The Tragedy of the Commons and Collective Action Essay

A. In a world the values “keeping up with the Jones”, it is understandable why a theory such as the Tragedy of the Commons would be introduced. Bell uses Garrett Hardin’s ideas to paint a picture when the Tragedy of the Commons occurs. When a common area for group of people is in use, it is likely to exploited because of the selfish mindset of “What can I get out of this?” rather than “What can we get out of this?” This causes the common place, be it a pasture, road, air, or ocean to become unusable as a result of being overused by the very people it was meant to serve. It turns common places into a

Garrett Hardin published in Psychology Today in September 1974. This passage is an excerpt from his popular paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” as a warning that overpopulation was dangerous due to how limited Earth’s resources are. This theory is reflected in Hardin’s thesis that the rich should do nothing to help the people of poor nations and turn away those trying to come in. Hardin used the imagery of a lifeboat almost filled in a sea full of drowning people to pose and answer a single question, “what should the lifeboat passengers do?” (290). Hardin's answer was to defend the boat against all trying to board. If anyone felt guilty about this course of action they should feel free to swap places with a drowning man and give them their

Economic activity and our environment have been closely linked since man first discovered the concept of trade. In the language of economics, the environment has itself, become an increasingly “scarce resource1”. Since economics is about managing these scarce resources, it will be a useful tool when considering some of the environmental issues facing our planet. One of the major concerns confronting the environment today is the overfishing of the world’s oceans, depleting some species to near extinction. With continued advances in technological and industrial proficiency, fishing vessels are able to fish across the globe, further exacerbating the effects of overfishing. Because the oceans are considered a shared or common

Situations where self interest and public interest work against each other are known as “commons problems.” In the market model the chief source of conflict is individual’s perceived welfare vs. another’s perceived welfare. In the polis model the chief source of conflict is self interest vs. public interest, or “how to have both private benefits and collective benefits.” Stone notes “most actions in the market model do not have social consequences” but in the polis, commons problems “are everything.” It is rare in the polis that the costs and benefits of an action are entirely self-contained, affect only one or two individuals, or are limited to direct and immediate effects. Actions in the polis have unanticipated consequences, side effects, long-term effects, and effect many people. Stone states, “one major dilemma in the polis is how to get people to give weight to these broader consequences in their private calculus of choices, especially in an era when the dominant culture celebrates private consumption and personal gain.” That is a

Collective action problems arise in politics because as individuals we are conflicted between our own interest and the interest of the group. Our choice is either to be selfish or cooperate with the group. “It involves building, combining, mixing, and amalgamating people’s individual goals” (Lowi, et al. 13). There are three main theories as to why collective action problems exist. First, according to Mancur Olson individuals are tempted to free-ride which is getting a benefit without contributing to it and that no individual is incentivized to work for the collective good. (Lowi, et al 571). Free-riding becomes a bigger issues as a group gets larger. Second, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a theory in which there are two individuals in a situation were neither has an incentive to cooperate although both would be better off if they did cooperate. Third, the tragedy of commons occurs when individuals’ use of a resource causes its depletion however it’s supposed to be shared by everyone. Collective action problems are difficult to solve because a group is formed to achieve common goals however as individuals we have different objectives and preferences. This is most evident in politics. My goal in this paper is to provide three different solutions to collective action problems in politics specifically in political parties, electoral process and interest groups.

Over the length of this course, we have discussed several aspects of politics. We have studied citizenship and obligations to society as a citizen, justice and what it means to us as individuals, and how to go about enacting change within a community and around the world. Some of the most important topics from this class included the characteristics, duties, and obligations of rulers of government. In addition to the concept of rulers, we also studied the notion of authority and the moral and metaphysical implications of authority to individuals ' autonomy. Within each concept of study, we read works from many authors with conflicting ontologies, constructed from their differing views on human nature.

