--- On Mon, 8/25/08, shag <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> From: shag <shag at cleandraws.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
> To: "Lame Brained Onanists" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Monday, August 25, 2008, 6:10 PM
> ahhh. haven't seen ascii newsletter art in ages. i guess
> i get this
> regularly but haven't noticed it in a while. fished
> this one out of the
> junk mail box.
>
> I never thought about it, but he's right: Hardin never
> did provide evidence
> for his assertions.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 133 .... August 25,
> 2008
> __________________________________________________
>
> The Myth of the
> Tragedy of the Commons
>
> Ian Angus
>
> Will shared resources always be misused and overused? Is
> community
> ownership of land, forests and fisheries a guaranteed road
> to ecological
> disaster? Is privatization the only way to protect the
> environment and end
> Third World poverty? Most economists and development
> planners will answer
> "yes" -- and for proof they will point to the
> most influential article ever
> written on those important questions.
>
> Since its publication in Science in December 1968,
> "The Tragedy of the
> Commons" has been anthologized in at least 111 books,
> making it one of the
> most-reprinted articles ever to appear in any scientific
> journal. It is
> also one of the most-quoted: a recent Google search found
> "about 302,000"
> results for the phrase "tragedy of the commons."
>
> For 40 years it has been, in the words of a World Bank
> Discussion Paper,
> "the dominant paradigm within which social scientists
> assess natural
> resource issues." (Bromley and Cernea 1989: 6) It has
> been used time and
> again to justify stealing indigenous peoples' lands,
> privatizing health
> care and other social services, giving corporations
> 'tradable permits' to
> pollute the air and water, and much more.
>
> Noted anthropologist Dr. G.N. Appell (1995) writes that the
> article "has
> been embraced as a sacred text by scholars and
> professionals in the
> practice of designing futures for others and imposing their
> own economic
> and environmental rationality on other social systems of
> which they have
> incomplete understanding and knowledge."
>
> Like most sacred texts, "The Tragedy of the
> Commons" is more often cited
> than read. As we will see, although its title sounds
> authoritative and
> scientific, it fell far short of science.
>
> Garrett Hardin hatches a myth
>
> The author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" was
> Garrett Hardin, a University
> of California professor who until then was best-known as
> the author of a
> biology textbook that argued for "control of
> breeding" of "genetically
> defective" people. (Hardin 1966: 707) In his 1968
> essay he argued that
> communities that share resources inevitably pave the way
> for their own
> destruction; instead of wealth for all, there is wealth for
> none.
>
> He based his argument on a story about the commons in rural
> England.
>
> (The term "commons" was used in England to refer
> to the shared pastures,
> fields, forests, irrigation systems and other resources
> that were found in
> many rural areas until well into the 1800s. Similar
> communal farming
> arrangements existed in most of Europe, and they still
> exist today in
> various forms around the world, particularly in indigenous
> communities.)
>
> "Picture a pasture open to all," Hardin wrote. A
> herdsmen who wants to
> expand his personal herd will calculate that the cost of
> additional grazing
> (reduced food for all animals, rapid soil depletion) will
> be divided among
> all, but he alone will get the benefit of having more
> cattle to sell.
>
> Inevitably, "the rational herdsman concludes that the
> only sensible course
> for him to pursue is to add another animal to his
> herd." But every
> "rational herdsman" will do the same thing, so
> the commons is soon
> overstocked and overgrazed to the point where it supports
> no animals at all.
>
> Hardin used the word "tragedy" as Aristotle did,
> to refer to a dramatic
> outcome that is the inevitable but unplanned result of a
> character's
> actions. He called the destruction of the commons through
> overuse a tragedy
> not because it is sad, but because it is the inevitable
> result of shared
> use of the pasture. "Freedom in a commons brings ruin
> to all."
>
> Where's the evidence?
>
> Given the subsequent influence of Hardin's essay,
> it's shocking to realize
> that he provided no evidence at all to support his sweeping
> conclusions. He
> claimed that the "tragedy" was inevitable -- but
> he didn't show that it had
> happened even once.
>
> Hardin simply ignored what actually happens in a real
> commons:
> self-regulation by the communities involved. One such
> process was described
> years earlier in Friedrich Engels' account of the
> "mark," the form taken by
> commons-based communities in parts of pre-capitalist
> Germany:
>
> "The use of arable and meadowlands was under the
> supervision and direction
> of the community ...
>
> "Just as the share of each member in so much of the
> mark as was distributed
> was of equal size, so was his share also in the use of the
> 'common mark.'
> The nature of this use was determined by the members of the
> community as a
> whole. ...
>
> "At fixed times and, if necessary, more frequently,
> they met in the open
> air to discuss the affairs of the mark and to sit in
> judgment upon breaches
> of regulations and disputes concerning the mark."
