Replying to LO26831 --
Mark,
I read Hardin's article many moons ago, and generally agreed with it,
except that his solution was to privatize a resource or put it into the
public domain. I have since come even more firmly to the point of view
that the tragedy is not so much the inevitability of overexploitation of
resources by the local population or a public entity as it is
globalization taking away local incentives for stewardship.
An interesting article is at
http://www.findarticles.com/m1076/10_40/53520537/p1/article.jhtml
When you ask whether TOC is only found in connection with human behavior,
how do you assign causality? For at least several tens of thousands of
years humans have inhabited the entire surface of the earth. How does one
determine whether our impact compensatory, additive, or causative at that
time scale? Clearly our current and recent past impacts -- last several
hundred years -- have been generally causative.
Humans have also recently been "credited" with wiping out every large
species of animal in Australia, and most large mammals in North and South
America. Given this possibility, living as part of regional ecosystems
for that length of time, we can not be discounted as factors in such
"tragedies."
As to your second question, the question of scale returns. Bureaucracies
are notorious for turf-building, so the question is, what size
organization are you looking at?
D.
--"Presser, Dennis" <dennis.presser@dot.state.wi.us>
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