Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Tragedy of the commons

[Bob Tingleff (bob]

Ostrom (1990) wrote a book about the conditions necessary for the
sustainable management of a commons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-pool_resource identifies
8 conditions from Ostrom:

   1. Clearly defined boundaries
   2. Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local 
conditions
   3. Collective-choice arrangements allowing for the participation of 
most of the appropriators in the decision making process
   4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable 
to the appropriators
   5. Graduated sanctions for appropriators who do not respect 
community rules
   6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms which are cheap and easy of access
   7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize (e.g., by the government)
   8. In case of larger CPRs: Organisation in the form of multiple 
layers of nested entreprises, with small, local CPRs at their bases.

Bob Tingleff
Santa Cruz, CA
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> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:59:09 -0400
> > From: "Yusuf Pisan" <yusuf.pisan [at] gmail.com>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Tragedy of the commons
> To: "Cohousing List" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <6dfad8320709271059y612770fajb3596125fe9c93ec [at] mail.gmail.com>
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>
> [ Apologies for the long email. At least no animals were hurt in
> writing or reading it :-) ]
>
> I am a computer science academic who has been teaching and researching
> computer games for the last 8 years. It is a fun job. Students are
> highly motivated to learn about games; I love teaching. There is lots
> of money in games, so the research can aspire to be industry relevant
> forcing some collaboration between academics and industry.
>
> My partner and I have been exploring cohousing options. We attended
> the New England Cohousing gathering, visited a number of cohousing
> communities (special thanks to Robert at Eno Commons and Steve at
> Takoma Villa for hosting us and giving us a tour; Megan at Eastern
> Creek and Ray at Arcadia for giving us a tour). We will be attending
> the California Cohousing bus tour on Oct 27 and hope to visit Pleasant
> Hill, Berkeley, Temescal Creek, Temescal Commons and Yulupa as well.
> (We are starting to fix our dates and contact each place, but if you
> can host us in your guest room or have a common meal around those
> dates when we can visit your community, please do email me)
>
> Back to "Tragedy of the Commons". For those who are not familiar with
> the terminology, it is often heard in economics, political science,
> law, and game theory circles and dates back to Aristotle who said:
>
>         "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least
> care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at
> all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as
> an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more
> inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill"
>
> It essentially comes down to "how free access and unrestricted demand
> for a finite resource ultimately structurally dooms the resource
> through over-exploitation"
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>
>
> At a recent games conference, DIGRA 2007, one of my colleagues ran an
> informal experiment in the form of a game about shared resources and
> its use. Alas, I was not attending the conference, but another
> colleague reported it in her blog
> <http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2007/09/26/commonsthinking/> He
> experimented with Anarchy, Dictatorship and Democracy and in that game
> Dictatorship with a benevolent dictator featured the best outcome.
>
> This is by no means a "scientific result". It served to demonstrate
> his point at the conference, but it got me thinking about a couple of
> issues. First, would a "consensus model" be plausible for conference
> attendees who are together for a short time and know that they are
> playing a game. Secondly, how do cohousing communities avoid the
> "tragedy of the commons" problem.
>
> One factor is that people self-select to live in cohousing and they
> have already consciously made the choice to maintain the commons.
> Another factor is unlike problems like over-fishing, a typical tragedy
> of commons example, where people can overfish and then move on,
> cohousing is an explicit choice to choose to live in a particular
> location. The last thing you'd want is to use the
> resources/facilities, run them down and then move.
>
> These are important factors, but not factors that can be implemented
> in a game. I am interested in designing a game (as part of the serious
> games effort) that teaches people how to be unselfish, to be
> protective of and contributing to the commons rather than just seeing
> them as a resource to be consumed.
>
> If you can think of additional factors that work in your community
> that enable commons to prosper and grow rather than dwindle and die,
> please email me and I will try to see how it can be designed into a
> game.
>
> For the politically inclined, I strongly recommend "The Redistricting
> Game" <http://www.redistrictinggame.org/> to see how games can be used
> as teaching tools.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Yusuf