Commons and the tragedy thereof
Continuing the talk of property rights and property rights regimes that found so much im/possibility in the realm of choices.
When a resource used for production or consumptiom is very plentiful relative to the humans who use it, there are often no individual or even community property rights assigned to it. That was widely if not universally the case with land in North America, before Euros arrived.* It was the case with English streams until pollution from their use as waste disposal intensified to impact downstream neighbors, and water property rights were developed. It is the case with air.
You don't need individual property rights for something you can access at any time without interfering with or being interfered with by neighbors.
Under the European medieval system of feudalism, the lord of a demesne often furnished a common for his (rarely her) tenants-- a plot of land open for tenants to graze their animals on.
As long as the common was large relative to usage, its herbage had time to recover from being grazed, and the system worked fine. More or more prospering tenants with more animals led to a problem called The Tragedy of the Commons.
"Oh, no, Willum! Thatcher's got *another* cow. Grass is already thinnish on the common."
"Well, then, Madge, I'll get our cattle out earlier and hungrier. Can't be beat by that Thatcher-- he'd leave none for us and ours!"
And thus under common property rights, once the property becomes congested, there is a self-interested tendency for everyone to run grab theirs, and run the property right into the ground.
This is part of why commons largely disappeared. It is part of why there are international treaties concerning fishing. And it is a cause for the assignation of private property rights.
* There were pre-Columbian Indian cities with populations enormous by world standards at the time, and it's difficult to tell what property rights systems may have obtained in them.
When a resource used for production or consumptiom is very plentiful relative to the humans who use it, there are often no individual or even community property rights assigned to it. That was widely if not universally the case with land in North America, before Euros arrived.* It was the case with English streams until pollution from their use as waste disposal intensified to impact downstream neighbors, and water property rights were developed. It is the case with air.
You don't need individual property rights for something you can access at any time without interfering with or being interfered with by neighbors.
Under the European medieval system of feudalism, the lord of a demesne often furnished a common for his (rarely her) tenants-- a plot of land open for tenants to graze their animals on.
As long as the common was large relative to usage, its herbage had time to recover from being grazed, and the system worked fine. More or more prospering tenants with more animals led to a problem called The Tragedy of the Commons.
"Oh, no, Willum! Thatcher's got *another* cow. Grass is already thinnish on the common."
"Well, then, Madge, I'll get our cattle out earlier and hungrier. Can't be beat by that Thatcher-- he'd leave none for us and ours!"
And thus under common property rights, once the property becomes congested, there is a self-interested tendency for everyone to run grab theirs, and run the property right into the ground.
This is part of why commons largely disappeared. It is part of why there are international treaties concerning fishing. And it is a cause for the assignation of private property rights.
* There were pre-Columbian Indian cities with populations enormous by world standards at the time, and it's difficult to tell what property rights systems may have obtained in them.