Something interesting about the tragedy of the anticommons is that it is created entirely by government. Intellectual property, spectrum allocation, and zoning/land use regulations would not exist in an anarchic world. I’ve heard incredibly cogent and compelling arguments against each type of government-created “market,” and it’s a damn shame that people look at you like you’re a crazed lunatic when you suggest that either a) people shouldn’t be granted monopolies on ideas and mathematical equations (i.e., computer code); b) the government should not be regulating the spectrum at all (god forbid we’d live in a world where all communication were as plentiful as wi-fi is today!); or b) maybe people should be allowed to build gigantic skyscrapers wherever the hell they want without parking. The last one is particularly pressing (in my opinion), though it’s upsetting that the closest that people get to recognizing this particular tragedy of the anticommons is supporting New Urbanism, which is at best a bastardized version of the most truly efficient urban allocation mechanism – market urbanism.
“Something interesting about the tragedy of the anticommons is that it is created entirely by government.”
Watch out for the affective death spiral. If we had no zoning regulation and no restrictions on contractual disposition of land property rights, we’d get a crazy-quilt of restrictive covenants.
Covenants can only exist if there’s a party to enforce them. And that party has to be paid, since preventing people from doing something costs money. Unfortunately, often the government takes that job upon itself (as in Houston).
A more realistic and free market-oriented approach would be to force people who want access to their neighbor’s property to...buy it! Sure, it would encourage people to own larger plots of land, but given the inherent perils of homeownership, I’m not entirely sure that converting a nation of homeowners to a nation of renters would be such a bad idea.
It sounds to me like you are ignoring the Tragedy of the Commons there, though. The purported reason for each of these government interventions is to enforce property rights where they don’t exist. I think the whole point of this post about the tragedy of the anticommons is to illustrate that you are finding an optimum, not a single limit.
The fact that all of these things mentioned here are created by government (and I am not sure that you’ve proven that tragedies of the anticommons can’t arise naturally) just gets to the point that you can easily over-correct for a failure of natural incentives, which means that you should probably be putting some thought into designing feedback mechanisms to naturally find the optima that you are looking for.
The purported reason for each of these government interventions is to enforce property rights where they don’t exist.
No doubt. I’m not ignoring the tragedy of the commons, though – I’m just saying that I have yet to see compelling evidence that it actually exists.
A free-for-all spectrum might have some interference, but then again, the concept of “interference” is a bit dated anyway, as modern technology can much more effectively filter it out than it could when the Titanic sunk (which was when we got a lot of these spectrum regulations in the first place).
A free-for-all in land development is not a great example of the tragedy of the commons, since it is not, strictly speaking, a commons. Sure, the “skyline” could be considered a commons, but then again, given astronomical land values in dense urban settings, it’s a bit unclear as to why a cluttered skyline would be such a bad thing. (The roads could be considered a commons, though given the deteriorating state of the environment and the very workably private mass transit companies that existed before the socialization of transport in the US, it’s difficult to argue that government-owned transport in the form of “road commons” is such a great idea.)
As for the IP argument, people have been arguing about this for a good long time. The best resource that I can recommend arguing against a tragedy of the commons is Against Intellectual Monopoly by Levine and Boldrin. For a brief summary of some of the argument against IP in pharmaceuticals (which is by far the field in which IP has the most support), see here.
Curious about the downvoting of parent. It’s concise, informative, well-argued (in a sense), and contains references for further reading. It therefore seems like a candidate for the top 20 or so comments we’ve had so far.
I may vote for Libertarian political candidates, but that doesn’t mean that I think every single damn website in the cosmos has to be about libertarianism.
If you’re sympathetic to libertarian ideas, I’m surprised you’re not interested in furthering discussion about libertarian approaches to spectrum allocation and land use and transportation policy. What mainstream websites/blogs/pundits do you know of who give anything more than a passing mention of these issues? I find that these issues in particular (IP not so much) are woefully neglected by...just about everyone. Even libertarian organizations (Reason magazine and foundation come to mind) often have very statist stances when it comes to land use and spectrum regulation.
