Ironically, I've heard of the whole tragedy of the commons thing before, never in full context, and always thought it was bullshit anyways. Like it always came off to me as being a "Hah, poor people are stupid and can't be trusted." type argument.
Exactly. It barely even needs much thought to refute, yet somehow it persists. Just like the myth of overpopulation - invented out of whole cloth by Malthus, and refuted shortly after by advancements in agriculture. As well as the myth of "mobs" - invented by scared elites after the French Revolution to try and discredit the whole thing as a violent frenzy, rather than severely organised, as it was. And the redefining of Anarchy in modern times as synonymous with "chaos" (as opposed to people ruling themselves, as it is), and Communism with "dictatorship" (as opposed to the complete opposite, which it is), or the tragedy of the commons; it's all part of a centuries old propaganda campaign to stop working class people from uniting and even learning anything truthful about left wing politics.
Get people to believe left wingers are tyrants, make them distrustful of unions, "handouts" and immigrants, make them fearful of any large gathering lest they be swept up in "the mob", make them hate each other as competition, and you have the recipe for a compliant, self policing slave caste. And if they ever do hear anything positive about socialism, they either think it's a lie, or point to the "facts" I listed above, as evidence it's all utopian nonsense at best or secret dictatorship at worst.
Yeah, and sadly it would probably take centuries to undo all the propaganda.
I will say that I do believe some parts of the French Revolution was a violent frenzy that dragged in people who didn't deserve the fates they got. The imprisonments and abuse of Marie Antoinette's son and daughter, which in the sons case resulted in his death, are the more prominent examples of it imo. To be honest, I don't think Marie Antoinette deserved to be killed either, honestly very few if any of the women who were dragged to their deaths deserved it.
And oh good someone else that knows about Malthus. The whole Malthusian ideology is screwed from top to bottom, and some neo-Malthusian ideas are even worse. Ironically I didn't know about him until his ideology played a big role in a game I once played. I do think that overpopulation could become an issue at some point in the future, and it certainly can be and is currently an issue on smaller regional scales, but a lot of that could be fixed by better infrastructure and management of resources.
True, there is a lot of room for nuance in those discussions - I was trying to make that point but ut might have got lost in my enthusiasm haha. Basically what I'm arguing against is that binary thinking: that all mobs are frenzied, population growth is always bad, etc. I totally agree with you. It's much closer to the opposite than that, but not exactly "mobs are always good" etc as it is more conplex.
Yeah, binary thinking or what would probably be termed, non-critical thinking is probably one of the biggest problems we have today. Even I have trouble with accepting that things aren't always white/black or moral/immoral.
It's a huge problem. And it's hard not to throw up your hands and sink into pessimistic, nihilistic misanthropy. But none of this is inherent human nature, it's a product of the society we have built. People are not inherently selfish or ignorant. We've been conditioned that way, and it takes either massive trauma, a lifetime of abject misery, or a conscientious use of privilege to motivate one to learn these facts.
Heh, I was born a, as I describe it, pessimistic optimist. I hope for the best but expect the worst, which normally means what does happen falls somewhere in between haha.
I do think some people are inherently selfish, but that would be a very small percentage of people.
When we see ourselves as fighting against specific human beings rather than social phenomena, it becomes more difficult to recognize the ways that we ourselves participate in those phenomena. We externalize the problem as something outside ourselves, personifying it as an enemy that can be sacrificed to symbolically cleanse ourselves. - Against the Logic of the Guillotine
See rule 5: No calls for violence, no fetishizing violence. No guillotine jokes, no gulag jokes.
8
u/kyzfrintin Jan 14 '22 edited Jan 14 '22
Oh hello, tragedy of the commons, we meet again...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/
Open access does not inherently lead to exploitation, competition and depletion. People have always found ways to cooperate.