In recent years, the case for "The Tragedy" has been rebutted by Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrum, who wrote "Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons." Ostrum examined how commons were actually used. She found that the so-called tragedy of the commons was not prevalent, nor was it difficult to solve. Indeed, people from local communities routinely develop controls over the commons to protect it from "the tragedy." In 1990, she wrote, "Governing the Commons," which examined the governance of natural resources. She found that neither state control nor privatization of resources was the appropriate answer and that commons are sometimes governed by voluntary organizations. She developed eight "design principles" of stable local management of commons. These are:
1. Clearly defined boundaries.
2. Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions.
3. Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process.
4. Effective monitoring by those who are part of or accountable to the appropriators.
5. A scale of graduated sanctions for those who violate community rules.
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access.
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities.
8. In the case of larger commons resources, organization in the form of multiple layers situated inside one another, like Russian nesting dolls.
These have been refined to include additional principles, e.g. effective communication, internal trust and reciprocity, and making connections between the various parts of the resource system as a whole.
The real tragedy of the commons is enclosure, which is what privatization used to be called. Marx called it "primitive accumulation" and observed that it is the origin of feudalism (landlordism with emphasis on "lord")) and capitalism (ownership of the means of production by a privileged class). Marx disputed Adam Smith's imagined narrative of the original enclosure arising spontaneously as hard workers utilize available resources, while slackers goofed off. Marx pointed to history, which is the record of powerful interests appropriating the commons by force, creating a privileged class of have's and a class of have-not's that whose existence was to serve the privileged class with their labor in order to use what had previously been held in common. This with their fellow countrymen. And with the rise of colonialism the process was even more brutal to the point of genocide in some places, for example, in America, when the native population resisted.
Building the Commons as an Antidote to the Predatory Market Economy
Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
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Wonderful piece. But, it looks to me like the commons, framed as it is here, needs a single power with monopoly over the means of coercion, here described as "the community" or higher levels of authority -- i.e. a sovereign. So, while Marx description is accurate, we still face the problem of sustaining a sovereign whose interests align with the protection of the commons. And for those who would try to dispense with a sovereign, think of the failed promise of UNCLOS, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which explicitly strives to create a global commons on the high seas, but because of the lack of senior power able to coerce obedience to its dictates, is unable to curtail the depletion of the world's fish stocks, high seas dumping of pollution, unsustainable oil exploitation practices... High seas going the way of the bison.
The troubling issue is that, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and unjustly, the only way to protect the seas may be some form of privatization. At least private exploiters may have a some interest in protecting their resource -- where a toothless UNCLOS does not.
As Marx, Marxians, and others have pointed out, that the problem is always traceable to a power elite who end up in control with or without government. The only way to prevent this is for the community as whole to stand up to power and take their power back, as has happened historically only for a relapse to occur.
Marx and others pointed out the failure of unorganized anarchy because such anarchists confounded governing with hierarchical government. Governing is necessary in a society, but hierarchical government is not.
Hierarchical government is always and everywhere controlled by a power elite. A community is governed by consensus as in the so-called primitive societies. Primitive hunter-gatherer societies were/are communal, being based on kinship and trust. They were (mostly) were replaced by command societies after the Agricultural Age and the advent of surpluses that could be commanded.
Command societies are governed on the hierarchical model of the palace, temple, and military. They dominated from the beginning of the Agricultural Age to the beginning of the Industrial Age and the rise of liberalism, when capitalism replaced feudalism.
Command societies were replaced by liberal societies characterized by liberal economics in which capitalism replace feudalism and representative democracies as republics replaced monarchy and aristocracy. The land ownership of the Agricultural Age in the hands of lords gave way to ownership of the means of production in republics controlled by the owners of capital goods.
So modern society is a combination of the primitive communal society (family, kinship, community), the command society (hierarchy of palace, temple, and military in modern garb) and the liberal/market society dominated by wealth as the source of power.
The commons movement is about retaining the surplus while getting rid of the hierarchical form of governance based on privilege, whether it be heredity, office or property. It looks at economics as a win-win game where knowledge is unlimited rather than a zero-sum game, in which a limited amount of real resources that must be fought over and ownership is rival and exclusionary.
@Tom Hickey: that sounds very pretty but utterly unrealizable, especially in international space like the high seas. (The "international community" is doing such a great job coordinating its response to the Syrian war, eh!) Which is why we have representative governments and parties -- elites that we can kick out periodically. Still, yours is a worthy dream and one that can to an extent inform electors' behaviour, so there is some hope in inducing the elites behave as if they believed in democracy.
How would the seas be privatized. Who is going to give title since no one one with legal jurisdiction to confer title possesses the seas now and international law regulates use and passage?
