>>It's more complicated than that. The tragedy of the commons is real. But
many
communities developed effective ways of combating the tendencies and
avoiding its effects. That does not mean the tendencies are not real and
that
the effects do not occur. The problems we have with overfishing are a case
in
point. --jks
=========
Justin,
The tragedy of open access to non-property [over-fishing the oceans] is very
different from Hardin's empirically inaccurate description of governance
strategies of commonly held [usually under the parish system] property in
England. The Familists knew the local ecology all too well,and were not
"rational utility maximizers"; that's probably why they held all property in
common and large numbers of the Levellers too were against the first
enclosures. Both groups in England, as well as others, rejected the sky god
and were pantheists or atheists which is an extremely intersting coincidence
imo. The tragedies of deforestation that took place in Greece and other
Mediterranean cultures were due to open access to non-property for the
purpose of making warships and other empire technologies.
I'm too ignorant to make any statements on pre-industrial non-euro cultures
and ecologies....
The left needs to work a lot harder to counter the Coasian/Epsteinian
nonsense on property....
Ian
[the November '99 issue of Ecological Economics is devoted to sustainable
governance of the oceans in light of recent developments in the treaty of
the sea and the latest survey data on fisheries]
