I mean, sure. Fuck malthusians.
Social dilemma theories (e.g. totc, prisoners dilemma, etc) are kind of neutral, though, and it’s one of the easiest ways to argue in favor of climate change regulation. As in, people make choices between selfish and cooperative choices. Some are more inclined for one or the other, but regulation can help curb the selfish oriented people.
In my social psych class I get to share research that literally says conservatives and people who prefer authoritarianism prefer competitive choices (as well as other factors). It’s basically a field devoted to figuring out what causes people who ruin everything for everyone else, lol.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Yes!
It’s “funny” how so many people know of the tragedy of the commons but so few know that the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics did so showing just how wrong the idea is
This is fascinating. I am commenting here to add an accessible article on the subject: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/ and Wikipedia pages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom.
I had assumed the “Tragedy of the Commons” dated to medieval times, possibly as a school teacher had introduced the idea (and to a child teachers are older than dirt).
In 1833, the English economist William Forster Lloyd published “Two Lectures on the Checks to Population”
Garrett Hardin’s essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” published in Science magazine in 1968.
Political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded 2009’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on the issue, and others revisited Hardin’s work in 1999.
Net-Net it appears that the “Tragedy of the Commons” is yet another method to keep people from even trying to better their world.
Edit: Another article: https://www.aei.org/articles/elinor-ostrom-and-the-solution-to-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/
Interestingly, The Tragedy of the Commons really does work with psychopaths, so once you move from a person to person level to corporations interacting the Tragedy of the Commons problem becomes a serious issue. Take a minimum wage, it necessary for the population as a whole to have surplus wealth to spend to keep an economy going. Individual companies, on the other hand, have an incentive to pay their own employees a pittance. If every company does that then there’s no surplus wealth for people to purchase most goods and slowly the economy grinds to a halt. Hence it’s in society’s best interest to have a healthy and large minimum wage (or better yet a UBI system) which will have to be enforced on companies by an outside force.
Yup. Once you go from a community of lasting relationships to a spot market of one-off, arms length transactions between strangers, the commons disappears. The Commons is not a place, it’s a set of relationships.
I’ve worked with psychopaths a lot, and not found them to abuse common resources as badly as corpos/billionaires. The not-stupid ones, tend to understand the larger social value of common resources, even if they lean on them a little harder.
I know comparing corporations to psychopaths is kind of unfair to psychopaths. Most psychopaths can see themselves farther into the future then the end of the quarter.
Yeah, they do attach sometimes, even if not strongly, and have rational self interest that makes them plausible if problematic members of a community.
Fuck Malthusians, and fuck misanthropes too.
It’s all nonsensical self-loathing zero-sum apologia for conservative thought.
I don’t think that should matter.
It’s like, if I say 2 + 2 = 4…
…and go on to say sex with animals should be legal… That doesn’t mean 2 + 2 isn’t 4 anymore.
Like, vegetarians shouldn’t give up on the concept just because of Hitler, you know what I mean?
It isn’t supported by evidence (see ostrom link below) and was spread by eugenicists to support their claims
It’s bullshit nonsense to excuse genocide. Not math and fucking whales.
Both statements are wrong. And no one was criticizing hitler’s dietary choices.
I actually was, but not here. Man had all the wealth in central Europe at his fingertips and still didn’t have any god damn taste.
