Lobster Industry

Throughout history there have been many examples of tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons is when people in a certain area over exploit a common resource which leads toa higher problem. Tragedy of the commons normally happens when people get greedy and get more than they really need. For example, if one farmer is public grazing area were to add a cow over the limit the field can sustain it won’t do much damage but if the other farmers also add another cow to the field it could end up harming it to the point where it is no longer usable.This comes to show that if even a single person becomes greedy it could ruin so many things for other people. Ideas will be pulled out from Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” to be used in this essay.

In the text “Sustaining our commonwealth of Nature and Knowledge” by Herman Daly, he clarifies the fact that goods are classified by the access of law to the goods, which it is classified as excludable and non-excludable, and by the physically use of the owner of the good, rival and non-rival. Every market good, an automobile, is rival and excludable and every public good, for example, the sun, is non-rival and non-excludable. But the problematic comes when the good is non-rival and excludable, an example he gives us is knowledge because it is usually patented and made by intellectual property. Also, the problematic comes when the good is rival and non-excludable because the management of these goods, such as fish, brings the tragedy of open-source

Question 2: Although land ownership is an individual right, what takes place on that land is still a concern for governing agencies. In this case, the impact to ecosystems covers an area greater than just the area owned by one individual or firm. Controlling the impacts of the landowners operation mitigates the impact to other landowners in the area. Owning land still requires a reasonable person to behave in a manner consistent with the law of the land. In this analysis, a gentlemen named Hurwitz backed Maxxam Inc. to purchase Pacific Lumber. Hungry for profits, he altered Pacific Lumber’s focus to the short term profitability of the firm, instead of long term sustainment of the business. Poor business practices put Maxxam Inc. in a position requiring a fixed amount of income to pay loan interest and fees. Hurwitz never assessed whether or not he could sustain payment with current operations and was forced to increase operations to make profitability still viable. (The Terrestrial Environment, 1998)

The Maryland Blue Crab, which is the most iconic creature of the Chesapeake, has decreased in population from 276 million in 1990 to 131 million in 2008. This dramatic decrease has caused a cumulative loss to both Maryland and Virginia of 640 million dollars. In an attempt to restore the blue crab population, Maryland and Virginia instituted a public policy to place restrictions on the crabbing of the Chesapeake. This is an example of a command and control policy because public authorities established direct controls on individual actions. This created harsh economic hardships for many crabbers, causing the Secretary of Commerce to decide that the blue crab fishery had undergone a commercial failure as it is defined under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is the primary authority for fishery management in the United States and it created regional fishery management councils that attempt to establish limits on total catches and regulations. This failure

Many philosophers have written arguments advocating for all types of property rights ranging from private to communal and for a varying array of reasons.Personally, I feel Schmidtz has the most compelling argument surrounding property rights. He argues for private property rights. According to Schmidtz when property does not have an owner and instead belongs to the commons, there is no way to protect that resource. Schmidtz provides the example of fishing using destructive methods. In certain countries, fishermen fish using methods that destroy habitats such as throwing dynamite or bleach in the water. This method has an extremely successful one time effect as all the dead fish float to the top of the water. However, it kills the entire habitat

Dame, U. o. (2006, November 28). Public Goods and Common Resources. Retrieved from University of Notre Dame: https://www3.nd.edu/~adutt/courses/documents/19PublicGoodsandCommonResources_Lecture.pdf

What is "the tragedy o the commons"? Explain how the concept might apply to an unregulated industry that is a source of water pollution?

Wallace begins “Consider the Lobster” by telling the reader about the Maine Lobster Festival, which hosted over 80,000 people in 2003 and served over 25,000 pounds of lobster. He moves on to give a basic scientific description of the lobster and the history of lobster as food. Wallace then gives his firsthand account of attending the Maine Lobster Festival. He then goes into the preparation and cooking of lobster and. He finishes his piece by exploring the question of lobsters’ feelings of pain and how

      Logos is the logic, internal consistency, and clarity of the argument and it is split into claims, reasons, grounds, warrants, backing, and qualifiers. Hardin begins his essay by establishing his main claim, which is the idea that he believes is the most believable, that the world’s resources cannot be distributed equally, and any attempts to equally distribute current resources will ruin them. He does this by using the metaphor of the earth and its resources as a lifeboat. Only so many people may fit on this lifeboat, just as so many people may have access to the world’s very limited resources, and trying to fit too many people on this lifeboat will sink it. This phenomenon he calls “The Tragedy of the Commons”. He supports this claim with reasons and grounds; reasons being claims which support his initial claim, and grounds being supporting evidence that leads the audience to support the reasons. His warrant, or understood belief, is that spoiling resources and leading the world to ruin is not optimal,

The Biodiversity Treaty sanctioned that countries whose biological resources are exploited by bioprospecting companies have a right to share the financial benefits resulting from the sale of these resources (Adair, 1997). National parklands are owned by the federal government. Therefore, our national parks have the legal right to share in the financial benefits that

Another problem with public goods is the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons occurs when individual people or parties disregard the well-being of the society in pursuing personal gains. When every country tries to gain the most benefits from abusing the climate, the demand will rapidly consume the supply of the resource, due to the country not

However this is very unfortunate for local fisherman because the over abundance of lobsters is hurting their job opportunities due to cheap prices per pound. In 2012 the Maine lobster industry set a record of their biggest year for lobster fishing at 126 million pounds of lobster caught. This lowered the boat price to just $3.72 per pound. For comparison in recent years lobsters has sold for more that $14 dollars a pound. This is the lowest price since the Great Depression. Even with the abundance of Maine Lobsters there are still regulations. You are not allowed to keep a lobster if it is pregnant or bigger 3-1/4 inches in length.

In Dr. Timothy Hinton’s philosophical article, Distributive Justice in the State of Nature: An Egalitarian View, Hinton argues that using an egalitarian mindset and his common ownership formula, society should be able to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves through the idea of equal ownership of the world’s natural resources (Hinton, 2012: 517). Hinton’s idea is important in the field of humanities and social science along with philosophy because it is a foundation for the ethical ideas in the economy that can affect all people within that society. Dr. Hinton uses ideas and provisos from Locke, Zonick, Grotius, Cohen, and Feser to form his argument for the common ownership formula. An example Hinton uses to prove his formula

This issue of overfishing covers vast fields, such as science, humanity, economy, society and nature. The term “optimum”, in regard to the yield from a fishery, is difficult to be defined, precisely and fixedly. Generally speaking, we can describe it as follows: (Niles E. Stople, January 2009, FishNet USA)

The classic essay Tragedy of the Commons describes the dilemma society faces when the interests of a group conflicts with the interests of individuals (Hardin, 1968). The example presented is that of a group of cattle ranchers commingling their cattle in a common pasture. At full capacity, each cattle owner still has an incentive to include additional cattle, since the slight decrease in overall yield per animal is offset by the additional animal. Unfortunately, this overgrazing inevitably leads to failure of the commons. The community goal of maximizing food production can only be achieved by placing controls on the interests of the individual cattle ranchers in favor of those of the community (Hardin, 1968). This paper is