[PLUG-TALK] Irony repeats
Ted Mittelstaedt
tedm at portlandia-it.com
Sat May 18 17:39:41 UTC 2024
Tragedy of the commons is a mostly bankrupt idea. Mostly "tragedy of the
commons" is a phrase used today by people attempting to ignore the problems
of overpopulation or discredit it.
Are you in favor of child exploitation by your implication that
overpopulation is an antique idea from the 60's and 70's and no longer
relevant? Are you one of those saying we don't have to worry about it
anymore? And that it is OK for people to breed indiscriminately? Because
that is what this is really all about.
The criticism of it is even in that link you sent, namely:
"Some scholars have argued that over-exploitation of the common resource is
by no means inevitable, since the individuals concerned may be able to
achieve mutual restraint by consensus."
This was further expanded by people like Elinor Ostrom who is also mentioned
in the Wikipedia article.
The United States, Europe, China, and most other developed countries have
achieved zero population growth of NATIVE citizens through this exact
mechanism 'mutual restraint by consensus' In fact I daresay that the
issues brought up in the 1960's and 70's
educated people who then exercised restraint. Those societies have accepted
- by consensus - modified economic structures that discourage indiscriminate
breeding and force restraint.
However, other countries HAVE NOT achieved this and are, in fact, using the
United States and Europe as "safety valves" for their excess population so
that they do not need to face the cruel facts.
The cruel facts are that it is no longer possible to have a sort of hybrid
"laissez-faire dictatorship" political system where the top 10% of people
can exploit 90% of economic resources for their own benefit leaving the
remaining 90% of people to fight it out with each other for the scraps that
are left. In that scenario, more children give the family more power over
other families and so the extra children produced by the 90% are being
exploited by people trying to fight with other people, essentially. If you
are advocating indiscriminate breeding - which is what people who throw
around "tragedy of the commons" almost always are doing - then you are party
to this kind of exploitation. One of the cruelest things the Catholic
Church is doing today for example, is pushing the idea of indiscriminate
breeding in those societies - they are doing it to preserve their favored
status in those dictatorships - instead of demanding reforms in those
governments and societies. The Palestinians, for example, also are doing
the same exact thing - encouraging indiscriminate breeding so they have an
upper hand fighting with Israel. Israel is encouraging settlement activity
for the same reaons.
The only way that a dictatorship can be maintained is a hybrid "capitalist
dictatorship" along the model of China where the top 10% only exploit maybe
50% of the economic resources for their own benefit, and what they leave for
the remaining 90% of people is enough so that the rest of the people have a
somewhat decent life. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and to a certain extent Jordan
are some of the few Mid East countries where the leadership understands this
and they are at least working towards it, but the rest of them are not. And
incidentally, those 3 Mid East countries have also had serious problems
being used as safety valves for the remaining dysfunctional countries excess
population.
The issue is far more complicated than what people like Garret Hardin
perceived. Ostrom and others have illustrated pretty effectively why
screwed up political systems such as those in Mexico, cause overpopulation,
by showing that when those systems are allowed to operate that they destroy
the communities needed to maintain population control, and destroy mutual
restraint by consensus.
Ted
-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG-talk <plug-talk-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Rich
Shepard
Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2024 5:45 AM
To: Off-topic and potentially flammable discussion
<plug-talk at lists.pdxlinux.org>
Subject: Re: [PLUG-TALK] Irony repeats
On Fri, 17 May 2024, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> Seriously the issue today, as much as people want to pretend it
> doesn't exist, is simply that of overpopulation.
>
> As the world population grows resources get scarce and people fight
> over them.
Ted,
That was a major issue in the late 1960s and 1970s, and it was included in a
introductory biology course I taught at Idaho State University. It was
Garrick Hardin's 1968 paper that made (some) people aware of the problem.
Look at the Wikipedia article for a good understanding of the tragedy of the
commons <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>.
Carpe weekend,
Rich
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