If you’re sympathetic to libertarian ideas, I’m surprised you’re not interested in furthering discussion about libertarian
“A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Not every conversation on the Internet has to be about libertarianism. Anyone who can’t accept that about any of their pet topics is a commenter we can’t afford to have.
Specifically, should posts be about rationality, or can they be “mere” applications of rationalist insights to specific topics?
The latter is a dangerous path to go down, at least for now. But if an application has something new to say about rationality and it’s something that our already iconoclastic readers haven’t heard before—i.e., not the standard arguments for libertarianism or whatever—then I guess so...
Are you saying that there is no incidence of the tragedy of the commons at all, or just that these things are not tragedies of the commons? If it’s the latter, I think it’s pointless to argue the specifics of any particular examples when the broader point still stands. When there is a tragedy of the commons, one possible solution is to create property rights so that incentives align with social optima, but the problem of the tragedy of the anticommons can arise if the property rights you create are too strong.
In practice, there will be cases where you don’t want to try to re-align incentives. If you have a situation where you are going to be naturally close to the social optimum (maybe the spectrum or the skyline are good examples of this—I’m not familiar with these cases intimately), then unless you have a well-calibrated government you are more likely than not to over-shoot the social optimum. If you have something that’s seriously misaligned—maybe people burning huge amounts of neurotoxin-containing wood and wearing a mask or something—you might overshoot or undershoot the social optimum, but even a poorly-calibrated government might be able to get you closer.
I wouldn’t want to be so absolute and say there is no such thing as the tragedy of the commons, but I am saying that I think it’s vastly overblown, and that in most cases when it’s invoked, it isn’t actually present.
You’re right about that: Many people use the spectre of the tragedy of the commons ad nauseum to sound clever and insulate their own ideological attachments to property rights and private ownership. Usually, when there’s a commons, some sturdy, democratic, responsive trustee entity or market can take care of problems of overuse.
Something interesting about the tragedy of the anticommons is that it is created entirely by government. Intellectual property, spectrum allocation, and zoning/land use regulations would not exist in an anarchic world. I’ve heard incredibly cogent and compelling arguments against each type of government-created “market,” and it’s a damn shame that people look at you like you’re a crazed lunatic when you suggest that either a) people shouldn’t be granted monopolies on ideas and mathematical equations (i.e., computer code); b) the government should not be regulating the spectrum at all (god forbid we’d live in a world where all communication were as plentiful as wi-fi is today!); or b) maybe people should be allowed to build gigantic skyscrapers wherever the hell they want without parking. The last one is particularly pressing (in my opinion), though it’s upsetting that the closest that people get to recognizing this particular tragedy of the anticommons is supporting New Urbanism, which is at best a bastardized version of the most truly efficient urban allocation mechanism – market urbanism.
“Something interesting about the tragedy of the anticommons is that it is created entirely by government.” Watch out for the affective death spiral. If we had no zoning regulation and no restrictions on contractual disposition of land property rights, we’d get a crazy-quilt of restrictive covenants.
Covenants can only exist if there’s a party to enforce them. And that party has to be paid, since preventing people from doing something costs money. Unfortunately, often the government takes that job upon itself (as in Houston).
A more realistic and free market-oriented approach would be to force people who want access to their neighbor’s property to...buy it! Sure, it would encourage people to own larger plots of land, but given the inherent perils of homeownership, I’m not entirely sure that converting a nation of homeowners to a nation of renters would be such a bad idea.
It sounds to me like you are ignoring the Tragedy of the Commons there, though. The purported reason for each of these government interventions is to enforce property rights where they don’t exist. I think the whole point of this post about the tragedy of the anticommons is to illustrate that you are finding an optimum, not a single limit.
The fact that all of these things mentioned here are created by government (and I am not sure that you’ve proven that tragedies of the anticommons can’t arise naturally) just gets to the point that you can easily over-correct for a failure of natural incentives, which means that you should probably be putting some thought into designing feedback mechanisms to naturally find the optima that you are looking for.
