Should anarchists abolish the commons?
I recently authored a cute little story in which I illustrated some of my concerns with voluntaryism/anarchism.
Read the story if you like; it's written mostly in my adorable, chatty prose, but be warned: some of my commenters were right - it's a little straw-mannish.
Basically, it's the story of two towns connected by a river, and of a tragedy-of-the-commons problem where landowners along the river start charging tolls and eventually stifle trade between the two towns, all because there was no government there to help them coordinate. Then I wrap it up with a nice barbarian invasion and everybody dies. See, you shouldn't be anarchists! (Maybe I should have left the barbarians out; they definitely enhance the straw-man aspect...)
You should probably check out the discussion that ensued from the post; it's pretty wide-ranging and civil. Nobody got into a flame war, which is nice. One topic that came up again and again was this question:
How do you talk about ownership of the river?
There were two flavors of answers:
- The landowners can't charge for river passage, because they don't own the river! @bitbutter, @solielj, and @hapakal were in this camp.
- Of course they can own the river, they have to be able to own the river! Actually, only @l0k1 said this. Nice, man. Way to commit fully to the anarchist story. :)
Here is the question for discussion today: How should the "commons" be treated in an anarchist utopia?
By "Commons," I mean things like:
- Waterways
- Oceans
- Fisheries
- Air (as in quality)
- Air (as in access for aircraft)
- Air (as in radio spectrum)
- Forests, for logging, hunting, whatever forests are for
The coordination problem is that the only way to protect the commons is for people to universally agree not to overexploit them. In anarchy, universal agreements are unenforceable (with no threat of civil or criminal penalties, everybody has an individual incentive to cheat on the agreement), so you have to get around that somehow.
The rote answer (read, the wrong answer) is that "everybody would see that it's in their best interests to comply, so they'd comply. If one person deviated, then everybody would punish them economically." The reason I view this as the wrong answer is that "everybody" is not an agent - in anarchy, "everybody" is a collection of individual agents, each with their own individual incentive to cheat. A solution to the problem is a proposal of how to realign agents' incentives so that they're actually better off not cheating, both now and long-term. Anyway, feel free to give the rote answer - but I'll ignore you. I want to go deeper.
Jeremy Rifkin dealt with this issue extensively in his book The Zero Marginal Cost Society in which he predicted the rise of the "Collaborative Commons" as a successor to capitalism. I previously discussed the book and explained how innovations like Steem can facilitate the advent of the predicted Commons: https://steemit.com/steem/@sean-king/why-steem-means-the-decline-of-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-the-collaborative-commons
In the book he goes to great lengths to destroy the whole idea of the Tragedy of the Commons. He demonstrates that the Tragedy is rarely observed in reality and that most advocates of the Tragedy idea president a false choice between allocating resources via either markets or central planning or suffering unregulated pillage of those resources (the co-called Tragedy of the Commons).
This choice is false because in reality people develop other ways of regulating use of resources besides governments and markets. He provides example after example--some quite ordinary and some pretty fantastic--of how human culture regulates such things through custom, shaming/ostracism, technology, etc.
I can't really do the topic justice in a comment, so I'd encourage anyone with an interest in the subject to read his book or my summary at the link above.
Thanks for the reference, I'll have to check it out. I'll be partucularly interested in the idea that the tragedy of the commons rarely happens in practice. I'm a student of game theory, where it's almost trivial to construct mathematical examples which exhibit catastrophic commons-tragedies. As a result, I tend to think of the tragedy of the commons as a foregone conclusion and I'd love to see an opposing viewpoint.
It seems like @sean-king's answer is just a variation on your "rote" answer. What is it to shun etc if not to have a group coordinate to punish the deviant economically?
I also am curious about the empirical studies of real-life commons, though.
As a follow up to my last comment left here, I'll note that social protocols, shunning, shaming, etiquette, peer pressure, customs, taboos and the like have all proven highly effective at regulating human conduct outside of governments and markets, and even often within them. In other words, reputation plays a key role in all successful commons.
Essentially, as is currently evolving right here on Steemit, the "community" comes to "agree" on certain customs, taboos and ettiquette designed to protect the commons from being exploited while also making it available to all in a "fair" way. Those who violate the agreed customs, taboos and ettiquette are shunned or shamed by the overwhelming majority. This shunning/shaming makes life more difficult than it need be for the violater. Eventually the violater learns that life is better following the custom than evading it. We saw this right here on Steem when the new reputation system was unveiled. People with low reps were marginalized and mostly either left the ecosystem or begged for forgiveness and agreed to modify their behavior.
It doesn't perfectly prevent individuals from exploiting the commons, but it does it well enough to be effective in most instances. And technologies with built-in reputation systems, like Steemit, will make that even easier in the future.
