Before the Tragedy of the Commons: Early Modern Economic Considerations of the Public Use of Natural Resources

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-424
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Wolloch
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Coal Reserves ◽  
Economic Considerations

Abstract This article distinguishes between the precise legal and economic approach to the commons used by Hardin and many other modern commentators, and the broader post-Hardinian concept utilized in environmentally-oriented discussions and aiming to limit the use of the commons for the sake of preservation. Particularly in the latter case, it is claimed, any notion of the tragedy of the commons is distinctly a modern twentieth-century one, and was foreign to the early modern and even nineteenth-century outlooks. This was true of the early modern mercantilists, and also of classical political economists such as Adam Smith and even, surprisingly, Malthus, as well as of Jevons and his neoclassical discussion aimed at maximizing the long-term use of Britain’s coal reserves. One intellectual who did recognize the problematic possibility of leaving some tracts of land in their pristine condition to answer humanity’s need for a spiritual connection with nature was J. S. Mill, but even he regarded this as in essence almost a utopian ideal. The notion of the tragedy of the commons in its broader sense is therefore a distinctly modern one.

The Effect of Incentives: Diffusion of Responsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Jason Brennan ◽  
William English ◽  
John Hasnas ◽  
Peter Jaworski
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
P Diffusion ◽  
Perverse Incentives ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Diffusion Of Responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility refers to the problem that when something is everyone’s job, it in effect ends up being nobody’s job. This explains why many collective problems arise. People face perverse incentives to free ride on others’ actions and not to do their part. As a result, agents often think in short-term rather than long-term ways. Problems such as climate change can be modeled as instances of the tragedy of the commons, one form of a collective action problem that arises due to perverse incentives created by the diffusion of responsibility.

scholarly journals Shame and honour drive cooperation

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 899-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jacquet ◽  
Christoph Hauert ◽  
Arne Traulsen ◽  
Manfred Milinski
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Resources ◽  
Public Goods Experiments ◽  
The Commons

Can the threat of being shamed or the prospect of being honoured lead to greater cooperation? We test this hypothesis with anonymous six-player public goods experiments, an experimental paradigm used to investigate problems related to overusing common resources. We instructed the players that the two individuals who were least generous after 10 rounds would be exposed to the group. As the natural antithesis, we also test the effects of honour by revealing the identities of the two players who were most generous. The non-monetary, reputational effects induced by shame and honour each led to approximately 50 per cent higher donations to the public good when compared with the control, demonstrating that both shame and honour can drive cooperation and can help alleviate the tragedy of the commons.

scholarly journals Caring for the future can turn tragedy into comedy for long-term collective action under risk of collapse

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (23) ◽  
pp. 12915-12922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfram Barfuss ◽  
Jonathan F. Donges ◽  
Vítor V. Vasconcelos ◽  
Jürgen Kurths ◽  
Simon A. Levin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Experimental Testing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Future Outcomes ◽  
The Impact

We will need collective action to avoid catastrophic climate change, and this will require valuing the long term as well as the short term. Shortsightedness and uncertainty have hindered progress in resolving this collective action problem and have been recognized as important barriers to cooperation among humans. Here, we propose a coupled social–ecological dilemma to investigate the interdependence of three well-identified components of this cooperation problem: 1) timescales of collapse and recovery in relation to time preferences regarding future outcomes, 2) the magnitude of the impact of collapse, and 3) the number of actors in the collective. We find that, under a sufficiently severe and time-distant collapse, how much the actors care for the future can transform the game from a tragedy of the commons into one of coordination, and even into a comedy of the commons in which cooperation dominates. Conversely, we also find conditions under which even strong concern for the future still does not transform the problem from tragedy to comedy. For a large number of participating actors, we find that the critical collapse impact, at which these game regime changes happen, converges to a fixed value of collapse impact per actor that is independent of the enhancement factor of the public good, which is usually regarded as the driver of the dilemma. Our results not only call for experimental testing but also help explain why polarization in beliefs about human-caused climate change can threaten global cooperation agreements.

Rogationtide Perambulation as Performative Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-473
Author(s):  
Jill P. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Recognition ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Administrative Units

This article draws on performance theory to examine perambulation practices in late medieval and early modern England. Rogation was originally a devotional celebration that also entailed a ritual walking of parish boundaries to define communities as legal and administrative units. Perambulators sometimes seized upon the occasion to draw attention to a culture of obligation that had been neglected. This essay looks at two such moments—the 1381 Revolt of St. Albans, when the commons rose against the abbot in the form of a perambulation, and a 1520–21 property dispute at South Kyme, Lincolnshire at Ashby Heath. In these instances, perambulators used the occasion of the public recognition of property boundaries as an opportunity to stage a complaint in an act of “performative law.” The complainants asserted their rights and liberties by means of a theatrical form that invited participants and spectators to assent in specific legal claims to the land in dispute.