The purported reason for each of these government interventions is to enforce property rights where they don’t exist.
No doubt. I’m not ignoring the tragedy of the commons, though – I’m just saying that I have yet to see compelling evidence that it actually exists.
A free-for-all spectrum might have some interference, but then again, the concept of “interference” is a bit dated anyway, as modern technology can much more effectively filter it out than it could when the Titanic sunk (which was when we got a lot of these spectrum regulations in the first place).
A free-for-all in land development is not a great example of the tragedy of the commons, since it is not, strictly speaking, a commons. Sure, the “skyline” could be considered a commons, but then again, given astronomical land values in dense urban settings, it’s a bit unclear as to why a cluttered skyline would be such a bad thing. (The roads could be considered a commons, though given the deteriorating state of the environment and the very workably private mass transit companies that existed before the socialization of transport in the US, it’s difficult to argue that government-owned transport in the form of “road commons” is such a great idea.)
As for the IP argument, people have been arguing about this for a good long time. The best resource that I can recommend arguing against a tragedy of the commons is Against Intellectual Monopoly by Levine and Boldrin. For a brief summary of some of the argument against IP in pharmaceuticals (which is by far the field in which IP has the most support), see here.
Curious about the downvoting of parent. It’s concise, informative, well-argued (in a sense), and contains references for further reading. It therefore seems like a candidate for the top 20 or so comments we’ve had so far.
I may vote for Libertarian political candidates, but that doesn’t mean that I think every single damn website in the cosmos has to be about libertarianism.
If you’re sympathetic to libertarian ideas, I’m surprised you’re not interested in furthering discussion about libertarian approaches to spectrum allocation and land use and transportation policy. What mainstream websites/blogs/pundits do you know of who give anything more than a passing mention of these issues? I find that these issues in particular (IP not so much) are woefully neglected by...just about everyone. Even libertarian organizations (Reason magazine and foundation come to mind) often have very statist stances when it comes to land use and spectrum regulation.
“A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Not every conversation on the Internet has to be about libertarianism. Anyone who can’t accept that about any of their pet topics is a commenter we can’t afford to have.
Agreed. Discussions of dogmatisms such as libertarianism in any of its forms is boring, boring, boring and now what I’d like to read here.
Not that the original post here is an example of that, per se, although I think it comes close.
For the record, while I do have sympathies for libertarian ideas, I consider myself closer to the socialist end of the spectrum.
Notice you didn’t mention ‘human rationality’ at all.
From our vague semi-non-official guidelines:
Are you saying that there is no incidence of the tragedy of the commons at all, or just that these things are not tragedies of the commons? If it’s the latter, I think it’s pointless to argue the specifics of any particular examples when the broader point still stands. When there is a tragedy of the commons, one possible solution is to create property rights so that incentives align with social optima, but the problem of the tragedy of the anticommons can arise if the property rights you create are too strong.
In practice, there will be cases where you don’t want to try to re-align incentives. If you have a situation where you are going to be naturally close to the social optimum (maybe the spectrum or the skyline are good examples of this—I’m not familiar with these cases intimately), then unless you have a well-calibrated government you are more likely than not to over-shoot the social optimum. If you have something that’s seriously misaligned—maybe people burning huge amounts of neurotoxin-containing wood and wearing a mask or something—you might overshoot or undershoot the social optimum, but even a poorly-calibrated government might be able to get you closer.
I wouldn’t want to be so absolute and say there is no such thing as the tragedy of the commons, but I am saying that I think it’s vastly overblown, and that in most cases when it’s invoked, it isn’t actually present.
You’re right about that: Many people use the spectre of the tragedy of the commons ad nauseum to sound clever and insulate their own ideological attachments to property rights and private ownership. Usually, when there’s a commons, some sturdy, democratic, responsive trustee entity or market can take care of problems of overuse.