Glamor Economics

Chapter 85

Chapter 12 Section 3 Tragedy Caused by Public Goods——Harding's Tragedy

A group of herders graze on a common pasture.There is a herdsman who wants to raise one more cow, because the increase in income from raising one more cow is greater than the cost of its purchase, and it is profitable.Although he knows that there are already too many cattle on the pasture, increasing the number of cattle will degrade the quality of the pasture.But for a single herdsman, it is beneficial for him to increase one cow, because the cost of grassland degradation can be borne by everyone.So he added a cow.Gradually, other herdsmen realized this and added a cow.As a result, due to overgrazing, the grasslands were degraded and could not meet the needs of cattle, and all herdsmen's cattle starved to death.

The "tragedy of the commons" was first proposed by the British Harding in 1968, also known as Harding's tragedy.Harding said: "In a society of shared commons, each person, that is, all people, pursue their own best interests. This is where the tragedy lies. Each person is locked in a society that forces him to increase without restraint within a limited range. In the system of livestock. Destruction is the destination to which all are driven. For in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons, each pursues his own best interest. The freedom of the commons brings destruction to all.”

Urban public equipment is the easiest to break, and the sanitation of public places is the most troublesome... We all know that for public goods, if you don’t get benefits from them, other people will get benefits from them, so people only expect public benefits. goods, but no one cares about the consequences of the public goods themselves.

There are many solutions to the tragedy of the commons, Harding said, we can sell it and make it private property; we can keep it as public property but grant access, and this permission can be done in many ways.Harding said that these opinions are reasonable, and there are places to refute, "but we must choose, otherwise we agree with the destruction of the commons, and we can only remember them in national parks."

Dilemmas like public meadows, overpopulation, and arms races, Harding said, "have no technological solution," by which he means "changes in technology only in the natural sciences, which require little or no A shift in human values ​​or morals".There are two ways to prevent the tragedy of the commons: one is institutional, that is, the establishment of a centralized authority, whether the authority is public or private - private ownership of public lands is the use of power; The second is moral constraints, which are linked to decentralized rewards and punishments.In practice this tragedy might have been avoided.Before the tragedy happens, if a set of values ​​or a centralized authority is established, this authority can control the quantity by raising costs or adopt other methods to control the quantity.

Some people may say that to avoid the tragedy of the commons, it is necessary to continuously reduce the commons.However, it is impossible to make the commons disappear completely.The public land still exists, which requires the government to formulate strict institutional constraints and assign management responsibilities to specific people. In this way, those who over-graze on the public land will restrain their behavior and rationally "graze animals" under government intervention. ".

In the early 20s, such a strange phenomenon appeared on the streets of Moscow.On the one hand, a large number of shops on both sides of the street are vacant; on the other hand, many box-shaped sales stalls made of metal have emerged beside the street.At its peak in 90, there were 1993 of these metal boxes on the streets of Moscow.Why don't vendors who sell on both sides of the street in Moscow's cold winter move to warm shops?Why would an off-street owner forego substantial rental income?Heller, an economist at the University of Michigan in the United States, believes that the reason is that there are many owners of the Moscow store, and each of them has the right to prevent others from using it, and ultimately no one can use it.He summed up this phenomenon as "the tragedy of the anti-commons".

Heller formally proposed the concept of "tragedy of the anti-commons" in the "Harvard Law Review" in 1998: "the anti-commons" as a resource or property has many owners, but each of them has formal or informal Formal power prevents others from using scarce resources, and ultimately no one has effective, substantive access to them. The property rights characteristic of "anti-commons" are not empty and unclear property rights, but fragmented property rights, which lead to idle or insufficient use of resources.

[links to related words]

The consumption of free-riding public goods is not free of cost. The maintenance of pastures, the construction of lighthouses and roads, and the watering of parks all have costs.It's just that unlike ordinary commodities, public goods cannot directly charge consumers.Driven by economic rationality, consumers who do not need to pay will abuse their consumption power, which is the so-called "free rider" phenomenon.

(End of this chapter)