It’s the Economics, Stupid!

I’m not sure just what it is about people in my Property Law class. So far, we’ve been covering some basic economic issues, and today we touched on the topic of the tragedy of the commons. Despite some of the utilitarian thinkers whose names we were introduced to in the text, the ideas shouldn’t be so hard to grasp.

“Tragedy of the commons” may be a term of economics, but the idea is very basic. Let’s say you’ve got a communal pasture, which everyone can access, and which nobody has rights to. What happens, then, in a community of herders? You’ll get overgrazing, because when nobody owns the rights to the common pasture, and anybody can use it, nobody has an incentive to stop somebody else’s herd from grazing. It’s a recipe for environmental disaster. The basic economic idea underlying this is that, when there is open access, and no exclusive rights, resources will be consumed faster, resulting in underproduction or shortage. To prevent overgrazing in the commons, then, the community could either ban herding (which has the advantage of negating the entire scenario, but the disadvantage of being unrealistic and avoiding the question), or the community could create private property by dividing the commons into small parcels. Each property owner then has a vested interest in the productivity of his piece of pasture, and so will not only limit his own consumption, but invoke his right, guaranteed by the law, to prevent others from grazing on his part of the pasture by any reasonable means, such as by building a fence. Simple enough, right?

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An SUV and a Gun

Looking at the pictures coming from Louisiana and Mississippi it occurs to me that maybe now some people in the blue costal enclaves and in Europe might get an inkling why America red staters like their SUVs and guns.

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Quote of the Day

The interesting contradiction of those who think that all we need to do is better understand those trying to destroy us is that the only ones who apparently don’t understand the terrorists are those calling for understanding.

John Moreschi, commenting on a post at the neo-neocon blog.

Did New Orleans Have to Flood?

In looking at the reports from New Orleans, I really have to ask if the catastrophic flooding of the city was inevitable, or whether it resulted from poor planning. It seems to me that technology exists that would have prevented the massive flooding we are currently seeing. Why wasn’t this technology used?

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More Stinginess

Alashiya and I were trading Emails, discussing the hurricane relief efforts, when she dropped a bombshell on me. “What are all of these other countries doing to help the US victims of a natural disaster?”

Huh! Good question. It could very well be that there’s some sort of relief effort being organized in another country, but I can’t seem to find any mention of it in the news.

I mean, the people of the United States have always been generous when innocent people from foreign countries need help. You can trace this back to the Berlin Airlift, the opening salvo of the Cold War, and we’ve been going strong ever since. So now that Americans are hurting, why doesn’t someone step up and make an offer of help?

It’s certainly become fashionable in recent years to claim that Americans aren’t doing their share when it comes to aid. I’m waiting for those same critics to rip the rest of the world a new one.