Talk:Tragedy of the commons

Template:Authoronlinesource2005

From Tragedy of the commons

"By cooperating, every individual agrees not to seek more than its share. Defection happens when an individual realizes that it's in its interest to use more than its share of public property."

I do not like that quote; it has an obvious flaw, being that it is not in his interest to take more than his share. Such an act would break the trust people have in him, thus making any cooperation, which is invariably benefical to every group, impossible with that individual. --Guizzy 00:32, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

These "its" sound really weird. Does Wikipedia have any usage/grammar guidelines we can refer to?

You are right; its is only to be used if there is specifically no gender to the owner of the object, and not the gender is variable. In this case, the neutral masculine possessive form should be assumed to be the most appropriate.

I wrote that. I'm portuguese, be free to correct me. Joao

---

I've fixed them. John Lynch

---

It looks that the expression "the tragedy of the commons" comes from Garrett Hardin's article "The Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett Hardin, Science, 162(1968):1243-1248. Quote from the article:

"The rebuttal to the invisible hand in population control is to be found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known Pamphlet in 1833 by a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). [6] We may well call it "the tragedy of the commons," using the word "tragedy" as the philosopher Whitehead used it [7]: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things." He then goes on to say, "This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama.""

http://www.dieoff.org/page95.htm

My interpretation of this, is that mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd used the overexploitation of the commons as an example, but the expression was used by the first time by Hardin. Joao

Hardin's essay is often mentioned by people who have perhaps never read it, and who might not agree with its thesis. I think it is appropriate to add parenthetically that the essay calls for coerced birth control to prevent human overpopulation. Will McW 00:01, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

The following text seemed very obscure to me, so I decided to put it here until someone can explain what it might mean...

Free software and colloborative projects like Wikipedia prove that for many digital commons the tragedy becomes a comedy.

- R Lowry 18:06, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It means that collaborative projects are not affected by the so called Tragedy. --Guizzy 00:32, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

---

Contents

1 Possible example to include 2 Historical Commons 2.1 False history? 3 Digital commons 3.1 Property and tradeability 4 Papers that cite this one

Possible example to include

An example was just removed from the PD page which is claimed to actually be a 'tragedy' example. See Talk:Prisoner's_dilemma#Water_shortage:_Bad_example. I've copied the deleted text below in case it is appropriate for this article.

Another example would be hoarding supplies of an essential item during a shortage. Let's say that all our tap water gets poisoned, somehow, and everyone has to rely on bottled water from supermarkets. Rationally, each person knows that they should limit their purchases of bottled water for the period of the shortage (ie, they should 'co-operate'), because if everybody rushes to the supermarket and stocks up on water (ie, if they 'defect') supplies will quickly run out — so that, in the long-run, there will be nothing left for anyone. However, each person also fears that hoarding is precisely what everybody else will be doing; therefore, rationally, they know that if they are to be sure of securing any supply of water at all they had better go and stock up too.

This scenario fits the PD payoff matrix outlined above: defection when others co-operate (T) means you can keep on getting a generous supply of drinking water repeatedly, because others are restricting their consumption; mutual co-operation (R) would bring the reward of a moderate amount of drinking water for everyone, over an extended period; mutual defection (P) would mean that everyone gets a lot to start off with but they probably all die of thirst soon enough thereafter; co-operation when others defect (S) means you end up with hardly any water, because it has all been snapped up by other people.

Wolfman 18:31, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this text over. As the original author of the above water shortage example, I was a little disappointed to see it removed from the Prisoner's dilemma article, tho' I didn't protest because I think the reason was a fair one. The second paragraph presumably wouldn't belong in this article, as it refers specifically to the PD payoff matrix, but I see nothing wrong with using the first paragraph here as a 'tragedy' example. However, since I obviously have an interest in saying that I'll wait for a few days before making the change, in case anyone comes up with any objections. R Lowry 19:18, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, it's done. R Lowry 20:41, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I disagree that this is a good example. The term "Tragedy of the Commons" was introduced for a situation where the overall amount of a usually replenishing resource is diminished by over-use (as also stated in the lead paragraph). No such thing occurs in the quoted water example; water is not lost but "only" distributed unfairly. That may be a tragedy, but does not fit here.

