Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would suggest Elinor Ostrom work on the topic. Isn't her fundamental restatement of the tragedy of the commons that if the people decide to cooperate, then it doesn't happen? Which is a pretty thorough refutation to the original tragedy of the commons, as we see it in the Econ 101 meme. Problem is that privatisation (together with markets, cause the two always go hand in hand) introduces incentives to compete and…
Here work shows of course that the simplistic Econ101 Trategy of the Commons is wrong. And that of course was known long before. Just as in any other field just reading 101 isn't sufficient. This is an old problem in economics and much has been written about. What her work actually shows is that the determining factor isn't so much if something is private or government or something else but rather about various other…
Private logging operations have started taking a more sustainable view only after a lot of pressure from conservationist groups. And even today, private logging operations are destroying incredibly important forests. Private logging is a good example of why privatisation is so extremely bad about the commons and the environment.
> communication, monitoring and enforcement. > Which is a roundabout way of saying government. Privatised, for profit ownership encourages unsustainable exploitation, without much regard for the longer term consequences. Again - forestry is a good example, and so are fisheries. Likewise:
> Privatization (as in splitting up the resources into various parts) can align the intensives correctly, the damage the resource takes impact your own utility and thus aligns intensives correctly.
Again is a roundabout way of saying government. And instead of adding for-profit middle-men here, we can just skip that part and just govern the resources. Then you don't need to deal with a fiddly system of incentives, that will most likely be made weaker by lobbyists representing private interests.
> Now one can make the argument if the privatization happened in a fair way. Meaning did all the people who had access to common land get a fair share. That however is a different question.
Intimately connected to the topic however, since historically, privatisation has always been used in order to enrich the already wealthy. So it is important, because this is the cause for privatisation, and therefore there will be a lot of propaganda and justification on why it needs to happen - which is what we see historically as well.