If the seas were privatized, property owners could not only charge tolls for passage but also prevent access. Who is going to settle disputes? On the basis of what law? And just imagine the transaction cost involved.
It's an impractical dream.
Rather simple, not saying it is necessarily the best way. But here is how. Get rid of any rights to the sea for non coastal nations in UNCLOS. Divide the entire ocean evenly between coastal nations -- i.e. extend national maritime boundaries to the middle of the high seas. Sell off national ocean rights and fishing quotas to private national operators, to exploit according to national laws. For non-resource-exploitation activities, keep all the freedom of navigation and the seas rules currently under UNCLOS.
Who is going to do this? By treaty: Sovereign nations can always break treaties, which then increases the likelihood of conflict. Non-coastal nations are going to buy into this scheme? It would greatly benefit countries with long coasts and disadvantage others.
Libertarian/neoliberal pipe dream unless imposed under threat of force by TPTB, e.g, the developed countries of the West under the US as the sole superpower. Russia would go along with it? You really think so?
BTW, there is already a huge international kerfuffle involving the US, Canada and Russia over possession of the Arctic as the sea ice melts and access to resources opens up. Potential for future conflict is not insignificant.
You'll have the conflict either way -- screwing over Ecuador and Switzerland and Laos for the mutual benefit of Russia, Canada, Denmark and the US is not hard to imagine. And actually this would solve many boundary issues. So, the way this would happen is by a consensus of coastal states in the UN to change UNCLOS. And of course this would be enforced by the threat of violence by a coalition of the coastal states, who vastly outnumber the rest.
Just playing devil's advocate, because the whole plan is impractical, as no nation, possibly not even the US, could enforce effective control over such large swaths of ocean. But in that sense it is no different from the arrangements under UNCLOS.
Tom -- I found this article on the Links page at Naked Capitalism on Monday. Of course it references Garrett Hardin and Lin Ostrom, as does this article, but has a slightly different approach to the theory and it's refutation by Ostrom. An interesting read.
http://timharford.com/2013/08/do-you-believe-in-sharing/
Thanks, John. Promoted to a post.
@ John Zelnicker. A fantatstic and instructive read -- but maybe what works in established communities cannot work in international spaces such as the high seas, and maybe the best way to get desireable communal solutions such as those described by Ostrom is to extend property rights and partial privatization of the commons. The Swiss farmers cooperated because they had to, and because there were sever sanctions for those who did not obey.
Propose a specific plan, Tom, or cite one that is on the table instead of an amorphous idea (ideal) and we'll discuss it. As I've already explained, it's a non-starter without a world governing body. Governments would never be able to come to an agreement about this. It would have to be imposed by the most powerful on the weakest, which is in essence just another instance of colonialism, where stronger countries claimed the land and resources, and manpower of the colonies just because they could.
The issue as I see it is whether communalism is third choice standing between state ownership and private ownership. It's what Marx envisioned after the withering away of the state and there are numerous historical examples, not only tribal societies but also the early followers of Jesus, who held all things in common.
(Act 2:44-45 ESV) 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
I don't have a solution. But I know that consumption of bushmeat in West Africa is endangering species because folk are looking for something to replace the calories they once got from local fisheries, which have been largely fished out by European and Asian fishing fleets. The link between overfishing by foreign fleets in the absence of a sovereign in Somalian waters and the rise of piracy have been well documented. So, I fear the choice may be between colonialisms. Please, if you can, explain to me why this is NOT the case. I hope you can come up with an satisfying answer.
Yes, you just described one effect of colonialism, and this could be multiplied. So the fishery is privatized, the bush cannot fish there, and then what do they do. Poach or die?
Really, be serious. You are avoiding the question by asking a irrelevant question that just cites an effect of colonialism, as if privatization would have any affect on that at all, even if it could be carried out which it cannot without imposing colonial force.
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Property rights as the solution to all problems of the commons?
Property as a "right" is a legal construct. Property rights are often contested at law and defense of property rights comes with significant transaction costs as everyone buying real property learns at the closing. And that is just the beginning.
Moreover, property law varies by jurisdiction, so often people are not completely clear what property rights may entail before the fact. In addition, titles may turn out to be clouded, something that is going to be a legacy of the housing and foreclosure crisis.
Additionally, in any complex case the outcome often rests on which party can afford to absorb more legal fees, as well as law shaped beforehand by special interest pleading, loading the outcome in favor of existing wealth and power.
In many ways property is a subterfuge for preserving and extending a power structure.
Thanks, Tom and Tom. Tom Hickey - What, then, do you recommend we do about resources such as the oceans when even international organizations and their rulings are ignored by countries that want what they want and have the ability to get it? I am thinking particularly about the Japanese refusal to follow the limits decided by the International Whaling Commission.