Historical Commons

Perhaps the article should contain some example of commons that didn't result in tragedy.

In the alpine region, most of the land (mainly forest and high pastures) was communally owned by a village or group of villages. Regulations kept under control the exploitation of the shared resource, although population has been for long time near the subsistence level.

See R. McC Netting "Balancing on a Alp"

On the other hand, there's the Easter Island case.

The defintion of "commoner" here, that it is a subset of the general public is at odds with commoner? -- PL 15/12 23:08

False history?

My problem with the historical part of this article is it doesn't match what little I know about the way that the law of commons worked (and of course works, because they still exist) in England and Wales.

Essentially there are two kinds of right. From memory about 10% of common rights are "at large" and amount to a right to put a fixed number of a particular kind of animal on the common. They were property and could be traded (contrary to what is said in the article).

Most rights were rights of "levancy and couchancy" -- the right to put animals of a particular type was attached to a plot of land. The number of animals you could overwinter on that land (hence "levancy and couchancy") was the number you could put on the common the rest of the year. The theory being that external factors would be taken into account so that you could put more animals on in a good year than a bad one. This right was, historically although not any more, attached to land and not "at large", though one could still say it was "property".

However in both cases the right to put animals on the common was limited. There was no "tragedy of the commons". The phrase being an example of the totally idiotic view that modern intellectuals have of the mediaevals, who were not stupid and would have been well aware of the problem of allowing too many animals on the common against the common good. Its like believeing that mediaeval people thought the world was flat -- it says more about the ignorance of modern people than of their predecessors.

PS: I am a English property lawyer, so I am quite sure about the law part of this.

Francis Davey 19:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please, be bold and correct the text as you think best. The fact is that there are two stories here- the historical commons, and the metaphorical commons. The man who created the metaphor (at least in modern day), was not a property lawyer, he was an American scientist, and probably had a faulty view of how the commons worked. Cheers, -Willmcw 22:40, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, what I've been told is that the commons worked too well for individuals who joined the collective, which is why parliment had to enact enclosure laws, in order to dis-enfranchise people working their way up the ladder, and to be able to sell of the land to rich landowners to expand sheep production. In Scotland, they were *pissed*. Of course I don't have a ready source for that, but maybe that should be looked into.
Also, the 'tragedy of the commons' was a propoganda piece published to throw-off people who were against wholesale appropriation. Kinda like 'survival of the fittest', which was from a political tract to justify takings from the whole of society, was grafted onto Darwin's evolutionary theory.
~ender 2003-04-14 02:52 MST

If you are referring to Hardin's essay, "The Tragedy of The Commons", then you should know it has nothing to do with property or appropriations. The "commons" in that essay is the gene pool. Hardin is arguing against the ability of anyone to add to the population, and in favor of state-controlled reproduction. Cheers, -Willmcw 19:31, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

OTOH, it has been cited in many, many other contexts. This fact should be examined in the article. Mr. Jones 19:00, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

That has not been a problem in the past. In fact, for a long time there was no reference to the actual content of the essay, and even now it is virtually a footnote. Hardin's metaphor is useful far beyond his intended purpose, a purpose that may embarrass some of those who quote it. -Willmcw 19:15, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Got a link to that paper? I don't believe that was the information I was reading (but I'm willing to check). I was reading about sheep and enclosure laws specifically (ie: England ramping up production to dominate the trade).

