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What is the tragedy of the commons?
Question 1: What is the tragedy of the commons? As a kind of resource or property, the commons has many owners, and everyone has the right to use it, but they have no right to prevent others from using it, resulting in excessive use and exhaustion of resources. Overcut forests, overfished fishery resources and seriously polluted rivers and air are typical examples of "tragedy of the commons". It is called tragedy because everyone knows that resources will be exhausted due to overuse, but everyone feels powerless to stop the situation from getting worse. Moreover, they all hold the mentality of "making profits in time" to aggravate the deterioration of the situation. Because property rights are difficult to define, it is an inevitable result that public products are competitively overused or occupied.

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Question 2: What does "tragedy of the commons" mean? When there are many owners of resources or property, each of them has the right to use resources for individuals, but no one has the right to stop others from using resources, which leads to the overuse of resources. This is the "tragedy of the commons". For example, grassland overgrazing and ocean overfishing.

Question 3: Brief Introduction to the Tragedy of the Commons 1968, British scholar Harding published an article entitled "The Tragedy of the Commons" in Science magazine. The tragedy of the commons should not be explained literally, but should be regarded as a metaphorical concept. This word is short for a phenomenon, not an accurate description of it. According to common sense, the word "tragedy" should not be regarded as a tragedy, nor should it be regarded as a condemnation of the cause. In addition, Harding's use of the word "commons" is often misunderstood, which leads Harding to think that he should change the title of his discussion to "the tragedy of unregulated commons". The Tragedy of the Commons focuses on explaining economics, developmental psychology, game theory, sociology and other fields. Some people regard this as an example of "unexpected behavior", which is accompanied by the tragic result of individual interaction in a complex social system. Harding's thesis focuses on the problems that cannot be solved by scientific and technological tools from the beginning (that is, it is different from the problems in natural science that only need scientific and technological research and development and change, but do not need to change human values or moral standards). Harding claimed that such problems came from population growth and the use of the earth's resources. Harding specifically mentioned the limited resources of the earth and the influence of limited resources on the so-called "quality of life". If the population growth is maximized, then each individual must minimize the consumption of resources other than maintaining basic survival, and vice versa. Therefore, he believes that there is no foreseeable technology to solve the problem of how to balance population growth and maintain the quality of life on this earth with limited resources. Harding set up such a scene in The Tragedy of the Commons: A group of herders were grazing together in a public pasture. A herdsman wants to raise one more sheep to increase his personal income, although he knows that there are too many sheep in the pasture, and increasing the number of sheep will reduce the quality of the pasture. How will herders choose? If everyone starts from their own self-interest, they will definitely choose to raise more sheep to get benefits, because the cost of grassland degradation will be borne by everyone. When every herder thinks like this, the tragedy of the commons will be staged-the grassland will continue to deteriorate until it is impossible to raise sheep, which will eventually lead to the bankruptcy of all herders. Ostrom, the first woman who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, analyzed and discussed the theoretical models such as "tragedy of the commons", "prisoner theory" and "logic of collective action" in her famous public policy book "Governance of Public Affairs". At the same time, she developed independent organization and governance of public affairs from the small-scale public resources problem. It opens up a new road for people facing the tragedy of commons selection, and provides an institutional basis for self-governance, so as to avoid the degradation of public affairs, protect public affairs and make sustainable use of public affairs, thus enhancing the collective welfare of mankind.

Question 4: Explain what is the tragedy of the commons with the knowledge of economics. The income is personal, but the cost is borne by society, so individuals will overuse resources, and finally everyone's income will not be guaranteed.

Question 5: The significance of the tragedy of the commons "The tragedy of the commons" is a symbol, which means that at any time, as long as many individuals use a scarce resource, it will cause great damage or even disappear. (4 points. Answer personal, scarce resources, huge destruction of the meaning of the field, get 3 points. Language fluency 1. )

Question 6: The economic principle of the tragedy of the commons As a kind of resource or property, the commons has many owners, and everyone has the right to use it, but they have no right to prevent others from using it, resulting in excessive use and exhaustion of resources. Overcut forests, overfished fishery resources and seriously polluted rivers and air are typical examples of "tragedy of the commons". It is called tragedy because everyone knows that resources will be exhausted due to overuse, but everyone feels powerless to stop the situation from getting worse. Moreover, they all hold the mentality of "making profits in time" to aggravate the deterioration of the situation. Because property rights are difficult to define (the transaction cost of defining property rights is too high), it is an inevitable result that public goods are overused or occupied by competition.

Tragedy of the Commons shows an embarrassing scene when private people use free lunch-endless plunder. This is the meaning of "tragedy". According to Harding's exposition, combined with our understanding of people's struggle in life, the mechanism of "tragedy of the commons" seems to be understood as: industrious people calculate for personal vitality, and after ignoring the calculation of long-term interests, they begin to "kill the goose to get the egg" for immediate interests. This behavior has no rules, property rights system and no compulsion. Finally, it leads to the collapse of public property, which is the cradle of people's survival.

A more accurate description of the "tragedy of the commons" is an unrestrained, open and resource-consuming disaster. Take environmental pollution as an example. Because pollution control requires costs, private individuals must find ways to externalize the costs of enterprises. Is this Herman? Daley called it "the invisible foot". The "invisible foot" leads to private self-interest and unconsciously kicks the public interest to pieces. Therefore, we must be clear that "tragedy of the commons" originates from the private use of public property. In fact, Harding's original intention is also here. In fact, Harding's countermeasures to prevent pollution of the commons are mutual coercion, even compulsory with approval, rather than privatization.