Tragedy of the Commons: Overcoming this Phenomenon as a Collective Steemit Community
Hello Steemians!
I have discussed about Self-Preservation and how we can relate it to the Steemit community. I also made a disclaimer in which anyone can scrutinize my content as they are subject to the limitations of the human mind. In that post, I made a promise to discuss about Tragedy of the Commons since it's an interesting theory and it can also be related to Steemit.
Wait, what!? Tragedy of the Commons?
(Now I'm talking to myself just to make a dramatic progression.)
Tragedy of the Commons
Kidding aside, Tragedy of the Commons is an economic theory wherein a limited resource is being shared by individual users. If these individual users will only consider themselves and disregard the common good of all, their acts would deplete or spoil that limited resource they are sharing. Behavior according to self-interest only would lead to harm or destruction of the collective species in general.
This phenomenon was first coined by a Victorian economist named William Forster Lloyd in his essay in 1833. He used a common land as the limited resource in unregulated cattle grazing. More than a century later, it was resurfaced and popularized in 1968 by an ecologist named Garrett Hardin. In his article which was published in the journal Science, the term commons was extended to any unregulated and limited resource.
I learned about this theory when I was bored and watched video clips on Facebook. There's this TED-Ed video in which a thought experiment is done. The video uses a pond of fish as a limited resource in which the villagers will get their food supply.
In that idealized situation, the 4 villagers should find a way to share the limited resource (8 fishes in the pond - 4 mating pairs that can produce an offspring each night) in order not to deplete it and starve them. The resolution to the situation is that each villager should catch 1 fish per day. Since it is assumed that the offsprings can grow in full adults overnight and the sex of the fishes is disregarded, 1 fish per day will not deplete their food supply.
Since the case is idealized, we can assume that each villager will follow the 1 fish to catch per day protocol. Factoring human instinct, this is where self-interest comes in.
In that simple scenario, when one of the villager will act according to self-interest and catch more than 1 fish per day, the fish population will eventually deplete, leaving all of the villagers to starve.
Popular Examples in Real and Complex Systems
Population Growth and Overpopulation: The common resource is the earth and exceeding the population to more than the capacity that the earth can sustain will have serious consequences.
Earth's Atmosphere and Air Pollution: Unregulated emissions of air pollutants to the earth's atmosphere will cause harm to the people and environment.
Marine Resources and Overfishing: Fish stocks in the world's bodies of water have been subject to any kinds of unregulated fishing and overexploitation. The numbers have been declining at faster rate than predicted. Bluefin tunas, sturgeons, cods, and others species of fish are under threat of extinction. If this will continue, depletion of fish stocks will lead to serious consequences related to food shortage.
Internet and It's Abuse: The internet has become a public property. No one owns it and everyone can do anything they want because of anonymity. Behaviors that are are detrimental to the public in general became rampant no one can be held responsible due to anonymity.
In the examples cited above, the last one is the most relevant in this context because most of our time, we are immersed into the internet.
Tragedy of the Commons in Steemit
Steemit has become a public domain. It has also become a site of value and when there is value, people with bad intentions will always follow. They will always find a way to exploit that value as motivated by their own selfish desires. Steemit is more than just a monetary tool. It is also a social media platform where people have set up their profiles.
Steemit's features may be subject to both internal and external threats that could potentially bring down it's value. I classified internal threats as those actions perpetuated by common users in Steemit that could potentially bring harm, while external threats are those threats coming from the outside and possibly engineered by cybercriminals.
External threats were properly discussed by @mrosenquist here. Internal threats are those mentioned as Don'ts by @thecryptofiend in his The Complete Steemit Etiquette Guide.
Overcoming the Tragedy of the Commons as a Collective Steemit Community
Laws exist to regulate actions. Social contracts exist to serve as basis of judgments. Agreements should be achieved for the greater and common good. Treaties, codes of conduct, and etiquette guides were provided to overcome our basic human self-interests. Regulatory bodies also exist to oversee individual actions. Together, we should be empathetic towards others.
Apathy is the greatest threat to humanity. We should overcome this by examining all our actions together and evaluate if these actions are for the greater good and not just for our own self-interest.
Acts based on self-interest will do more harm than good in then long term, even to those who perpetuate the act.
Illegal Logging for Personal Benefit. But this man from Indonesia saved his entire village from drought by taking action not just for himself. A classic example of one's determination to overcome the Tragedy of the Commons. His action has created a Ripple Effect. Watch the video here: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=765679833632685&id=470281129839225
@originalworks