There's no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody had to work so you could have your food. And depending on efficieny, more or less per food unit.
Correct on all accounts! But the problem is that while economists know more about the mechanics of a society, they cannot make value decisions on our behalf. Ideally everyone would know about society as economists do but this is not possible. Prediction markets would be one possible solution.
Like I wish I could plant all my experience to a public player's head so he could appreciate our arguments. Likewise I wish I could plant the knowledge of economists to everyone's head so they could understand all sides of the debate. When's that not possible, we just need to make 2nd-best solution.
Government system is one thing but my main argument was that many policies can be proven to make everyone worse off, by economics. So how we incorporate better understanding of these factors into public policy is up to a debate. I didn't say I had an ideal solution in mind, but prediction markets shound very useful for everything that can be measured.
I just want to point out that the "tragedy of the commons" is one of the single most bullshit arguments and the original paper is one of the worst papers ever published in a scientific journal. And it is so disastrous because governments and corporations have used it as justification to take private control of resources, under the guise of "more efficient management," which is only true if you define efficiency in the terms of extracting the most profit in the shortest amount of time.
Basically Hardin made up a hypothetical scenario about grazelands and extrapolated his entire idea from there. His base premise was flawed; his descriptions are entirely historically inaccurate and this has been pointed out by anthropologists, historians etc. that the Commons were managed by dividing into equal plots, or by setting agreed upon limits for the maximum number of animals. In fact the essay does not actually demonstrate a case of the Tragedy ever happening, only that Hardin says it is "inevitable". He basically takes the behavior of capitalists in a free market, and applies to it shepherds living in a pre-capitalist society. Then, he takes this invented scene and uses it to justify the privatization of natural resources.
If you look at many pre-capitalist societies you will find that many (though not all, communal management was not perfect and I do not pretend that it is) effectively managed their natural resources without depleting them. Compare that to the modern industrial era, where privatization in the name of the tragedy of the commons has resulted in exploitation of the environment and indigenous peoples, avoidable extinction of species, pollution, ineffective distribution of food and water, and so on. And yet people still use it as a justification.
Thankfully some resource management is improving, like lumber farming in the U.S., but this is only because the U.S. is rich enough to export the bad practices to poorer countries who can't afford not to do it (deforestation in South America, dirty mining in China and central Africa are 2 examples).
Basically my point in regard to yours: you are wrong that a private owner is necessary for resource management. That is all i want to say because this thread is way too long and dumb and just got one post dumber when i posted in it.
Yes there is, it's called permaculture, you can pick most food off a tree or find it in the ground.
Seriously will you even acknowledge anything outside of your personal social circle?
BORED NOW, cba to reply to someone who doesn't bother taking on board what i'm saying.
PS. prediction markets look quite interesting yeh, it's almost what happens now though and seems to want to really force a global value on items which imo can only be valued relatively, if at all.
Finally someone who knows something about the subject at hand.
Let's take indians for example. A lot of people thought they had no "propery rights". But that was because the land was plenty, but when the areas became more crowded, they did enforce property rights by not hunting at neighboring tribe's areas because that would result in an conflict that would benefit nobody. Indeed free people can arrange property rights without a state, such as the Not so Wild Wild West (Standford Economics and Finance). And even if there was no neighbouring tribe, they used their own property frugally as they would die out of hunger if they didn't.
And nothing prohibits bunch of communal people from buying a piece of land and using in a communal way in modern society.
And take fishing for example. I don't remember the name of the place but previously there was no overfishing in one place, but the fishermen would not overfish because others would not let such fellows marry their daughters. Thus they used social pressure to solve the coordination problem. However then foreigners and other people arrive. This comes naturally from freedom of movement. Like they don't want to live there, and move out, some people move in. But the mix of cultures meant that the foreigners were not even interested in marrying and the old social pressure system just broke out and overfishing became a problem.
But moral hazard is a real problem. People don't use other's people's resources (we can call that money) as frugally as they do own. Politicians act like this, and problems like we have in PIGS-countries and the ever-exploding levels of debt I live in a welfare state, and it is down-right obvious to me.
Look tragedy of commons is just one problem. I think economic calculation problem is much, much bigger issue.
If we hadn't industrialized, we would definitely have a problem with the distribution of food and water. Or please give me an example of a country with state-run farms that does not have such problems, or a country with living standards of western society with state-run economy.
Then on your second point about environment and so on. You forget is that there's a cost associated with everything. Sure, state could declare that half of UK's land cannot be used by humans anymore. What would happen? The price of the remaining land would skyrocket and so would the cost of many goods we consume like food. The poor would be the worst to get hit.
The real question is who should be the one to pay the cost and to decide how a piece of land is used. Someone is going to have to pay. I believe it is for humans to decide on their own (free-market environmentalism). I do believe in marginal utility and subjective theory of value. For example here we have Pentti Linkola's The Finnish Natural Heritage Foundation which buys land by donations and preserves it forever.
This whole dumb topic is a great example of tragedy of commons. In this case, the commons is the entire society. If me and tom lived on different planets, we wouldn't have this argument because there's no commons to shared and fight over with. Tom and his friends could arrange their planet as he wishes, and I wouldnt't care. Indeed this is why property rights are so useful. It provides a peaceful way to solve usage of resources instead of these dumb arguments, quarrels and wars, and whatever we have.
Private ownership is necessary for industrialization which is necessary for modern level of living standards. Pre-industrial societies used more shared version of propery rights and I have no problem with that but such things don't work really well with the modern society.
We've many things that can be considered public goods, and depending on the economist you ask, you get a different answer which these are.
Globalization and cheap industrial labour is the best way for developing countries to escape their grinding poverty. Don't believe me? Ask Paul Krugman, who happens to be a Nobel-prized economist aswell.
But you are right. Taking the homo economicus and applying it to pre-industrial societies is just dumb. But that's not my argument.
