I would imagine a system you’re suggesting would first have to eliminate scarcity of resources. We certainly have the ability to do that with our technology today but choose not to do so. Wouldn’t it require a turn to benevolence by all involved in the society to achieve that? If so, that doesn’t sound like a likely outcome. What, in your opinion, would it take to escape the Tragedy of Commons that is likely to actually occur?
Comment on Not a good sign
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 10 hours agoOh definitely, my issue with the concept of the Tragedy Of The Commons is not that shared wealth is not vulnerable but rather that the idea that humans innately cannot function in an environment while preserving and growing a shared commons without some kind of system of authoritarian control and violence actively preserving that shared commons is a deeply political, problematic and scientifically incorrect way of understanding people.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 9 hours ago
I would imagine a system you’re suggesting would first have to eliminate scarcity of resources.
Provide evidence for this claim.
I understand this has been established as our cultural intuition but it is a near axiomatic assumption that upon examination has very little evidence to support it, whether we look to the natural world or to human societies.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Provide evidence for this claim.
I can provide zero evidence. I’m trying to imagine a world where your proposal works. Scarcity elimination the best possible way I could come up with.
I understand this has been established as our cultural intuition but it is a near axiomatic assumption that upon examination has very little evidence to support it, whether we look to the natural world or to human societies.
If your proposal doesn’t need to eliminate scarcity, I’m even more interested in how it is done. Whats the secret sauce society-at-large has been missing?
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
Do you have a human society to point to where your proposal exists successfully already?
Every single human society in history where a commons was maintained via a system other than centralized authoritarian violence?
In other words, every society that isn’t ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime and that has some shared wealth whether it be in public spaces, public knowledge, public utilities, public education or other forms of public shared resource.
In the natural world it is very difficult to find ecosystems that function purely on a scarcity mechanism. If one considers the function of a predator in an ecosystem, it is precisely to stabilize the ecosystem so it can absorb large inputs of excess resources without the system collapsing. If one considers the basic function of herbivores in ecosystems it is the same, to stabilize the growth of plants so that abrupt periods of resource abundance and opportunity don’t destabilize the forest.
The only system that functions under the axiom that you suggest, which is that scarcity is a necessary obstacle to tackle before systems can stabilize, are ecosystems dominated by invasive species. This is in fact why invasive species collapse ecosystems.
Which is all to say, there are systems that cannot handle abundance as a temporary state and not a final destination never to be reached, but they are systems of cancer. All the dynamically stable systems we can point to whether they in the natural world or in human societies all feature some degree of scarcity, some degree of abundance and yet still manage to develop a shared commons of wealth.
For example, if you watch how Grizzly Bears eat Salmon, they do a shit job of it. They often become distracted in the process of eating a Salmon and just drop it leaving an only half eaten Salmon carcass on the ground wherever they happened to be. The way you understand how scarcity MUST impact systems cannot explain this blatant inefficiency in a natural ecosystem, individuals in nature are supposed to use EVERYTHING they can right? Evolution selects for efficiency right?.. Except it didn’t because it turns out the Grizzly Bears discarding the Salmon ends up transferring a massive amount of nutrients from the Ocean to the Forest.
You cannot understand the essential aspects of the above example of Grizzly Bears, Salmon and Forests under the mindset that you are approaching this problem from.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
i dunno. the community garden run by the local MS-13 has the weirdest red drip system, but my begonias have never looked better.