This is a problem yet to be worked out, with many nations acting like adolescents without supervision. Some see the answer in a world government body with teeth, unlike the present structures which are mostly advisory or else owned and operated by the rich and powerful nations for their benefit.
The answer to this from the right is privatization but that just transfers the problem to another cohort that has shown itself to be no more mature. In addition, the transfer is seemingly impossible without imposition and asymmetry resulting from existing power structures that would favor rich and powerful nations over others. And typically what happens when the commons is enclosed is as much or worse exploitation of resources than previously.
So that leaves the communal solution of creating a different conception of the commons and it use at the grass roots and using power arising from shared values and commitment from below.
It's quite doubtful to me that there is going to be either a top-down hierarchical solution coming from governments cooperating for the common good of humanity or that privatization of real resources is any better solution overall — and likely worse.
There is a vibrant response bubbling up from the bottom internationally and if things are going to get down it will likely be through concerted moral and political pressure from the grassroots as more people are affected consciously. More and more people are waking up as their lives are affected. For example, there was a front page article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette yesterday about how the change in weather patterns are adversely affecting the pheasant population. You can bet that this was at topic of interest at bars frequented by people who hunt last evening. These would be the people that don't think that warming is a problem — until now that it is affecting them directly this season and is predicted only to get worse.
I think Tom Hickey's answer to my charge of a choice between colonialism is an interesting one, and may have some merit. But, I am also informed that Somalian fish stocks have improved because of the piracy -- which has frightened off industrial fishing vessel for a number of years now. Let us not pretend, however, that this is evidence of some communitarian process of mutual agreement and sharing -- it is simply the result of possibly defensible violence by certain Somalian parties.
There are cases of international agreement to protect a commons -- like the Montreal agreement over the banning of ozone-depleting substances (ODS). But such agreements are rare and frequently unworkable. And sometimes the best is enemy of the better. Sadly, I can think of cases where enclosure has resulted in BETTER environmental outcomes. And we have to consider that sometimes human justice may be the enemy of environmental improvement (certain types of poaching being examples of distributional justice that harms the environment). Sometimes the commons IS the problem.
It is irrelevant to argue commons v enclosure in that the issue has been decided by history. the issue is where to go from here.
The tragedy of the commons argument sets up a false dichotomy between commons and privatization and argues from some successes with privatization to the conclusion that the commons is optimally enclosed as much as possible.
That is a false dichotomy, and virtually no one on the commons side argues for going back to the communism of primitive tribes or the early followers of Jesus, even though they can also point to successes there also.
Even Marx and Engels did not reject private property in toto, holding that the ownership of the means of production should not be privatized since this results in a class power structure and exploitation of workers, They emphasized that the holding of private property by the petite bourgeoisie was fine as long as it was based on use rather than rent that exploited others. They sought to recruit the petite bourgeoisie, whom that saw as natural allies who were deluding themselves by identifying with the interests of the haute bourgeoisie and titled (landed) aristocracy rather than the workers, whose interests were more in line with theirs.
This is the difference between communalism and communism. What came to be known as Soviet Communism is Marxist-Leninist, which Mao imitated and gave Chinese characteristics.
Basically, there are two ways to solve apparently opposing interests, either cooperation with a view to win-win, or or conflict with a view to either zero-sum or maximizing advantage. The mature, intelligent and fair way, as most parents teacher their children, is the former.
Historically, families tend to be be communal since wise parent recognize that education needs to prepare children for social life and citizenship. However, some family models are more command (strict father, authoritarian) or market-based (positive and negative reinforcement based on incentives). The outcome of such upbringing leads to social dysfunction, either producing control freaks or acquisitors bent on eating as much of the pie as they can and accumulating the most toys.
I think Professor Arnason has the answer:
Individual responsibility
Prof Arnason, who addressed the annual science conference of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in Reykjavik, said attempts to reform and improve fisheries were not anything new.
Fisherman landing his catch (Image: AP) Many of the world's fisheries consist of small-scale low-tech fishing boats
"The only system that empirically has been found to function have been based on private property rights," he recalled.
"In fisheries, this is usually done by saying that an area of the ocean belongs to a group - this is called territorial rights. It works pretty well if you have sedentary species, such as shellfish.
"When you are dealing with fish stocks that are moving about then you usually have quantitative catch rights. So out of the total allowable catch for that particular stock, you would get a fixed [allocation], for example 1%.
"You then do not have to race or compete against your fellow fishermen. If this right is a long-term right, you also have a greater interest in the welfare of the fish stock and ecosystem because the amount you are allowed to catch increases as the state of the fish stocks/ecosystem improves.
"So you become a little bit like a shareholder in a company, you want the company to succeed."
see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24209950
Good luck with that. Unworkable to get widespread agreement and make it enforceable. Never happen in the current context of nation states.
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