> (Engels 1892)
>
> Historians and other scholars have broadly confirmed
> Engels' description of
> communal management of shared resources. A summary of
> recent research
> concludes:
>
> "What existed in fact was not a 'tragedy of the
> commons' but rather a
> triumph: that for hundreds of years -- and perhaps
> thousands, although
> written records do not exist to prove the longer era --
> land was managed
> successfully by communities." (Cox 1985: 60)
>
> Part of that self-regulation process was known in England
> as "stinting" --
> establishing limits for the number of cows, pigs, sheep and
> other livestock
> that each commoner could graze on the common pasture. Such
> "stints"
> protected the land from overuse (a concept that experienced
> farmers
> understood long before Hardin arrived) and allowed the
> community to
> allocate resources according to its own concepts of
> fairness.
>
> The only significant cases of overstocking found by the
> leading modern
> expert on the English commons involved wealthy landowners
> who deliberately
> put too many animals onto the pasture in order to weaken
> their much poorer
> neighbours' position in disputes over the enclosure
> (privatization) of
> common lands. (Neeson 1993: 156)
>
> Hardin assumed that peasant farmers are unable to change
> their behaviour in
> the face of certain disaster. But in the real world, small
> farmers, fishers
> and others have created their own institutions and rules
> for preserving
> resources and ensuring that the commons community survived
> through good
> years and bad.
>
> Why does the herder want more?
>
> Hardin's argument started with the unproven assertion
> that herdsmen always
> want to expand their herds: "It is to be expected that
> each herdsman will
> try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. ...
> As a rational
> being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain."
>
> In short, Hardin's conclusion was predetermined by his
> assumptions. "It is
> to be expected" that each herdsman will try to
> maximize the size of his
> herd -- and each one does exactly that. It's a circular
> argument that
> proves nothing.
>
> Hardin assumed that human nature is selfish and unchanging,
> and that
> society is just an assemblage of self-interested
> individuals who don't care
> about the impact of their actions on the community. The
> same idea,
> explicitly or implicitly, is a fundamental component of
> mainstream (i.e.,
> pro-capitalist) economic theory.
>
> All the evidence (not to mention common sense) shows that
> this is absurd:
> people are social beings, and society is much more than the
> arithmetic sum
> of its members. Even capitalist society, which rewards the
> most anti-social
> behaviour, has not crushed human cooperation and
> solidarity. The very fact
> that for centuries "rational herdsmen" did not
> overgraze the commons
> disproves Hardin's most fundamental assumptions -- but
> that hasn't stopped
> him or his disciples from erecting policy castles on
> foundations of sand.
>
> Even if the herdsman wanted to behave as Hardin described,
> he couldn't do
> so unless certain conditions existed.
>
> There would have to be a market for the cattle, and he
> would have to be
> focused on producing for that market, not for local
> consumption. He would
> have to have enough capital to buy the additional cattle
> and the fodder
> they would need in winter. He would have to be able to hire
> workers to care
> for the larger herd, build bigger barns, etc. And his
> desire for profit
> would have to outweigh his interest in the long-term
> survival of his community.
>
> In short, Hardin didn't describe the behaviour of
> herdsmen in
> pre-capitalist farming communities -- he described the
> behaviour of
> capitalists operating in a capitalist economy. The
> universal human nature
> that he claimed would always destroy common resources is
> actually the
> profit-driven "grow or die" behaviour of
> corporations.
>
> Will private ownership do better?
>
> That leads us to another fatal flaw in Hardin's
> argument: in addition to
> providing no evidence that maintaining the commons will
> inevitably destroy
> the environment, he offered no justification for his
> opinion that
> privatization would save it. Once again he simply presented
> his own
> prejudices as fact:
>
> "We must admit that our legal system of private
> property plus inheritance
> is unjust -- but we put up with it because we are not
> convinced, at the
> moment, that anyone has invented a better system. The
> alternative of the
> commons is too horrifying to contemplate. Injustice is
> preferable to total
> ruin."
>
> The implication is that private owners will do a better job
> of caring for
> the environment because they want to preserve the value of
> their assets. In
> reality, scholars and activists have documented scores of
> cases in which
> the division and privatization of communally managed lands
> had disastrous
> results. Privatizing the commons has repeatedly led to
> deforestation, soil
> erosion and depletion, overuse of fertilizers and
> pesticides, and the ruin
> of ecosystems.
>
> As Karl Marx wrote, nature requires long cycles of birth,
> development and
> regeneration, but capitalism requires short-term returns.
