british economist william forster lloyd was the originator of the tragedy of the commons metaphor.
british economist william forster lloyd was the originator of the tragedy of the commons metaphor.
the originator of the tragedy of the commons metaphor was?
british economist william forster lloyd
the tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users, by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. the theory originated in an essay written in 1833 by the british economist william forster lloyd, who used a hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing on common land (also known as a "common") in great britain and ireland. the concept became widely known as the "tragedy of the commons" over a century later due to an article written by the american ecologist and philosopher garrett hardin in 1968. in this modern economic context, commons is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, roads and highways, or even an office refrigerator.
tragedy of the commons
in 2007, elinor ostrom along with her colleague charlotte hess, did succeed in extending the commons debate to knowledge, approaching knowledge as a complex ecosystem that operates as a common – a shared resource that is subject to social dilemmas. the focus here was on the ready availability of digital forms of knowledge and associated possibilities to store, access and share it as a common. the connection between knowledge and commons may be made through identifying typical problems associated with natural resource commons, such as congestion, overharvesting, pollution and inequities, which also apply to knowledge. then, effective alternatives (community-based, non-private, non-state), in line with those of natural commons (involving social rules, appropriate property rights and management structures), solutions are proposed. thus, the commons metaphor is applied to social practice around knowledge. it is in this context that the present work proceeds, discussing the creation of depositories of knowledge through the organised, voluntary contributions of scholars (the research community, itself a social common), the problems that such knowledge commons might face (such as free-riding or disappearing assets), and the protection of knowledge commons from enclosure and commodification (in the form of intellectual property legislation, patenting, licensing and overpricing). at this point, it is important to note the nature of knowledge and its complex and multi-layered qualities of non-rivalry and non-excludability. unlike natural commons – which are both rival and excludable (only one person can use any one item or portion at a time and in so doing they use it up, it is consumed) and characterised by scarcity (they can be replenished but there are limits to this, such that consumption/destruction may overtake production/creation) – knowledge commons are characterised by abundance (they are non-rival and non-excludable and thus, in principle, not scarce, so not impelling competition and compelling governance). this abundance of knowledge commons has been celebrated through alternative models of knowledge production, such as commons based peer production (cbpp), and embodied in the free software movement. the cbpp model showed the power of networked, open collaboration and non-material incentives to produce better quality products (mainly software).
commons