Honest question, since I'm new to these discussions: is enforcement by shunning and shaming and social ostracization and taboos - to the extent they're effective - deemed preferable by anarchists to a government that enforces cultural norms that have been considered explicitly by representatives, written into available laws, etc? If so, why?
Good question. I'm pretty new to voluntarism, so I'm not authority (I'd love to hear what @lukestokes has to say on this), but my understanding is that anarchist are first and foremost opposed to all forms of physical coercion. Since reputation systems are not physical and arguably not coercion (after all, we should all be able to associate only with folks we want, and avoid associating with folks we don't), I believe they'd be considered acceptable.
Thank you! But it seems if that kind of thing consistently worked, the government wouldn't need implicit violent threats either. I like the point about free association, which I can see looks different with governments, and makes me think.
I guess my main question is why think there wouldn't be more, and more arbitrary, coercion in anarchy. For all that's wrong with the US (in my view), even if I had the easy choice to opt out of government completely and go to an old-Australia lawless place, I really don't think I'd want to - and I think I wouldn't want to in large part because I suspect I'd be the victim of way more "might makes right" coercion.
Anarchy doesn't mean "no rules". It means "no rulers". The key to anarchy (and any successful commons) is development of widely-accepted rules (or customs) and a system that rewards compliance and cooperation while penalizing rule-breaking.
The trick is to make breaking the rules more difficult/costly/troublesome than complying with the rules. There are dozens of well-documented ways to do this, but blockchains are a hugely important innovation that will facilitate this in ways that were previously impossible.
Bitcoin provides a perfect example. Anyone can, in theory, launch a 51% attack against the Bitcoin network by acquiring sufficient computing power. However, because acquiring this power is very expensive, deploying it in ways that destroy the value of the bitcoins one would gain from the attack is irrational. Anyone with that much computing power would be far better off economically if they devoted it to mining bitcoins legitimately, and thereby making the network even more secure, rather than to attacking the network and destroying the value of the coins they would gain.
So, in systems like that, there's simply no need for physical coercion, arbitrary or not.
There will always be a small minority of irrational people who refuse to comply for one reason or another. The key is to make sure that their non-compliance doesn't jeopardize faith in the whole system. It usually won't, unless they resort to physical force, in which case the majority who follow the system are justified in using physical force to defend themselves.
I'm not an anarchist, so I cannot speak for them, but I think the point was more of whether is was possible for anarchists to be able to manage the commons. Whether shaming etc. is preferable or not doesn't matter as much. I think many anarchists are just fed up and would rather figure out a way to live together without a system that is easily corruptible (govt). Even if it means using techniques that aren't preferred.
I have to say It does often look to me, too, like that's what the anarchist says: "the current system is imperfect, so let's chuck it all out and hope that's better." But that doesn't seem a charitable reading. I hope they (at least think they) have positive reason to prefer anarchy! And if we don't care whether the technique is better, there are lots of ways to "manage" a commons - like commandeer it, burn it to the ground, etc ...
Yeah, I agree that reputation has to be a crucial part of it. One speed bump is that people also tend to value anonymity, which seems hard to reconcile with reputation.
I agree. I was a huge advocate of anonymity (prior to Steem), and still am, but I know see the extraordinary benefits of real-life reputation systems.
This can be seen internationally as well. If countries misbehave, you start with sanctions and embargos (shunning/shaming). If they continue to misbehave, then violence is usually next. But this is all done without a coercive world government, only a voluntary UN etc.
Yeah without organized laws and governments, agents must manage some other way. But I still don't get why the non-governmental way - even on the global scale - is better.
Anarchist believe it's better because it's more moral. It's more moral because it's voluntary (free of physical coercion). All forms of government ultimately derive their power from implicit or explicit threats of violence, which is understandably offensive to many.
Thank you! I certainly get the impulse to avoid coercion. But could you explain a little more? I still don't understand how the kind of sanctions imposed by whatever cultural group in power in the Rifkin scenario aren't also implicit / explicit threats of violence. Say their initial shaming etc don't work - will they not resort to violence, or at least suggest they would, in order to ensure compliance? (If shaming / non-violent sanctions always worked, there would no longer be need for implicit threats of violence in a government, either.)
@sean-king, Sorry to approach you this way; this is wildly off-topic. I'm trying to launch a new content aggregation service called the Lost Content Digest. I'm finding articles by new authors who missed their first payout, but deserve something more. I'm going to be writing articles that feature several of these missed articles, and then I'll send the SBD proceeds of my article to the authors of the lost articles, hopefully generating them some income and followers.
Is this something you'd be interested in supporting?
Absolutely. How can I help?
For now, the first article needs upvotes. I'll be posting new issues as I collect content for them; can I contact you when new issues are up for your votes?
What this really needs is a group of "benefactor" whales who would put posts from me that are tagged #lostcontent-digest onto their bot upvote lists.
