Americans: “Tragedy of the Commons proves that people are incapable of working together for mutual benefit, because personal greed will always lead to the devastation of the collective common good.”
Chinese: “Why do you not simply arrest and punish the bad actors in your society when they overstep and impede on the general welfare?”
Americans: “Because that’s fascism. Also, we’re arresting and deporting you for asking.”
Additionally, we have managed pastures, woods, and fisheries for thousands of years without government intervention. The so-called tragedy is solved by community members (checks notes) talking about how to preserve the resources required for their survival.
Should be noted that Europe had commons for hundreds and hundreds of years before they all got enclosured and they managed them just fine with local-level spontaneous democracy.
Also the “tragedy of the commons” as we know it today was invented by a malthusian in the 1960s and everybody who invokes it as an argument against socialism ignores the part of the essay where the author advocates for central planning
Well said. To give some more examples of communal societies:
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The Mbuti hunter-gatherers of the Ituri Forest in central Africa.
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The gift-giving economy of the Semai in Malaya.
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Numerous indigenous societies in NA that practice communal land ownership (Lakota/Dakota/the Cherokee, etc.).
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Millions who shared resources in the villages of Europe:
- Arable land was often divided into plots for local families to farm (e.g., the English open field system, - Scandinavian Solskifte [“Sun Division”] system, the Irish “Rundale” system, etc.).
- Grazing lands and forests were often shared by the community (e.g., in Scandinavia, Spain, France).
People who argue that we need capitalism to save us from ourselves don’t understand human nature.
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Does anyone actually think it’s pro-capitalism? Though the social psych equivalent to this is just the concept of the harvesting dilemma and the main lesson is generally pro government regulation (regardless of economics). Social dilemmas like this apply to any common good everyone benefits from, be it air quality, military defense, public parks, public safety, etc. (when explaining, I use a few right wing examples too, even if I am a bit ACAB myself lol).
Basically, they simply don’t exist without some form of social agreement not to be a shitty greedy asshole. Government being the most obvious way to control that.
When private property is so ingrained in your brain that you think communism is when more people have land.
The tragedy of commons straight up describes capitalism, profits are privatized and costs are socialized, how can people think this is a refutation of communism.
the more people spread 30 minute youtube essays to support their points, the more i have to rely on ai to summarize those points so i can lookup the primary sources
In the end, really, the tragedy of the commons hides a far messy reality of primitive accumulation; mass pre-capitalist (feudal or before) dispossession of many property, communal, church, if not state, in favor of monopolized accumulation in the portfolio of the burghers, the forerunners of capital, as we know them.
The Tragedy of the Commons was popularized by a man who was anti-immigrant and pro-eugenics, and it’s not good science. The good science on it was done by Elinor Ostrom who won a Nobel-ish prize for fieldwork showing that various societies around the world had solved the issues of the governance of commons.
The thing is, Ostrom didn’t disprove it as a concept. She just proved that with the right norms and rules in place it doesn’t inevitably lead to collapse. IMO it’s not about capitalism or communism, it’s about population. A small number of people who all know each-other can negotiate an arrangement that everyone can agree to. But, once you have thousands or millions of people, and each user of the commons knows almost none of the other users, it’s different. At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules. That, of course, fails when the commons is something like the world’s atmosphere and there’s no worldwide government that can set and enforce rules.
It’s about understanding the difference between the dictionary definitions of “communism” and “capitalism” and how they are actually practiced in the real life.
One of them is a system where the super rich hoard all the wealth and use the news media they own to keep the poor and middle classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the f*cking money.
And the other one is a system where the super rich hoard all the wealth and use the news media they own to keep the poor and middle classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the f*cking money.
“But wait a minute,” you ask. “Aren’t those the same thing” Yeah. Congratulations. You GOT it.
My goverment fucks me so everyone else must be getting fucked amirite guys!?
This is nonsense. It’s neither historically accurate nor logically accurate, in the USSR for example wealth disparity was dramatically minimized. Please, open a book sometime.
you’re a fucking moron
That’s not what communism is, you dweeb
Nordic countries aren’t communism, if thats what you mean by “communism”
I never said they were. That’s socialism not communism. And when I think of socialism, I think exactly of Scandinavian countries, not Soviet-era Russia.
Socialism is when white union workers at Swedish arms factories eat cheap treats farmed by impoverished black farmers kept in line with western arms.
Cocoa farmers in Ghana have never even tasted chocolate.
The USSR was socialist, governed by a communist party. The Nordic model is capitalist, as it is dominated by private ownership of large firms and key industries, and relies on imperialism to function. I suggest you do more research on these subjects.
Nordic countries are capitalist
What not reading theory does to an mf
