What is it about a commons that makes people lose their heads? The commons is, in essence, an institution that is designed to fail. Yet many people believe that we need to somehow maintain a commons so that people will have to collectively deal with its overuse. The Antiplanner interprets this to mean they want a commons so as to teach people to become “New Socialist Men” (and women) — that is, people who work for the collective rather than for themselves.
For example, a folk singer named David Rovics has a song celebrating the commons and criticizing those who would privatize it. (True to his beliefs, Rovics has placed all of his songs, including this one, on line.)
By definition, a commons is a resource that a lot of people can access. For example, most ocean fisheries are a commons. Anyone with a boat can go out and catch them. The government regulations designed to limit such fishing mostly work by limiting the number of days in the fishing season each year. The fishers respond by upgrading their technologies and catching as many fish in the shorter seasons as they previously caught in the longer seasons.
A few countries have privatized their ocean fisheries, turning them into individual transferable quotas. A recent article in Science compared fisheries that were a commons with those that were privately managed and found that the latter were much healthier. “Under open access, you have a free-for-all race-to-fish, which ultimately leads to collapse,” says the lead author. “But when you allocate shares of the catch, then there is an incentive to protect the stock.”
This does not mean that commons will inevitably fail; there have been many documented instances of people successfully managing a commons. However, in nearly all if not all cases, the number of people who have access to a successfully managed commons is no more than a few hundred. Significantly, the Mennonites, who treat property as a commons, keep the size of their communities to no more than 150 people.
The process of converting a commons to private property can be stressful and sometimes inequitable. The enclosure movement in England, for example, led to huge controversies and sometimes violence. When New Zealand privatized its ocean fisheries, it sensitively used a simple rule: a fisher who had historically harvested X percent of fish from a particular fishery received that percentage of transferable quotas.
It should be taken http://www.icks.org/data/ijks/1482457576_add_file_2.pdf purchase generic cialis for a minimum of 7 hours of sleep per day. Commonplace physio medications are practice programmers, nerve preparing strategies, redress of poor carriage, pacing method, trunk segmental preparation and reinforcing of the profound flexor muscles of the cervical spine. viagra tadalafil The autonomic nervous system is tasked with the job of regulating the speed at which food transits viagra generika through the gut, the secretion of acid in our stomach. Australian TGA cheap cialis icks.org health and safety has approved the device for human use. Other than protecting the resources that were once commonly held, the big benefit of privatizing the commons is that leads to much more productive use of that commons — in short, to the creation of wealth. Hernando DeSoto’s great book, The Mystery of Capital, shows that the reason why some countries have become wealthy and others have stayed poor is that the former land is mostly private and the latter land is mostly held in common.
The Antiplanner’s one visit to Africa was a comparison of how several countries treated wildlife as property. In some countries (as in the U.S.), wildlife is considered a commons; anyone can shoot an elephant. In other countries, wildlife is treated as private property; to shoot the elephant, you need to pay the owner. Guess which countries have healthy elephant populations?
Aside from the wildlife, Africa is a very poor continent and that is mostly due to the lack of property rights. Land is held to be commonly owned by residents of villages. The chief in each village gets to decide how people get to use the land. If you want to plant cotton or tobacco or another crop, you ask the chief for permission.
I suggested to some Peace Corps workers that the real solution to poverty would be to privatize the land, perhaps giving each villager an equal amount of land that they could farm or sell or trade to other villagers. “Oh no, we can’t do that,” they said. “The commons is a part of their culture.” In fact, the commons was often imposed upon Africans by European colonialists.
Sometimes it is possible for government to act like private managers, meaning that outright privatization is not essential to fixing the problems of overuse of a commons. In the early twentieth century, many species of wildlife, such as the passenger pigeon, were going extinct because they were a commons.
The states stepped in and took control by limiting hunting seasons and charging hunters fees. Effectively, the states were acting like owners. This led to the recovery of many species, including elk, pronghorn, and buffalo (but it happened too late for the passenger pigeon). The key was that the state agencies were funded out of hunting fees, giving them an incentive to protect the wildlife so they could keep earning the fees. But there continued to be a lot of flaws with state management, especially of fisheries, that might be better addressed through privatization.
In any case, as romantic as the idea of the commons might be, we will all be better off when we rely on institutions that work rather than ones that fail.
What is it about a commons that makes people lose their heads?
What is is about private property that makes people selfish, greedy, individualistic, xenophobic jerks?
I highly recommend the Mystery of Capital.
Xenophobia seems mainly concerned with commons. I do not worry that an alien will come to this country and offer me more money for my land. But, surveying recent political adds that pray on the fear of immigrants coming to the US to collect welfare and social security (both commons) and take American jobs (as if jobs were a zero sum game) I conclude xenophobia is not related to private property.
Africa is a very poor continent and that is mostly due to the lack of property rights.
I dunno Randall, I think AIDS, Colonialization, and political corruption might have had something to do with it too.
In fact, the commons was often imposed upon Africans by European colonialists.
That’s right. I’d forgotten how Europeans went around imposing Socialist experiments on their colonies. Where is your source for this absurd idea?
By the way, I just got back from Ethiopia, the only African nation never colonized (ignore that little tryst with the Italians during WWII). All of the land there is held in common. This, of course, only deepens their poverty. But I would never say this is the source of most of their poverty. It’s hard to pin down big issues on one policy.
Randy wrote: “The commons is, in essence, an institution that is designed to fail.”
