Once Again: ‘The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons’  

Ian Angus has a follow up to his piece on "The myth of the tragedy of the commons" - Once Again: ‘The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons’. I'm not so sure about his blog's subtitle - "Ecosocialism or Barbarism: There is no third way" - but ideology aside, its still an interesting subject.

The response to my recent article, “The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons,” has been very encouraging. It prompted a small flood of emails to my inbox, was reposted on many websites and blogs around the world, and has been discussed in a variety of online forums.

The majority of the comments were positive, but many readers challenged my critique of Garrett Hardin’s very influential 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” A gratifying number wrote serious and thoughtful criticisms. While they differed in specifics, these responses consistently made one or more of these three points:

* How can you say that the tragedy of the commons is a myth? Look at the ecological destruction around us. Isn’t that tragic?
* It doesn’t matter if Hardin’s account of the historical commons was wrong. He wasn’t writing history: he just used the commons as a model, or a metaphor.
* Hardin wasn’t rejecting all commons, just “unmanaged commons.” A “managed commons” would not be subject to the tragedy.

This article responds to those points. ...