I had to chuckle when I came up with that title. Anyway, here's an argument I'm having trouble getting my head around. Maybe it's so far off the wall that it doesn't make sense but for some reason I find it oddly compelling. Still, I don't believe a word of it...can anyone help me understand it?
The argument is from Robert Ovetz, PhD (in what I don't know) in a commentary posted on ENN.COM entitled (Privatization is the Real Tragedy of the Commons). Here's the basics of Ovetz argument (I hope I'm not taking anything out of context):
The privatization of the commons is the real tragedy. Beginning with the land and forests, one by one, water, air, ocean and even our genetic code are being threatened by new enclosures. These new enclosures promise vast wealth to those that seek to exploit and own more and more of the commons while leaving the human community to shoulder the burden of their rapid depletion.
Over the past few decades we have come to learn the fatal flaw in Hardin’s hypothesis that “under a system of private property, the men who own property recognize their responsibility to care for it.” As we know from our global economic system, ownership no longer assumes geographic limitations. Once a privatized commons is exhausted and the costs passed onto the local and increasingly global communities, new commons to exploit are sought elsewhere ad infinitum. The crisis only ensued once the privateers began to run out of commons to be exhausted.
As examples, Ovetz points to fishery decline:
A recent report in the scientific journal Nature warns that since the 1950s, the number of large carnivorous fish have declined by as much as 99%. As nations increasingly expand their borders further and deeper into the ocean and rent and trade access and quotas to the remaining fishing grounds we have seen a rapid decline in ocean wildlife.
and the privatization of water:
The privatization of public water supplies from Stockton, California to Cochabamba, Bolivia and the selling of quotas to polluters to continue polluting our atmosphere and wreaking havoc on our climate have now become national and international law thanks to the Kyoto Accords.
What really scares me is that Ovetz seems to be arguing in support of fully removing all private property rights to solve the tragedy of the commons.
The continuing enclosure of the commons is the real tragedy that threatens the very survival of humanity. Many traditional and indigenous communities hold shared values, beliefs and purpose which have allowed them to live in balance with the natural world upon which they have relied for their very survival for millenia.
So...because social norms work in very specific settings (as I argued here and here), we should eliminate private property and all live a communal life. That's how we'll save the environment? Seems like a logical fallacy. Am I missing the point?