Then this can be said for our legal system which is a kind of commons, though Randy you your self benefit vastly from the commons as this our pork based collective highway system.
For an other perspective in the UK, their government meets in “the house of commons”.
You are also forgeting that there is an important need for neutral zones or commons, to maintain civil rights.
In any case, as romantic as the idea of the commons might be, we will all be better off when we rely on institutions that work rather than ones that fail.
First, let me say that occasionally I find commonality with libertarians. My publics usually find this out when we discuss ecosystem services and their protection & their importance over economies.
Anything we can do to put aside ideologies to protect global commons that cross boundaries – fisheries, air, ocean currents, water, migratory species, etc – should be done for our children and grandchildren.
Next, ‘commons’ is not a romantic notion, as Randal contradicts himself earlier in the essay when mentioning enclosure (it goes farther back than that, but I leave that to Francis King).
Then, we must return to the fact that inexorable human population growth is the overarching issue here. Consumption of resources (on a limited sphere of finite dimension) by human populations is driving resource scarcity – I = PAT.
Lastly, fetishization of private property is as inflexible an idea as inflexible season days (catch limits and boat limits are far more effective). Adaptive management (as used in the Science article above) does not allow for inflexible private property fetishization.
DS
All of the land there is held in common. This, of course, only deepens their poverty. But I would never say this is the source of most of their poverty. It’s hard to pin down big issues on one policy.
Surely Ethiopians have a policy for too many people in an arid environment – what was that Resolution again? It has a name that includes ‘endemic environmental degradation and unbridled population growth’…help me out here…
And their policy to prop up kleptocrats helps too. Or their policy to have militants roam the land taking property – surely that policy has a Resolution number…
Oh, and outside policies to avoid instituting agricultural extension programs and microloans to help stem the loss of arable land.
DS
Dan, I can’t tell if you’re mocking me or agreeing with me. Maybe both? I didn’t mean “policy” literally.
Nor did I.
There are many, many, many more important issues surrounding Ethiopia’s poverty and exacerbation thereof than the mere fact of tenure on pastoral-ag lands often is held in common (and has been, in some cases, for centuries, BTW).
In fact, it is easily argued that the old tenure arrangements are in line with Randal’s overarching general argumentation here, and current commons tenure is held in a central, unitary command and control structure – leading, in part, to its failure due to larger extenuating circumstances of climate fluctuations, resource destruction, overpopulation, globalization, yada.
DS
Dan this blog is based on nothing but contradictions.
Mr.O’Toole loves America so much he wants to destroy it!
The Antiplanner wrote:
> In any case, as romantic as the idea of the commons might be, we will all be better off
> when we rely on institutions that work rather than ones that fail.
Correct you are. This goes on the wall next to the phrase People make rational decisions, something
I passionately believe.
Now (IMO) that means that there are some public-sector institutions that work, and work
well (one attribute being that they don’t have an endless appetite for taxpayer
subsidies).
CPZ, The People are often irrational*, hence the field of behavioral economics to clarify their irrationality wrt economics**.
And the commons tenure system in pastoral Ethiopia worked for centuries. An institution that worked, if you will.
DS
* the term is ‘bounded willpower’.
**
The general opinion out in the world is that Capitalism defeated Communism, and that Communism is now dead. As a parrot.
There are one or two cases, though, that should give pause for thought. If people feel that they have a strong relationship, communism works – but people aren’t going to work harder, so that someone else can put their feet up. The Second World War forced people together in a way which meant that a planned economy worked. Parents provide for their children, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. The northern mining communities lived together, fought together, and survived together.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Significantly, the Mennonites, who treat property as a commons, keep the size of their communities to no more than 150 people.”
That’s about thirty families, the largest community where all the heads of the family are going to know each other. That’s probably also true of a small village.
Antiplanner wrote:
“For example, most ocean fisheries are a commons. Anyone with a boat can go out and catch them. The government regulations designed to limit such fishing mostly work by limiting the number of days in the fishing season each year. The fishers respond by upgrading their technologies and catching as many fish in the shorter seasons as they previously caught in the longer seasons.”
The EU introduced a new system, with quotas. This worked, until British fishermen sold their quotas to the Spanish fishermen. Then there were complaints about Spanish trawlers trawling in British waters, using the same permits which they had just bought.
One problem with the current quota system is that it is species specific. Hence, fish are tossed back dead into the water in order to keep within the quotas.
Also, under self-made pressure from quotas, the EU is buying up fishing rights in African waters, so that there are fewer complaints from fishermen about dwindling incomes. The competition is damaging the rights of the African fishermen, some of whom, in Somalia, are now turning to piracy.
King, it’s a race to the bottom!
It’s easy to be bad, but you have to work to be good, thus is human nature.
Though when we think about it, strangely at times, there isn’t much difference between public and private sectors.
If things are going to be squandered. They are going to be squandered, be they private or public.
The aspect about over fishing was interesting, since a good chunk of what is going on is out of sight & out of mind to the general public, much as with roads.
Ecosystems can crash just as with economies. After all our economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.
We still have a lot to learn as a spiece, we’re pretty much just very conceded apes.
One other thing the regarding Randy’s African visit, he’s was looking at the people who lived there as people, not as a potential resource that could be loaded into the haul of ship, to work a plantation in the southern states.
Timing and context are important too, even people can be other people’s property.
Maybe property ought to have rights too, just as children in the custody of their parents have their own rights?