The Tragedy of the Bunnies (hey, Its Easter. )
by on 03.25.05
While trolling the net, Treehugger often finds environmental websites that are "fair and balanced" in the manner of Fox News. Often the only way to determine their real position is to read the reviews of Michael Chrichton's "State of Fear". It appears that some of these groups want to get at the sprouts before they become treehuggers and have created games with a message- Only because it is Easter, we present "the Tragedy of the Bunnies"
Based on a dated article from 1968 titled the Tragedy of the Commons. as defined in Wikipedia:
"The cause of any tragedy of the commons is that when individuals use a public good, they do not bear the entire cost of their actions. If each seeks to maximize individual utility, he ignores the costs borne by others. This is an example of an externality. The best (non-cooperative) short-term strategy for an individual is to try to exploit more than his or her share of public resources. Assuming a majority of individuals follow this strategy, the theory goes, the public resource gets overexploited."
It is used often as an excuse for the enclosure and privatization of public resources, on the specious basis that private owners have a vested interest in protecting the environment whereas the rest of us who have to share the resource do not.
So without further ado, we invite you to waste valuable bandwidth resources to learn that private bunnies are better than public bunnies. :: Play The Tragedy of the Bunnies. [by LA]
Private individuals have an interest to protect their environment at the expense of the environment of others. Why do you think outsourcing is so popular?
I especially enjoy that in an effort to prove their point, after I left six bunnies at the end, the game still says that public domain is bad and that there are no more bunnies. Even though there are six left.
Odd.
I think this is a valuable lesson, but it's sometimes misinterpreted to suggest we don't need things like national parks, or even city parks. Some things are definitely better handled in the public domain. The philosphy is that we *do* own things like the parks in a personal as well as community sense, and that's what keeps them well maintained (usually). As for how large a scale that can work at... who knows. At any rate, sharing land to go walking in is not the same as harvesting rabbits.
I think the intent of the Tragedy of the Commons was to make a point about overpopulation and more and more people living in a resource-limited world.
That aside, I don't think the Tragedy of the Commons is something necessarily used to argue for the privatization of public resources. Especially since the Tragedy of the Commons (as the commenter above points out) relates to *consumptive*, as opposed to non-consumptive uses.
That is, if you walk through a park, that's a non-consumptive use. There is still just as much park for everybody to use. However, if you're talking about logging in the park, the same is NOT true. When YOU cut down a tree, the tree is no longer there for anyone else to cut down, use, enjoy.
In fact, the Tragedy of the Commons argues FOR protection of resources. It says that people working towards they're private interest (without restriction) won't lead everyone to commonly desireable outcomes.