I am sorry to have missed last week's discussion on Zero-Sum Gain. I hear there was extensive debate about the classification of the stock market; is the trade of shares likely to benefit everyone involved? This is a tough question that the great figures of economics can debate while I watch my shares in the market increase in relative value.
This week's article on Collective Theory is a gift in my attempts to explain away liberal jabbering on the tragedies of common resources. It happens that, while I was unfamiliar with the name, I have been discussing the conclusions of collective theory for quite some time. The Taylor Grazing act has been around for more than half a century. Permits are granted on a long term basis, giving incentive to use their rangelands responsibly in order to ensure continuing profit. Water resources in the Western US are allocated in a manner that forces an economic expression of ecological principles. As a final example, the permits granted to fishermen in the Gulf of Alaska are bestowed as a sort of property where holders have direct monetary incentives to adhere to sound ecological principles.
Naturally, there are a great number of examples that have nothing to do with natural resources where governments have managed to build an effective system to regulate collective action. My peers here may have a greater number of examples to nullify this selection; I hope there can be a discussion that I can bring back to those professors of mine who pick one perspective to indoctrinate with.
I suppose the question I find most thought provoking is: Is government by nature less capable of dealing with collective action? I am inclined to believe that there are cases where a central regime can more effectively promote wellness than the spontaneous cooperative relationships proposed by Ostrom.
As I see it, Ostrom's research is all about getting past the simplistic private/public and market-failure/government-solution dichotomies that dominate the debate on common pool resource management. The question shouldn't be "when markets fail, can government do better?" or even the converse that "when governments fail can the market do better?" The question I see Ostrom raising is "under what conditions can individuals, through collective action, cooperate to overcome social dilemmas in the absence of an established external enforcement mechanism like the market's profit-loss motive or the State's coercive laws and regulations?" It's about the conditions under which self-regulating institutions (whether private or public) emerge and promote the spontaneous order and rules of the game that are conducive to social cooperation.
ReplyDeleteDoes that make sense?