Ownership and the tragedy of the commons

Bloggers Note: Those of you who know me are aware that I have been a little busy as of late, what with the whole 'get married, go on honeymoon, write your thesis' thing. I'll try and write a little more regularly and a little less splenetically* than previously.

Th tragedy of the commons refers to how unregulated grazing on common land would eventually exhaust said land, and lead to the impoverishment of all those using it, whereas proper management could have ensured it's equitable use. It's also become a shorthand for why everything should be privatised and how common use or property held in common will inevitably fail.

And oh how it has been criticised. That's not my aim here, except to note that the whole thing depends upon a presupposed market society. If the herders involved aren't able to exchange their cattle for some imperishable abstract value (whether that's grotes, guilders or goodwill) then the nature of competition is somewhat changed and simply becomes about collective survival. In other words can we (herders) raise enough cattle to feed our families collectively, and how willing are we to starve our neighbours in order to say have one or two more children ourselves.

I'll note at this point that the *cough* "peasantry" *cough* (otherwise known as people) of the world managed to feed themselves and generate considerable surplus with all kinds of cultural, regulatory and financial ways of managing commons. For about 10 thousand years.

Now, let's see where we are today. If we accept that common management and ownership is impossible, the logical outcome is that one person should own the world. All of it. They will then delegate, and so on and so forth. So then. Feudalism. Of course, the actual management of the world will proceed in basically the same way as it would under common ownership, as owners typically can't manage every aspect of a system. But of course nobody apart from the one owner would have any say in how the system was run.

So, there we go. I'm sure people can pick apart my argument and make the counter argument. It's just that that puts you firmly in the "starve your neighbour" camp. It's your choice.

*[sic] Pratchett