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July 26, 2005
The Tragedy of the Commons
In 1968, Garrett Hardin postulates some theories for explaining how people act in their own self interest, but to the detriment of mankind as a whole, when dealing with a resource that is shared in common. The Tragedy of the Commons indicates that, in many of these situations, no technical solution exists. His thesis is, in many ways, fundamentally flawed. For instance, he states:
Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow "geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means that the per-capita share of the world's goods must decrease. Is ours a finite world?
Well, no. Ours is not a finite world. It's not a Zero Sum Society, where, for every economic winner, there has to be an equal and opposite loser. Consider a program like Microsoft Windows. Writing one copy is labor intensive, but producing a second copy is free. So, in theory, wealth can be created out of thin air by creating more copies of the same software. Who is the loser in this? No one.
But, if you can get negotiate around his erroneous assumptions, Hardin does posit a few intruiging ideas.
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Posted by Peenie Wallie on July 26, 2005 at 03:51 PM
Comments
I find it endlessly amusing, and frustrating, that the Left insists the notion of private property is somehow evil. Their notion of social justice has nothing whatever to do with economic well being, for anyone.
When everybody owns a thing, nobody owns it. And therefore nobody is responsible for it. Even Karl Marx recognized capitalism was the most efficient economic system, not socialism. Yet, in the name of "social justice", Marxists still persist.
Does history teach us nothing?
Posted by: Roger Snowden on July 30, 2005 at 10:53 PM