[extropy-chat] Heinlein and thinking for yourself

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 31 01:14:54 UTC 2004


--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> At 12:17 PM 10/30/2004 -0700, Adrian wrote:
> 
> 
> >thus a central
> >government must operate (and collect funding for)
> >these improvements if their benefits are to be reaped.
> >Others can, for various (including technical) reasons,
> >be funded and operated a lot more efficiently if done
> >so by one or a few agencies on behalf of everyone,
> >rather than each obtaining their own, so again more
> >progress per unit time is enabled by having government
> >do this than by leaving it to individuals.  (Also
> >known as the "tragedy of the commons".)
> 
> More exactly: also known as *avoiding* or *circumventing* the tragedy
> of  the commons.

The tragedy of the commons occurs when those that consume a public good
are not responsible for paying for maintaining that public good.
Government controlled commons fall into this conundrum all too often,
which is why rational government tries to minimize as much as possible
those goods which are commons, preferring only to create and maintain
commons when such goods cannot be fenced off.

It is easy to fence off land, but hard to fence off migratory wildlife.
It is easy to fence off mineral deposits, but hard to fence off EM
spectrum or air.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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