~ender 2005-05-02 18:03:MST

Yes, see the first link in the list of "External links". This goes straight to it: [1] (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243). -Willmcw 03:54, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Digital commons

Many people argue that the 'tragedy of the commons' principle does not apply to certain aspects of the digital world, because sharing information and software with other people does not decrease the amount that is available for others. Indeed, as the writer Eric S. Raymond, in an essay called The Magic Cauldron [2] (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/) has pointed out, in the case of open source software more widespread use actually tends to increase the usefulness of a product — the more people that are finding and correcting bugs, the better it is for everybody. Raymond has described this process as the inverse commons (see also: network effect). A similar process may be observed in collaborative, open content projects like the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the digital world. Furthermore, it seems to be a strawman. Does anyone argue that the tragedy of the commons does occur in these situations? anthony (see warning) 01:00, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 21:05, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)) I restored the para, but only because I objected to the gross language from POlyglut. But I don't understand your arguments against it: the connection to the digital world seems obvious.

It seems to me that some misidentify copyright law as solving a tragedy of the commons. That's just not true in the first place. Copyright law is designed to resolve a free rider problem, not a tragedy of the commons. The difference, as is somewhat explained here, is that sharing information does not decrease the amount that is available for others. But like I said, that's really a strawman argument. Moreover, what I really don't understand is why this is somehow specific to the digital world. Whether digital or analog, sharing information doesn't decrease the amount that is available for others.

Of course, maybe this isn't about copyright law in the first place. I'm kind of guessing, but copyright law isn't even mentioned here.

And, of course, the tragedy of the commons does occur in the digital world, in areas other than that of information. For instance, spam has caused a tragedy of the commons with regard to email.

Finally, I figured your restoration of the comment was more due to the way in which Polyglut removed the text. But that paragraph was already one which was bothering me, and after looking at it again I'm just not convinced it should stay, at least not without being clarified. anthony (see warning) 21:51, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 22:05, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)) I don't understand why you have introduced copyright. But I'm not desperately happy with the para either.

Open source, open content, these are terms which are related to copyright. anthony (see warning) 22:42, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

-- i added the following comment:

<<the digital commons, are properganda of the wikipedian fuckfaces, as usual. basically, you'll see such in any article these OpenSourcers can remotely insert their shit. Xah Xah Lee 15:01, 2004 Aug 22 (UTC)>>

and it got deleted by Anthony DiPierro. Since when do OpenSource fuckfaces not only insert properganda into articles and delete opposing edits, and now censor arguments in the discussion section? Is it because it contain swearing, fuckfaces? Xah Lee 23:04, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 09:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)) You'll generally find swearing counterproductive, as it is in this case. Being able to spell propaganda would help, too.

I didn't find anything useful in your comment, but if you choose to readd it I won't fight with you about it. By the way, you might want to note that I'm the one arguing for the deletion of this content, not the one adding it. In fact, as there doesn't appear to be anyone arguing for inclusion, and I can't think of a way to distill this down into something appropriate for Wikipedia (NPOV, verifiable, not original research, related to the topic), I'm going to delete it now and see what happens. As for the profanity, we do have a rule against unnecessary profanity, (Wikipedia:Profanity), as well as one against personal attacks (Wikipedia:No personal attacks). anthony (see warning) 11:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

-- An argument in favor of "Open Source or Open information" paragraph:

The idea of open sharing of resources is always looked upon with some distrust by humans. And not without good reasons: the "Tragedy of the Commons" is a vivid illustration of some of these reasons. Given that context, it seems nice to point to a domain where these reasons do not apply very strongly. Forms a nice counterpoint. As remarked by another poster, it can be put in terms of "information sharing" with Open Source software only as an example.

Property and tradeability

Since I last edited any of this, someone has altered it based on a US-centric misundersting of property. For the record, the property article contains this: "Property is defined as the right to use, enjoy or possess a determinant thing, and the right to exclude others from doing the same." This does not require tradeability; in fact, the second part is merely an implication of the first.

Property implies tradeability if, and only if, the thing in question can only be enjoyed by being traded, the way you don't get any benefit from money if you can't spend it.

quibble: You can get value from money, for example you can use paper fiat money as notepaper, wallpaper (post WWI Germany comes to mind), insulation, tinder for fires, in stacks as blocks for children to play with, and as toliet paper. Coinage can be melted down, etc.

