This one is not going to be very long, because it's an easy one. Tragedy of the Commons is the name given to a theory that if a group of people share a resource, it will eventually be plundered and rendered useless. Overfishing of the Grand Banks is a commonly cited example. Selfish people will overuse the resource, ruining it for everybody. This concept is the basis for a good deal of leftist political thought, it is the reason that they want to put government in charge of everything. They are right, up to a point, but as usual they miss the mark completely in an attempt to bring everything under the thumb of government.
Let's start with an example:
Suppose there is a herd of buffalo. Nobody owns it, it's just there. The people of the nearby town go out and shoot buffalo when they need or want one. Some people shoot two or three of the animals because they want to stock up, some people shoot the buffalo and just take a favorite part, leaving the rest to rot, some people just shoot them for fun. Pretty soon that herd is gone and the people have no more buffalo and they start to starve.
The statist sees this and his solution is to create a governmental agency to manage the buffalo herd. Hunting licenses are required, and the Buffalo agency issues bag limits. Pretty soon the Buffalo Agency takes some land to keep it's buffalo on. One year a PETA drone is elected head of the agency and no permits are issued, so the herd grows uncontrolled. That won't do, so a biologist is brought in to manage buffalo breeding. Wolves show up to feed on the weak and young of the herd, so now the Buffalo Agency hires some of the hunters that it won't let shoot the buffalo to shoot the wolves. The people are starting to starve again, so the Buffalo Agency starts a program to humanely butcher selected older buffalo and sells the meat. They then start a Buffalo Cultural Festival to celebrate all things buffalo related (and to toot their own horn), and so on. The Buffalo Agency, which was established simply to keep the buffalo from being hunted to extinction, now employs half the town. The buffalo? Well, they're still there, but now they're almost an afterthought.
Read the rest here...
http://minx.cc:1080/?post=352550
Let's start with an example:
Suppose there is a herd of buffalo. Nobody owns it, it's just there. The people of the nearby town go out and shoot buffalo when they need or want one. Some people shoot two or three of the animals because they want to stock up, some people shoot the buffalo and just take a favorite part, leaving the rest to rot, some people just shoot them for fun. Pretty soon that herd is gone and the people have no more buffalo and they start to starve.
The statist sees this and his solution is to create a governmental agency to manage the buffalo herd. Hunting licenses are required, and the Buffalo agency issues bag limits. Pretty soon the Buffalo Agency takes some land to keep it's buffalo on. One year a PETA drone is elected head of the agency and no permits are issued, so the herd grows uncontrolled. That won't do, so a biologist is brought in to manage buffalo breeding. Wolves show up to feed on the weak and young of the herd, so now the Buffalo Agency hires some of the hunters that it won't let shoot the buffalo to shoot the wolves. The people are starting to starve again, so the Buffalo Agency starts a program to humanely butcher selected older buffalo and sells the meat. They then start a Buffalo Cultural Festival to celebrate all things buffalo related (and to toot their own horn), and so on. The Buffalo Agency, which was established simply to keep the buffalo from being hunted to extinction, now employs half the town. The buffalo? Well, they're still there, but now they're almost an afterthought.
Read the rest here...
http://minx.cc:1080/?post=352550
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