Interesting Links for 31-01-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The inevitability of the tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth - people are actually pretty good at cooperating

(tags:economics psychology cooperation )

2. BBC Inquiry finds that its journalists lack an understanding of basics enconomics, and are led too strongly by Westminster narratives

(tags:economics bbc fail )

3. Who are the 'Citizens of the Reich'? (Far right German conspiracy theorists who want to overthrow the government and bring back the monarchy)

(tags:Germany terrorism monarchy )

Comments

[nancylebov]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-are-the-citizens-of-the-reich-movement-explained-after-member-arrested-hiding-children-in-cellar/ar-AA16U7QD

3. This may be a non-paywalled version.

[skington]

Disabling Javascript is enough to remove the paywall and other annoying cruft from the various flavours of The Independent that Andy likes to link to. (Which admittedly is hard on mobile.)

[toothycat]

"People are actually pretty good at cooperating" - this is, perhaps, more true of some groups than others. Reading this here in a country that chose to privatise most of its literal commons centuries ago and is currently busily demolishing public institutions for private gain is doubly depressing.

[jack]

Indeed, I think someone explained that the history of the *actual commons*, as in common grazing land, was that there was a delicate balance of formal and informal agreements about exactly how much everyone could use them without overreaching, and the "tragedy" happened when higher authority appeared and insisted that everything had a well-defined taxable owner or was open to all. Although maybe also when people became more mobile and less "the same farm my grandparents had".

That is, I think when you have a bunch of people who don't know each other, either because there's too many of them, or the group is constantly changing, or it happens in places they can't easily talk, then sharing tends to degrade as people see others taking a little more and nothing stopping them, and no benefit to sharing fairly. Whereas when you have a group of people who all see each other as some sort of group, not even necessarily by choice or very localised, then I think it's common for norms to develop to chide people who let the side down until everyone has something "fair". (Which has it's own problems if what looks fair isn't fair, but avoids a race to the bottom.)

[conuly]

1. The inevitability of the tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth - people are actually pretty good at cooperating

I've taken great joy in pointing out to anybody who invokes The Tragedy of the Commons that, in fact, the system of "the commons" existed and worked pretty darn well for most of European history.

[andrewducker]

I definitely agree that you need more rules when social cohesion doesn't work by itself. Something something Dunbar something.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, exactly. I think that poo-pooh'ing the concept of tragedy of the commons is just as over-simplified as describing it as inevitable. It's more correct to say that scale matters a great deal.

With a small group, ordinary social pressures are often plenty enough to share things around. It's when the group gets large and less socially unified (generally by the time it gets to city-sized) that you generally need regulation and/or markets (often best as some of each) to determine the distribution of resources.