this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
1865 points (98.6% liked)

Comic Strips

12752 readers
3525 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SlopppyEngineer 7 points 9 months ago

But the tragedy of the commons is possible due to other circumstances. One of that is a different model of ownership that is used now. If land is owned, you can use it was you want. That's your right. Something that's not owned, like the sea of air, is can be exploited. In the past, there was shared ownership over lands, and if you tried to exploit it you got slapped. Or you only owned something for a time and then came a reshuffle according to their needs. What we have now is en exercise in how far you can take individual ownership until it breaks.

And in the past, there was more a steady state model. Population only grows slowly. Now with fast growing population. Back then you also had money as a hard currency. You wanted more, you had to dig more out of the ground. Now we have a monetary system that gets its value by promising even more value tomorrow. It forces growth on everybody and everything basically as a religion.

Combine the two and things go horribly wrong.