Tragedy of Commons

Posted on January 30, 2006. Filed under: Social |

Having a commons (publicly-owned property) sounds like a great idea, so why do stories about the commons – the ocean, rivers, and air – so often turn tragic? Why are so many species facing extinction? Why are so many resources being depleted?

The American buffalo, Asian tigers were hunted nearly to extinction. Why? No one owned them, so hunters had an incentive to kill as many as they could. Ranchers and farmers, on the other hand, own cattle. When was the last time you heard about the threat to cattle?

Economists Saying:
As any economist will tell you, people respond to incentives. If there’s a valuable resource lying about in a commons—picture a pizza at a party—people will try and grab as much of that resource as they can before the resource is depleted. This response is natural—it’s an example of people responding to incentives. In other words, in a zero-sum game, you need to “get while the getting is good”. The more other people get, the less there is for you.

Bunny Game or here
“The Tragedy of the Bunnies” is a simple game that illustrates the concept of “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Moral of the Game

Bloggers saying:

A
The tragedy of the commons can never be stopped as it is related very closely to survival of the fittest.

B
The tragedy of the commons is something that occurs in a society or community which conflicts with the common good.

IEEE Spectrum (Jan 2006)
The World Wide Web is also a commons but survival is ensured by some courtesy built into the protocol suite. Consider the transmission control protocol, TCP, used to send information across the Internet. Normally, this protocol increases the speed of data packets being sent by a computer until unacknowledged packets begin to accumulate, indicating the connection is getting congested. Then the computer that is sending the packets slows the speed of transmission to avoid clogging up the network.

Imagine if our cars acted like TCP. You’d be allowed to drive as fast as you wanted, as long as you didn’t interfere with others. As soon as your car detected that you were interfering with others, your speed would be automatically reduced, and you could build it back up only gradually. If everyone were subject to such a system, perhaps traffic would flow much better, and the roads would be more peaceable. However, we’d all hate it. Triumph over the tragedy surely comes with a cost..

Triump over the tragedy:
Tragedy of Commons as Hardin artistically puts it: “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in freedom of the commons.”

But, the ascent of man from a primitive existence with no wealth accumulation to life as we know it is fundamentally a story about triumph over the tragedy of commons.

Our very existence as human beings is defined by evolved institutions for avoiding tragedies. We have names, which serve the economic purpose of identifying us as parties to contracts and agreements.

We have abstract symbols of ownership—deeds, titles, and contracts—that define spheres of autonomous behavior. We speak of our homes, our cars, our clothes, our families, and our pasture. Even language has evolved to provide a possessive form that accommodates triumph over the commons.

We write and observe contracts, wills, and marriage agreements that define relationships, identify turf, and conserve wealth. We accept evolved bodies of law and law-enforcement activities to assure the integrity of our agreements. We carry papers that enable us to acquire property, extinguish debt, cross borders, drive vehicles, and communicate effectively with strangers. And we have locks, keys, walls, fences, brands, and encryption devices, all this in an effort to avoid a tragedy of the commons.

The fight for survival continues….