>
> "The entire spirit of capitalist production, which is
> oriented towards the
> most immediate monetary profits, stands in contradiction to
> agriculture,
> which has to concern itself with the whole gamut of
> permanent conditions of
> life required by the chain of human generations. A striking
> illustration of
> this is furnished by the forests, which are only rarely
> managed in a way
> more or less corresponding to the interests of society as a
> whole..." (Marx
> 1998: 611n)
>
> Contrary to Hardin's claims, a community that shares
> fields and forests has
> a strong incentive to protect them to the best of its
> ability, even if that
> means not maximizing current production, because those
> resources will be
> essential to the community's survival for centuries to
> come. Capitalist
> owners have the opposite incentive, because they will not
> survive in
> business if they don't maximize short-term profit. If
> ethanol promises
> bigger and faster profits than centuries-old rain forests,
> the trees will fall.
>
> This focus on short-term gain has reached a point of
> appalling absurdity in
> recent best-selling books by Bjorn Lomborg, William
> Nordhaus and others,
> who argue that it is irrational to spend money to stop
> greenhouse gas
> emissions today, because the payoff is too far in the
> future. Other
> investments, they say, will produce much better returns,
> more quickly.
>
> Community management isn't an infallible way of
> protecting shared
> resources: some communities have mismanaged common
> resources, and some
> commons may have been overused to extinction. But no
> commons-based
> community has capitalism's built-in drive to put
> current profits ahead of
> the well-being of future generations.
>
> A politically useful myth
>
> The truly appalling thing about "The Tragedy of the
> Commons" is not its
> lack of evidence or logic -- badly researched and argued
> articles are not
> unknown in academic journals. What's shocking is the
> fact that this piece
> of reactionary nonsense has been hailed as a brilliant
> analysis of the
> causes of human suffering and environmental destruction,
> and adopted as a
> basis for social policy by supposed experts ranging from
> economists and
> environmentalists to governments and United Nations
> agencies.
>
> Despite being refuted again and again, it is still used
> today to support
> private ownership and uncontrolled markets as sure-fire
> roads to economic
> growth.
>
> The success of Hardin's argument reflects its
> usefulness as a
> pseudo-scientific explanation of global poverty and
> inequality, an
> explanation that doesn't question the dominant social
> and political order.
> It confirms the prejudices of those in power: logical and
> factual errors
> are nothing compared to the very attractive (to the rich)
> claim that the
> poor are responsible for their own poverty. The fact that
> Hardin's argument
> also blames the poor for ecological destruction is a bonus.
>
> Hardin's essay has been widely used as an ideological
> response to
> anti-imperialist movements in the Third World and
> discontent among
> indigenous and other oppressed peoples everywhere in the
> world.
>
> "Hardin's fable was taken up by the gathering
> forces of neo-liberal
> reaction in the 1970s, and his essay became the
> 'scientific' foundation of
> World Bank and IMF policies, viz. enclosure of commons and
> privatization of
> public property. ... The message is clear: we must never
> treat the earth as
> a 'common treasury.' We must be ruthless and greedy
> or else we will
> perish." (Boal 2007)
>
> In Canada, conservative lobbyists use arguments derived
> from Hardin's
> political tract to explain away poverty on First
> Nations' reserves, and to
> argue for further dismantling of indigenous communities. A
> study published
> by the influential Fraser Institute urges privatization of
> reserve land:
>
> "These large amounts of land, with their attendant
> natural resources, will
> never yield their maximum benefit to Canada's native
> people as long as they
> are held as collective property subject to political
> management. ...
> collective property is the path of poverty, and private
> property is the
> path of prosperity." (Fraser 2002: 16-17)
>
> This isn't just right-wing posturing. Canada's
> federal government, which
> has refused to sign the United Nations Declaration on the
> Rights of
> Indigenous Peoples, announced in 2007 that it will
> "develop approaches to
> support the development of individual property ownership on
> reserves," and
> created a $300 million fund to do just that.
>
> In Hardin's world, poverty has nothing to do with
> centuries of racism,
> colonialism and exploitation: poverty is inevitable and
> natural in all
> times and places, the product of immutable human nature.
> The poor bring it
> on themselves by having too many babies and clinging to
> self-destructive
> collectivism.
>
> The tragedy of the commons is a useful political myth -- a
> scientific-sounding way of saying that there is no
> alternative to the
> dominant world order.
>
> Stripped of excess verbiage, Hardin's essay asserted,
> without proof, that
> human beings are helpless prisoners of biology and the
> market. Unless
> restrained, we will inevitably destroy our communities and
> environment for
> a few extra pennies of profit. There is nothing we can do
> to make the world
> better or more just.
>
> In 1844 Friedrich Engels described a similar argument as a
> "repulsive
> blasphemy against man and nature." Those words apply
> with full force to the
> myth of the tragedy of the commons.
>
> Ian Angus is editor of Climate and Capitalism and an
> associate editor of
> Socialist Voice.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e
> t))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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