Creatures of Place is an insight into the wonderful world of Artist as Family: Meg Ulman, Patrick Jones, and their youngest son, Woody. Living on a 1/4-acre section in a small Australian town, Meg and Patrick have designed their property using permaculture principals.
They grow most of their own food, don’t own cars and ride their bikes instead, use very little electricity, and forage food and materials from their local forest.
LoL “stealing”. Are you “stealing” the air you’re breathing right now? That’s a weird choice of word. Anyway.
But you’re right. If everyone started to live like this, it would be devastating. But when you think about it, think about how many forests were cut down and how much land was taken and transformed just for agriculture around the world just to feed us humans. It’s insane.
I put it in quotes because I didn’t have a better word. If it’s a public park and I walk in with turf cutter, and take all the grass for my own yard, that’s clearly stealing from everyone.
How much can I take from a public forest without it being stealing? Can I cut down 1 tree for firewood? 10? How much foraging can I do before local wildlife is affected?
I don’t expect that one single family to be foraging that much to a point where the local wildlife is affected.
Which is why I specifically said if everyone did it it would be a problem.
And I agreed with you.
Yes. Stealing. From the taxpayers that maintain that forest. From the public who owns the property.
Stealing is exactly right. Because while everyone can breathe air, there isn’t enough of that forest to go around if everyone lived like this.
Welcome everyone to the concept of the commons (and by extension the tragedy of the commons)
The tragedy of the commons is, literally, privatization.
No it’s not.
The tragedy of the commons is when too many people use a public resource in a way that is unsustainable. For example, air is not privatized but air pollution impacts everyone who checks notes uses air.
That’s not to say there aren’t solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons problem and resources cannot be made publicly available, but systems need to be created to manage common resources.
So lucky I decided to get that gills-surgery
Close, but not.
The “overuse” is an aspect of mismanagement of the commons, it’s not simply about overuse, it’s about the management. The understanding that “someone just used up all that nice stuff” is poor, even in accordance with the author of this theory.
The tragedy is that the its so mismanaged that it allows an asshole to ruin it for everyone. That’s not some default, that’s what happens when you have poor management. Plenty of commons have good management and it’s a known field and theory. If you want to go by this view, you can read Ostrom who actually researched the issue of management:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth
https://tn.boell.org/en/2023/04/19/5-elinor-ostrom-et-les-huit-principes-de-gestion-des-communs (look for YouTube lectures too).
In practice, however, what you describe as the asshole greedily and selfishly taking from the commons is literally the act of privatization. Which is why the usual capitalist “solution” to this problem - official privatization - is a failure.
Here’s also a humorous podcast explaining what’s wrong with it: https://player.fm/series/srsly-wrong/ep-235-the-imaginary-tragedy-of-the-hypothetical-commons in case you like to listen.
The thing about the tragedy of the commons is that it’s basically bullshit. It’s been debunked as long as it’s been around. It’s privatization propaganda, nothing more.
People have been equitably maintaining commons for literally all of human history, and they are good at doing so within their communities. Social structures to maintain commons without official regulation have been in place for generations without major issues.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth
Oh! Great reply! That’s interesting.
And from the indigenous people who originally lived there - these people are very clearly not Aboriginal Australians.
I’ve heard Native American activists argue that white influencer style permaculture is inherently racist when performed on American soil, because it’s modeled on a romanticized ideal of white settler lifeways and has nothing to do with how permaculture was actually practiced in North America before the genocides. I’m not sure how I feel about that argument. But having a family of white Australian permaculturists literally stealing from public land to maintain their settler lifestyle… it’s a little too on the nose.