As far as the idea of 'abolishing' anything, I feel like that's a bit over the top for me. The entire point of anarchy is that there's no ultimate overarching group or organization that can dictate to everyone else. Kind of hard to abolish something if you can't forbid people from doing it.
Secondly, as far as the commons go, if you're using something, and it doesn't belong to someone else, then it's yours.
That neatly sorts out the issues of airspace for airplanes, you own the chunk of air you're flying through, and you can't fly low enough to physically affect the ground that someone else owns.
Also, the problems of ocean. You own the bit of water that your boat is sitting in and wherever your net is. If you build an island, well, it's not ocean. If you build a floating whatever, then it's just like a boat.
Waterways are somewhat different than oceans, in that they're bound by land on either side, which can be built on. So, let's say you build some kind of gate across a river. Alright, then. Charge away. If you charge too much, people will start shipping overland or by air or via teleportation or whatever. Issue resolved.
Air quality is tricky, but it -is- in everyone's best interest, including polluters, to keep the air clean. Don't associate with polluters, problem solved.
Fisheries are simply an extension of ocean. You own the bit where your boat and net are.
Forests, well, you own land, so you can forbid people from cutting down your trees on that land. As far as preserving forests, currently, in the U.S., logging companies are required to replant after they cut. So, if that's a concern you have, simply disassociate from loggers who don't replant. Also, certainly you could maintain ownership of a chunk of land, and live on it while leaving it largely undisturbed. And like minded people could do the same thing on land next to yours, and land next to that, etc, until you have a big area of land with a few small roads though it, that is largely undisturbed. Problem solved.
Radio spectrum, well, if the waves are clear, broadcast. If they aren't, your broadcast won't be very effective. It still leaves the issues of someone deliberately trying to jam or drown out your broadcast, but I would assert that you don't have the right to decree that your radio waves are king of a certain airspace. shrug
I think that's about it.
This makes sense, but you still need some way of preventing pillaging of the environment (for instance, overfishing in the ocean). If there's not government limiting how much you can catch, or what seasons you can catch it during, how does the community protect the long term viability of the resource? Shaming and reputation is one way. Blockchains can facilitate this by, for instance, creating completely trackable supply chains thereby making it easier for people to know whether what they are purchasing "complies" with society's values or not.
No. If someone overfishes the ocean, then there's no more fish. People will figure out something else to eat until the fish breed back to a higher population. Not to mention, what century are you living in? Aquaponics is a better investment than a boat.
I'm late to my own discussion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your approach is what I'd term "outcome-agnostic." You believe that the outcome of a societal structure is self-justified, and all outcomes are equally moral. So if the oceans are overfished and we cause mass extinctions of ocean critters, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It's justified by the fact that it happened.
I think you and I fundamentally disagree there. I view a world in which humans have caused mass extinctions as a worse world than one in which we haven't. Even shy of mass extinctions, I believe that it's both possible and desirable to avoid crashing fish populations and having to "wait till they breed back."
I'm pointing this out because I want the specifics of our disagreement to be crystal clear. We may or may not disagree about other things also, but if you're truly outcome-agnostic, then if we argue about those other things, we'll only be talking past each other.
Air is a common because for all intents and purposes, it is unlimited. But in a submarine it is not, thus the population inside the submarine has to be limited to how much air is needed for the people inside it. But even the air is not entirely a common, because two aircraft cannot occupy the same piece of air, same even here down on the ground, the primary place where even in the garden of eden, there is a scarce resource.
Cheating is an incentive only in a short timescale, in a longer timescale cheating costs everyone. People cheat when they think they can get away with it, when there is a security mechanism, they fear to get caught and rightly so. Some people don't need the disincentive, others do. It is in the best interests of the whole to have security against cheating, this is also why many anarchocapitalists talk about compulsory insurance policies. But they are not compelled in the same way as a government does it, because the exact method is different. There is a concrete piece of property and a specified and concrete set of rules set by the owners. In an anarchocapitalist neighbourhood, we house owners may not own the road, but we pay for it because we need it to get in and out. The rules therefore are collaboratively produced, but can entirely differ between one neighbourhood and another. There will tend to be a convergence about these rules over time.
This makes me think of something too. In network technology, switches and routers, the things that give us the internet, do not have to work under a centralised authority. A simple set of rules that each node operates, rules that have been devised and refined over time in newer generations of hardware, improve the rate of convergence towards agreement about how to govern the traffic. It does not require a central government, but it works best when everyone agrees on the rules. This may seem like splitting hairs but consensus on rules is in the interests of all players, it does not have to be enforced, and protocols for discovering them do not also need to be imposed top down. They emerge best from cooperation.
So just as I said above, it is in the interests of all to have an insurance policy against criminal damage, whatever scale it goes to, up to broad regional military defence. In fact, centralising the control of this leads to corruption, whereas when the alliances are looser and each operator chooses their way of operating on a smaller scale, a broader scale consensus eventually must arise because it simply works.