According to Lee, the key social problem is “reconciling principles of conformity and individual initiative, group living and private freedom of choice, social regulation and personal autonomy” (Lee 5). She explores how we as individuals are usually in one social structure or another; but we do not get the freedom we as individuals

When I think about a political community, I usually associate it with elections, politicians, and advertisements that bad mouth candidates from the different political parties. Politicians try to persuade citizens to vote for them by making promises that they may never fulfill. But a political community is more than that. A comparison of Aristotle and John Locke’s nature and purpose of a political community has given me a new insight. I learned that, even though the political community is responsible to provide security, its main purpose is aimed for the highest good of all its citizens, which is virtue and happiness.

In the activity “Tragedy of Commons” 4 people had to share a pond with each other which includes 16 fishes. The people have to fish enough fish to support their families, but cannot deplete the supply of fish to 0 (game over) in a time period of a year. If the person gets 1 fish then that person’s family starves, if the person has 2 fish then the person can use that for profit. Each remaining fish reproduces 1 new fish every year. Later each person will “get” their own private pond that they can fish from (same process/procedure). This will be easier to support the individual’s family, along with keeping the supply of the fish sufficient.

From the article of “Reclaiming the Commons” By Naomi Klein, Klein defines The Commons is “the spirit they share is a radical reclaiming of The Commons” (Klein, 2001, p.82). In other words, the common is a public space where people go. People can gather together to talk and have meetings. An example of the commons is “used to see fights as saving a nation, now I see it as saving democracy” (Klein, 2001, p.83). In other words, The Commons has to do with anything like the cultural, social, and natural materials. It is all public and not private to the society. The Commons implication is nothing is private in the society because everything becomes public for the society to know what is going on such as the news and media of other people. The significance

Rational choice theory accepts that all individuals attempt to effectively expand their preference in any circumstance and in this way reliably attempt to minimize their misfortunes. The hypothesis depends on the possibility that all people construct their choices in light of sound figuring’s, act with discernment when picking, and intend to increment either delight or benefit. Rational choice theory likewise stipulates that all unpredictable social wonders are driven by individual human activities. Accordingly, if a business analyst needs to clarify social change or the activities of social organizations, he needs to take a look at the balanced choices of the people that make up the entirety.

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

“The Tragedy of the Commons” written by Garret Hardin explains how the human population is degrading the environment. When Hardin refers to commons he is talking about a resource that is owned by no one and used by a group of people. Some examples of commons include the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the oceans we fish. The tragedy is that people don’t look at the bigger picture; the over use of commons for our own personal benefit leads to the destruction or extinction of these commons. For example if one fisherman wants to fish the oceans as much as possible that’s fine, but now imagine if every fisherman wants to fish the oceans as much as they can, this is one example of a common being destroyed by the human population. The

One of the facets of living within civilized society is that there are certain norms and social conventions that people must follow. Frequently, there is a large effort on the part of government, financial, and social institutions to keep people doing most of the same thing as others going to work, driving cars, buying homes, etc. Despite the fact that people engage in these efforts individually, the simple fact that they are all attempting to do the same thing, in much the same way, is indicative of the fact that they are engaged in collective behavior. THESIS: Those who are able to overcome collective behavior and allow for their individuality to determine their own outcomes exemplify the best of human nature.

Few decades ago, clean water was “commons” (Hardin, 1968) to us. It was a natural resource shared by everyone and not owned by anyone. This “commons” was taken for granted to the extent that people exploit clean water without considering its finiteness. Resorts and factories dumped wastewater and ruined nearby rivers and oceans. People carelessly littered garbage and substituted the dirty water with diminishing clean water. They definitely benefited in terms of financial cost and comfort from their negligence. However, those individual interests ended up bringing severe water pollution, attacking our collective interest of public health and well-being. In this vein, water pollution is undeniably the “Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968). Following these dire circumstances, water purification techniques and systems have been further developed and become widespread. Yet, the technical measurements have not quite fundamentally solved the problem. What is needed at this point is people’s will and practical action to improve the environment. However, merely hoping and encouraging people to do so are not enough. In order to have a steady support from people, we need a practical device for a “mutual coercion” (Hardin, 1968) to earn consent to coercion necessary to amend the situation. In this paper, I am going to address the technical and individual effort for water pollution and its limitation, and suggest a way to complement this limitation through a device on an institutional