[FRIAM] Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders

[Eric Charles]

New subject to avoid thread bending!

Libertarians seem to think that private ownership of property facilitates
> good stewardship of that property. The tragedy of the commons argues that's
> not the case because the scope of ownership is ambiguous.


This libertarian merely asserts that The Tragedy of the Commons is a story
about a lack of willpower, and that it is best addressed by trying to
create people who exercise their individual will more intelligently, *not* by
creating a superordinate-will with a monopoly on socially sanctioned
violence, especially a superordinate will with a zeal for
arbitrary enforcement, run by bureaucratic minutiae. Even if you find that
you eventually need something superordinate, surely (I assert) the first
step in trying to fix such problems is to deal with the individual decision
makers. The superordinate effort is for whatever problem is left after that
has been work on. Reference any of John Dewey's writings about the
essential place of educational efforts in a Democracy. However much
attention we give the question of how to police bad citizens, we need to
place at least as much attention on the question of how to develop good
citizens.

There is a similar problem with talk about The Free Rider Problem.
Sometimes there *is *such a problem, but most of the time I hear people
talk about, the context is simply a lack of commitment to trying to help
others. "I think a public park would benefit the community, but I'm worried
about free riders taking advantage of it without helping to pay for it."
<-- That's just weak willed crap. If you *want* to see the community
benefit from a public park, then do what you can to benefit the
community, and if you achieve your goal smile with contentment at what
you have accomplished. If you can't do it alone, find others who *want* to
benefit the community in that way too. No member of the community is a
"problem", in that story, whether they contribute or not.





On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 5:05 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it might be wise to couch this within a larger discussion of
> private property and ownership, in general. Libertarians seem to think that
> private ownership of property facilitates good stewardship of that
> property. The tragedy of the commons argues that's not the case because the
> scope of ownership is ambiguous.
>
> That wealth that is accumulated is, at least in negligible part,
> *everyone's* property. So not only is Bezos not Bezos. But Bezos' property
> is not Bezos' property ... or as some parents are fond of saying "I brought
> you into this world. I can take you out."
>
>
> On 3/12/21 12:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> > Tangenting off of the Great Man discussion, I would like to solicit a
> > discussion on  "What is Wealth for".  I believe we have attended to this
> > on the side many times (I remember a vFriam where it was declared that
> > "Billionaires are Assholes, but Millionaires aren't (necessarily)"?
> >
> > Each of our Great (Wo)Men on the snark/not-snark list share one thing in
> > common, Wealth.   I'd be interested to hear others riff a little more on
> > their taxonomies of "what is Wealth for?"
>
>
> --
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
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