Non-fiat money can be redeemed for its equivalent - historically gold or silver - both of which have non-monetary value.

Of course if you meant you can't get near the benefits from money's reputed value if you can't spend it, I'll agree. But be careful with your statements.

~ender 2005-05-20 02:13:MST

On the other hand, there are many forms of property that need not be tradeable to be capable of being enjoyed; land is one such. The idea that you can only fully own land as property if you can trade it is US-centric, from the very things the USA put in on purpose like banning entails of land. Yet under other systems, entailed land - despite not being tradeable - was most definitely property. And of course, under the mandate Zionists placed restrictions on the sale of land they bought so that it would remain forever within the settler community and could not return to Palestinians once they were no longer so poor, a sort of ratchet. The thing is, certain restrictions can actually enhance the ability to enjoy and actually increase the ownership.

The long and the short of all this is, whoever edited this to assert that commoners' rights weren't property because they weren't tradeable was plain wrong. It's only property that is essentially liquid, inherently needing value in trade like money, that needs to be tradeable to be property. But commoners' rights had value in use. PML.

(William M. Connolley 08:34, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)) I disagree with you. And I'm not from the US. So I've restored it. Your examples are poor: land is tradeable. As for your quote from wiki: read a bit further down.

We should probably specify that the status of commoners' rights as property is ambiguous, rather than arguing for one side or the other. For arguments' sake, fee tail land is not necessarily tradeable. - Nat Krause 10:00, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 15:27, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)) I partly agree. I accept there is ambiguity though. Perhaps rather than stating whether or not the rights were property we simply state that they could not be sold? As to fee tail land: I accept it could not be traded. But its not really clear that it was property in that case.

(Not that it matters in terms of this article, but I would say that fee tail land is the property of its owner, but that another party owns a restrictive easement on its use). - Nat Krause 16:30, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As I explain above (under the historical section) rights of common certainly could be sold, but most such rights were attached to land, so they could not be traded independantly of the land to which they were fixed, but since that could be sold (at least since Quia Emptores) they were something that could be exchanged for money value. Obviously one could also hire out their use. Francis Davey 00:59, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I originally put in the bundle of rights/property part, then someone US centric "corrected" it. I've now tried to separate out the issues, without resolving the part about being attached to the land (which I knew, but didn't emphasise). I believe that I covered how these rights could be leased (it was actually called "thistle rents"). That still leaves unresolved just how the rights could be sold, but I don't think we need to get into that detail in this article provided we only make it clear that where these things applied they really were property rights. At least, I hope nobody is so US-centric to dispute that other approaches exist, and US ones shouldn't be used when they weren't the relevant ones. It's like "Oh, you were married by the law of the country? but they don't have churches so you weren't really married, were you?"

I'd also like to see all these "a commons" things cleared up, not just for pedantry but because it confuses the fact that there were lots of distinct commons, each somewhat different, and not conferring any general access to the public. The whole Prisoner's dilemma thing comes from a difference between "each" and "all", and that makes this mechanism sensitive to what is singular and what is plural - it isn't a quibble, the way objecting to the Americanism "a woods" would be. PML.

Would it worthwhile to move most of the discussion of the historical commons, and their inclosure, to the Commons article? That might help separate historical fact from metaphorical extrapolation. Just a usggestion. -Willmcw 05:58, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Papers that cite this one

There must be very many! However, I wonder if there are any we could refer to that describe the effect of selfish groups (rather than individuals) on the common good. Famous papers that refer to it would be good to mention too. Anyone have access to a citation index? Mr. Jones 18:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Google now has a scholarly journal search function, which includes citations. [[3] (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Tragedy+of+the+commons%22&btnG=Search)] Hardin wrote a follow-on essay, which is the first listed. That essay alone has been cited over 2200 times! -Willmcw 18:31, May 4, 2005 (UTC)