http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Oh no! Wikipedia!!!

You go ahead.

Adam, it's nothing against you. This topic has just been completely and utterly exhausted on this forum.

Over and over (crimson and clover).
There is too much talk of politics, but soo soo much is wrong with the arguments. I don't blame you for muting.
Heck, I'll probably end up muting it.

Yeah, wasn't "Can anyone defend socialism?" Tettleton's Chew's first thread?
Oh for those days when I was a young callow youth who thought that TC actually wanted an answer to that question and hadn't just already decided that the answer must automatically be "no".

Tragedy of the Commons as defined on Word:
a phenomenon in which individuals attempt to exploit the resources of a group, but only harm themselves because everyone adopts the same strategy and resources are uniformly depleted

Yeah, I wasted a lot of breath (or keyboard life, rather) arguing before I realized that it wasn't actually a discussion at all...

Are you King Atom, and is this new name a clever name variation (one would expect King Adam and Atom Bomb, not King Atom and Adam Bomb)? If not, you two seem to have similar interests - you'd probably enjoy meeting him

He is not, since the old KA is alive and well on vDip.

Let's go off topic as much as we can! And see how much of an argument we develop! That'll be fun!!!
But really, guys. Stay on topic.
To set a base for this thread:
Socialism:
Political system for communal ownership:
a political theory or system in which the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles
Movement based on socialism:
a political movement based on principles of socialism, typically advocating an end to private property and to the exploitation of workers
Stage between capitalism and communism:
in Marxist theory, the stage after the proletarian revolution when a society is changing from capitalism to communism, marked by pay distributed according to work done rather than need
political system that aims to create equality:
a political system that aims to create a society in which everyone has equal opportunities and in which the most important industries are owned or controlled by the whole community
Synonyms:
collectivism
communalism
Marxism
Leninism
Maoism
Antonym:
capitalism

disputes? anyone?

I like socialism myself and am a big supporter.

Ok, good, good. Progress.
Diplomat, just why do you like socialism?
Respect the speaker, please, and be silent until he has posted.

Which of course means that he neglects to answer.
Go ahead everyone.

I'm also a fan. I think that true freedom is accomplishable only under socialism.

I'd also like to add tragedy of the commons is the sort of thing that could be overcome through education. So that people learn to loathe excess

The tragedy of the commons is the result of private property, not socialism. Stop dumping your problems on other social systems. Management of communal lands for collective purposes has always been an effective method of management, and Hardin's article has been thoroughly debunked.

blarg. That is all

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Economic calculation problem

Ya I scrolled down here to add my two cents about how the tragedy of the commons is a big problem with free market type systems much more so than any other but putins got it covered

Individuals without self-confidence love socialism because they don't mind being in a state of child-like dependence.

As pointless as replying to TC is...

It's funny he should liken socialism to living in a state of dependence. Because quite frankly, all forms of society are rather like that. Our lives would practically shut down if not for the efforts of hundreds of other people.

Capitalism, quite simply relies on the production of others for many of our basic necessities.

Most Socialist societies do too.

It isn't a bad thing, man is a social animal, and it is no surprise we need others to be successful.

Capitalism creates dependency, not socialism. Socialism achieved full employment. Capitalism requires a generous welfare state in order to exist, because otherwise people would not put up with its infliction of unemployment in order to suppress wages and create a reserve army of labor, nor would they put up with the rich making billions while millions starve to death. The only way capitalism can survive is through tax-based redistribution via social insurance and the like. Under socialism there was no need for this, because everybody worked. From each according to ability, to each according to work performed was the guiding principle of the Soviet Union.

The essence of capitalism is parasitism. The parasitism of the bourgeoisie, who live off the labor of the working class. The parasitism of the coupon clipping elite, who live off nothing but dividends and interest while taxing people who actually work for a living. The parasitism of the trust fund babies who inherit wealth which the bourgeoisie doesn't want taxed while lecturing the working poor about handouts.

And naturally, the aim of all of the ads which the capitalists bombard us with on a daily basis in order to brainwash us into buying their garbage is to create consumer dependency on their shitty products. There's nothing more exemplary of dependency than monopoly capitalism.

The economic calculation problem is not the bugbear it is made out to be, and quite frankly capitalism suffers from the mispricing of assets, which is evident by the repeated bubble economies which keep devastating it.

Socialist economies still use the pricing mechanism in order to allocate resources and provide information about cost, but cost is based on the amount of resources used to produce the product - the drain on the economic resources of the entire community. Cost would factor in the general importance of the commodity and the quantity available. All factors of production have factor-valuation tables calculating their respective prices based on the above criteria. While it is true that precise calculations would be difficult to implement correctly without feedback, planners are quickly availed of feedback and make adjustments to price accordingly if the prices of a particular commodity were set too high or too low and cause surpluses or shortages in supply. For example, the much maligned "food lines" in the USSR were due to a larger disposable income by consumers and thus a larger demand for high-end food products like meat than ever before. The state had set the price too low for these goods, but ironically had they set the price higher citizens would eating less well than they were because they would have less disposable income. As data tables clearly show, Soviet diet in terms of caloric intake was on par with or greater than most western countries. At any rate, the minor inconvenience of food lines is better than the total misallocation of resources under capitalism, in which widespread hunger coexists with large-scale food waste.

Socialist pricing in theory is more efficient because pricing in a private initiative economy relies on arbitrage to correct mispricings, which is entirely voluntary and based on whether or not the correct incentives for arbitrage actually exist in a particular market. Where arbitrage falls apart, serious problems occur which cannot be readily corrected.

It's true capitalism is a problem, it's just that socialism isn't the answer. In my country, we simply need more democracy. And not in the sense that we need more elections or more freedom of speech, but more people who take the trouble of buying decent newspapers, reading decent books and who know exactly what is going on in the country and who can make informed decisions both politically and economically.

So long as information is a for-profit market, people will buy tabloids instead of informative newspapers and pulp paperbacks over serious work. Corporations will use their immense resources to tilt the press in their direction. People don't have enough time to research the machinations of finance capital and the intricacies of the legislative process, they're too busy trying to work so they're not thrown out on the street by their employers.

I also wanted to point out that the tradegy of the commons occurs in capitalist states, thus is not a problem limited to socialism.

Take the example of the commonly held 'air' which every individual uses.
Now some companies take advantage of the air, mixing it with chemicals which they would otherwise not be able to dispose of (and thus not make a profit) Without an Environmental Protection Agency, these practices can become more common and once every company is pouting the air everyone (company and individual) loses out.

Yet you would call regulation like the Environmental Protection Agency, the very system set-up to prevent the tragedy of the commons, 'socialism'.