Savagery, Civilization, and Property: Theories of Societal Evolution and Commons Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 507-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Schorr
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Development ◽  
Human Ecology ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Development Discourse ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Commons

Abstract This article argues that modern commons theory has been substantially shaped by early modern ways of thinking about the evolution of civilizations. In particular, it has hewed closely to models that gelled in the Enlightenment-era works known as “stadial theory,” by authors such as Lord Kames and Adam Smith, and passed down to the twentieth century, to theorists including Garrett Hardin, Harold Demsetz, and Elinor Ostrom. It argues that stadial thinking reached modern commons theorists largely through the disciplines of anthropology and human ecology, paying particular attention to the debate among anthropologists over aboriginal property rights, colonial and international development discourse, and neo-Malthusian conservationism. The effects of stadial theories’ influence include a belief among many that private property represents a more advanced stage of civilization than does the commons; and among others a Romantic yearning to return to an Eden of primitive and community-based commons. Thus do deep cultural attitudes, rooted in the speculative thinking of an earlier age, color today’s theories — positive and normative — of the commons.

Signs of Happiness

2021 ◽  
pp. 515-532
Author(s):  
Adriana Luna-Fabritius
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Internal Development ◽  
The Core ◽  
Agriculture Industry ◽  
Public Happiness ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Industry And Commerce

Although it has been argued that Cameralism had a prominent place in the formation of the modern economic mind and that public happiness was a crucial intersection of early modern economic discourses, its (re) discovery by mainstream economics has been considered partial and unconvincing. Therefore, it is crucial to understand that it was in the aftermath of the political and economic crisis of the Thirty Years’ War that happiness was established at the core of the foundations of Spanish Imperialism in the 1650s and then again in the 1760s. The text Signs of Happiness by Francesc Romà i Rossell (1768) is the best thread to reconstruct the evolution of Spanish imperialism. It spins the thread from the 1650s when happiness expanded the public sphere until the publication of his proposal where happiness is defined as the ability to recover from the decline through internal development and the improvement of agriculture, industry, and commerce. It is then when happiness and Cameralist teachings came together to sharpen Romà i Rossell’s science of government to transform the monarchy and underpin the creation of the Spanish nation.

scholarly journals Evolution in group-structured populations can resolve the tragedy of the commons

2006 ◽  
Vol 273 (1593) ◽  
pp. 1477-1481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Killingback ◽  
Jonas Bieri ◽  
Thomas Flatt
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Dilemma ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Indirect Reciprocity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Animal Societies ◽  
Trait Group

Public goods are the key features of all human societies and are also important in many animal societies. Collaborative hunting and collective defence are but two examples of public goods that have played a crucial role in the development of human societies and still play an important role in many animal societies. Public goods allow societies composed largely of cooperators to outperform societies composed mainly of non-cooperators. However, public goods also provide an incentive for individuals to be selfish by benefiting from the public good without contributing to it. This is the essential paradox of cooperation—known variously as the Tragedy of the Commons, Multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma or Social Dilemma. Here, we show that a new model for evolution in group-structured populations provides a simple and effective mechanism for the emergence and maintenance of cooperation in such a social dilemma. This model does not depend on kin selection, direct or indirect reciprocity, punishment, optional participation or trait-group selection. Since this mechanism depends only on population dynamics and requires no cognitive abilities on the part of the agents concerned, it potentially applies to organisms at all levels of complexity.

The Option to Discharge Industrial or Sewage Effluent to the Marine Environment

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. A. M. Botes ◽  
K. S. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Marine Environment ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Quality Criteria ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Materials ◽  
Remedial Actions ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Views And Perceptions ◽  
Economic Considerations

The utilisation of the ocean for the disposal of domestic or industrial waste is a controversial subject with different views and perceptions by the public, the scientific community and developers. With extensive developments, increased stresses are exerted on the coastal zone areas. Disposal of wastes will have effect on the environment (land, atmosphere or ocean) and it is the responsibility of the scientific community and the authorities to minimise detrimental effects to the environment. The ocean as a disposal medium is an inappropriate medium to dispose of persistent toxic materials, however, the assimilative capacity of the sea is enormous for certain substances providing:Impact assessments to determine the influence of disposal to the marine environment should be compared to similar assessments of the environment to be influenced by alternative disposal options.Social and economic considerations should also form an integral part of such an assessment.Water quality criteria should be clearly defined and scientifically sound to provide the basis for the design of outfalls as well as for monitoring the short and long-term impacts.Authorised control and effective legislation should be available to enforce quality requirements and remedial actions to be taken.

Antibiotic Resistance is a Tragedy of the Commons That Necessitates Global Cooperation

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (S3) ◽  
pp. 33-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Hollis ◽  
Peter Maybarduk
Keyword(s):  
Antibiotic Resistance ◽  
Selection Pressure ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Resistant Bacteria ◽  
The Commons

Antibiotic resistance presents a classic example of the “tragedy of the commons.” In this eponymous tragedy, the commons — shared, public access lands — are overgrazed because farmers can send their livestock onto the land at a zero price. The “tragedy” occurs because overgrazing destroys the land and reduces its ability to provide fodder. The application to antibiotics is obvious: the use of antibiotics creates selection pressure leading to increased proportions of resistant bacteria in the patient and the environment. The increase in frequency of resistant organisms diminishes the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating future infections; thus, the long-term value of the antimicrobial resource is reduced.

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