The comedy of the commons is an economic concept, developed to explain why the tragedy of the commons model doesn't always correspond to reality. In the comedy, the presence of more people can in some cases, cause a commons to work better when "the grass grows taller when it is grazed on".[1] Even when returns to scale don't occur, often users of the commons are able to develop mechanisms to police their use to maintain and even improve the state of the commons.[2] Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize for analysing under what situations commons are run successfully.[3][4]
The term comedy of the commons appears to have originated in an essay by legal scholar, Carol M. Rose in 1986.[2][3][5]
Etymology edit
The concept is sometimes called the inverse commons, cornucupia of the commons, triumph of the commons.[6][7]
Commons edit
In this case commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Sometimes commons consist of information contributed by the public.[6]
While the original paper on the tragedy of the commons by suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, commons are extremely common in the real world and are not universally doomed to failure. Work by many later economists have found many examples of very successful commons. Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize for analysing under what situations commons are run successfully.[3][4]
Triumph of the commons edit
The original essay "Tragedy of the commons," by Garrett Hardin, who coined the term, has been criticised, among others, by Susan Jane Buck Cox who argues that the common land example used to argue this economic concept is on very weak historical ground, and misrepresents what she terms the "triumph of the commons"; the successful common usage of land for many centuries. She argues that social changes and agricultural innovation led to the demise of the commons; not the behaviour of the commoners.[7]
See also edit
- Game theory
- Homo reciprocans
- Network effect
- The Magic Cauldron - essay on the open source economic model
- Tragedy of the anticommons
References edit
- ^ The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an ... By Eric Raymond
- ^ a b Rose, Carol M. (1986). "The Comedy of the Commons: Commerce, Custom, and Inherently Public Property". Faculty Scholarship Series. Yale Law School: Paper 1828. Retrieved December 28, 2011.
- ^ a b c Rifkin, Jeremy. "10 - Comedy of the Commons". The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
- ^ a b Governing the Commons- The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action Elinor Ostrom Published: October 2015 isbn: 9781107569782
- ^ The Drama of the Commons By Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, National Research Council, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Board on Environmental Change and Society
- ^ a b Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth By David Bollier
- ^ a b Cox, Susan Jane Buck. (1985). "No tragedy on the Commons," Journal of Environmental Ethics 7 (Spring).
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