<100 years of oil? The Oil Drum Plateau continues, aided by outages...>

102 comments on You decide who's to blame

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

totoneila on April 15, 2006 - 11:32am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Hello Yankee,

Thxs for posting this as we can now start tracking all the scapegoating that will be going on a people refuse to accept the 'Tragedy of the Commons'.

I think going forward we can expect to read media reports of people yelling at gas station attendents at the gasoline price, SUVs having their tires deflated, truckers causing massive traffic jams as their method of protesting diesel prices, the unemployed starting to blame certain ethnic groups for their strife, and so on.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
totoneila on April 15, 2006 - 11:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello TODers, especially newbies!

I feel I should include this link to Dieoff.com to help explain the 'Tragedy of the Commons' by Garret Hardin to any new members:

http://dieoff.com/page95.htm

If you wish to read more about Hardin:

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Don Sailorman on April 15, 2006 - 5:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for posting link to Hardin site.

I fervently hope many TOD readers will visit there, look at the descriptions of his books, buy some and study them.

Prerequisite to living with Peak Oil is coming to grips with the tragedy of the commons. It is not easy to do so, but it is necessary, because the only alternatives are the worst scenarios of the doomers.

If one person's ideas can be said to be most fundamental to understanding where we now stand and suggesting constructive actions, I nominate Garrett Hardin for first place.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
oldhippie on April 16, 2006 - 4:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If you want to kmow about the commons why go to somewone as obscure as Garrett Hardin? Try reading Karl Marx. Actually you are not going to read any 19th century British history or literature and not pick up constant references to the commons and to the Enclosure Acts.
When there were substantial commons - common pasture and common woodlands usually, but including all sorts of commonly held land - the system worked well and smoothly for 1000 years. The theoretical problems latterday economists like to yammer on about mostly just did not arise. The problem came when common property was privatized.
I'm sure there's the possibility of researching this one online but I suggest you try the library instead. And look up enclosures or the Enclosure Acts since existence of commons is assumed.
Once you know something about commons and enclosures you will understand everything you've ever learned about Europe quite differently. And understand what an anomaly America is.
Seriously, you are not even going to understand gamewarden vs. poacher jokes if you are relying on someone so far afield as Hardin for the lay of the land on commons.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Don Sailorman on April 16, 2006 - 5:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As "obscure" as Garrett Hardin.

That one word speaks volumes.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
oldhippie on April 16, 2006 - 9:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, really, obscure.
Won't bother to post anymore on this site & am sure you are already glad of that. Spectator position only.
And Only in America could such an article or such a discussion of the commons exist. You can't adress peak oil or much else while being so severely provincial.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
BOP on April 17, 2006 - 12:44am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

 Don't let Don scare you off the site or stop posting. He has not read much history, and even less anthropology, and almost nothing on communal fisheries management. But then neither has Hardin.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Don Sailorman on April 17, 2006 - 9:45am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks BOP, we need all the humor we can get on this site.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
fallout on April 17, 2006 - 12:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I personally hope oldhippie changes his mind, and decides to post again here. I have enjoyed his previous posts, and a little google search for "Garrett Hardin" vs. "Enclosures Act" (or even "Karl Marx") will prove him correct regarding Hardin's RELATIVE(key word) obscurity on the matter of commons.  
Being a prolific blog poster does not in any way make what you have to say any more important or accurate.

Having been a reader and contributor to TOD longer (albeit not more frequently) than Don and BOP combined, I also feel compelled to point out that being generally abrasive and/or discourteous to others are not traits that serve well either on this blog, or in post-peak life.  

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
oldhippie on April 17, 2006 - 10:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Since you are so kind, I will post once more, on this probably dead thread. Don Sailorman does not scare me off. I rather like him. A fellow cyclist. A fellow curmudgeon.

The problem is the futility of this endeavour.

Good Lord I probably ran into Garrett Hardin 3 decades ago when some young naiive econ professor ran that article past me. And now he has a new life on the net. Back then I think I bothered to debate it. Looking at that shite again, having been trained as an historian, it just feels like a slap in the face.
There was once, and may be again, a stripe of American scholar who would pick up something plain as dirt, simple as breathing, but unknown to America. Who would know if the facts were wrong? Who would catch that he had no grasp of the field?  Dress it up with a metric. Reference a name physicist, mathematician, philosopher, whatever. Cover by publishing in a journal where no one knows. The audience really was born yesterday. And this stuff now lives forever.

What really bothers me about Hardin is that he committed that essay in 1968. Probably the last time we all really had the chance to live.

Anyone still with me? Read the knave of the soixant-huitards, Guy Debord. The whole oeuvre is 3 inches of shelf, unless you read French and can score a copy of the filmscripts - then it's 5 inches. But would anyone on this board be able to read it? Or read the illustrated version from Grant Morrison.

Anyway this board has people who know lots and lots about about petroleum engineering and the oil biz, subjects of much interest where I should only listen.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Don Sailorman on April 18, 2006 - 7:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Oldhippie,
Of course you should not go away! We have a lot in common, as you pointed out.

We are in the mess we are in BECAUSE the ideas of Hardin are relatively obscure.

I in no way intended to attack you--but rather to deplore the ignorance of the powers that be as to what our fundamental problems are.

Peace.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
MillMan on April 15, 2006 - 10:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Looking at The Tragedy of the Commons article on that site, I thought this was interesting:

Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that none has: there is no prosperous population in the world today that has, and has had for some time, a growth rate of zero. Any people that has intuitively identified its optimum point will soon reach it, after which its growth rate becomes and remains zero.

Since today there are a number of countries with negative population growth, the above claim is no longer true (I admit there are holes in this claim, but I'm not going to elaborate). At some point the costs of having children became greater than their benefits. That's a qualitative change that was not an intended technological consequence. That gives me a few extra shreds of hope for the current energy dilemma.

For bonus points, perhaps, prove that the calculus making the cost of children greater than the benefit is reliant on cheap energy. heh.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Don Sailorman on April 16, 2006 - 2:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
To reduce birth rates, just educate women. This policy is dramatically effective even in poor and very low-energy societies.

The problem of population in high-energy societies is not a problem of excessive birth rates: Every single modern society has low birth rates, some of them 40% lower than that needed just to stabilize population. The problem that prosperous societies in the U.S. and Europe face is immigration from poor countries.

Neither Democrat nor Republican leaders have the guts to do what needs to be done, because both are captive to special-interest groups that favor large-scale immigration to the U.S. Note that this failure of democracy is a VBD (Very Big Deal), because even though a large majority of U.S. voters want immigration stopped (or greatly restricted), the people have been betrayed by their elected representives.

IMO, the leaderships of the Republican and Democratic parties are both morally and intellectually bankrupt. The major parties are broken and cannot be fixed, and hence the importance of creating a successful new party for the first time in a hundred and fifty years.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
MillMan on April 15, 2006 - 12:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
For what it's worth, I'm trying to do my best to keep my self defeating cynicism down while Bad Things things like this start to occur. It's far more constructive to calmly explain to people (whose typical news consumption is entirely propaganda driven) what's really going on rather than darkly enjoying "what we've earned for ourselves."
Comments can no longer be added to this story.

102 comments on You decide who's to blame

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version