• compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zoneOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    18 hours ago

    The tragedy of the commons is ahistorical bullshit used to prop up bad policy, and it is completely detached from any resemblance of how the commons actually functioned. Garrett Hardin had no idea what he was talking about. Elinor Ostrom literally won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work studying how common-pool resources are collectively managed in real life.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Isn’t the whole point of the “tradegy of the commons” narrative to draw attention to the fact that the “commons” need governance?

      The image you posted seems to be in support of non-goverance, which would be the opposite of what people like Elinor Ostrom advocated.

      • compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zoneOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        18 hours ago

        The tragedy of the commons, as Hardin put it, supported the need for government to impose regulation to prevent “rationally self-interested” actors from depleting the common resource. However, the scenario he imagines in which that’s necessary does not mirror the real world. What Ostrom found was that when faced with a dwindling resource, communities find ways to cooperate and develop rules to manage those resources without requiring a central top-down authority.

        I actually don’t find all that much connection between the image I posted and the tragedy of the commons argument. (I just really hate Garrett Hardin.) My interpretation of the post is less an advocacy for no rules in managing common pool resources, and more a complaint and pondering of how work seems to lose meaning when it is on behalf of someone else

        • jacksilver@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          17 hours ago

          I don’t have any issue with the bottom part of the image, it’s the top part that seems to be oblivious to how the world works.