Having written my doctoral thesis in 1987 on innovative economic devises to assist command and control regulations for environmental protection, my memory and understanding is that Aldo Leopold discusses the "Tragedy of the Commons" in his Sand County Almanac book long before this white supremist dude uses the concept for arguing against goodness. Leopold learned his lessons from our public declaration of war on wolves where he was involved.
Tragedy of the Commons is a vitally important concept that needs to be discussed not dismissed because some misuse or misunderstand it. It is not fake or BS because someone coopted it to argue bad policy! It is an economic concept that stands for the experiential concept that if no one owns the air, it will be over polluted. If everyone or no one owns the water, we will over poison it. This could apply to groundwater for overuse but groundwater is distinct from polluting a river is. The economic conclusion I drew in my 35 year old thesis is to CHARGE TO POLLUTE and to subsidize non-fossil fuels too since we all commonly benefit from that. We pool our tax resources to build roads and bridges and that is the good side of defeating or preventing a tragedy of common areas- pooling resources for the common good.
Think climate change since that is the best example of "Externalities" or economic costs of use of common resources- the planet- that are not "Internalized" into the cost of doing business. Why? because we as a common people have not required it in our laws. When companies can make more profit by polluting- we have not dis-incentivized it economically and economics drives everything including politics- hello! and law. As a people, we vote with dollars and we do things we should not for dollars. We have to make compliance with good protective laws mandatory in corporate charters. Don't comply, lose your charter and your LIMITED LIABILITY that corporations get for their supposed contributions to the common good. Think hard on that one and Join Move to Amend, a very smart group.
Going back to John Loche, when we own our land, we are not only not communists but we take care of the land and things we own. The tragedy is that we overuse resources if we do not value them. This value could be expressed as a price. Its just true so what do we do about over grazing or over forestation on public lands? EASY- Stop doing it or allowing it or CHARGE for removal of trees. CHARGE for mining public lands and charge enough to cover clean up of pollution.
REGULATE the common resources is what we have done since the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and thank God! Even so, we have not eliminated water pollution under a system that issues "permits" or permission to pollute under a legal regimen system we call the "National Pollution Discharge Elimination System" (NPDES) so regulations have not been enough. We have to get a handle on climate change like we are driving a race car. We have to monetize the value of nature that we have not protected from use.
This we do with money so we need to think about that tragedy of the commons that is clearly misunderstood by a whole lot of people as pointed by Douglas Rushkoff in his Medium article here points out. But ignoring the tragedy of the commons or thinking it is fake news is not fixing what the concept demands of us or fixing the grave misunderstanding of an argument to save our common resources by making them a priority and recognizing that we can do it with economic policy- gas taxes even.
We need to use economic devises like fees and subsidies -as we are to a little degree- so we bring the true cost of pollution to bear on those who pollute- our air, our water, our land. Our planet needs us to fund the repairs from what is the best example of the tragedy of the commons: climate change and its devasting weather and permanent losses. So let's implement some innovative economic devises to deal with it.
Go Carbon Tax and Go Bob Ingles at RepublicENs! He's trying to teach the world and those in his party and has quite a coalition. This is not a partisan issue. Please learn what we need to do and write your reps and Vote for climate protection measures as our number one issue above all else right now. And use your dollars to meet the doctor's creed and do no harm.
