True
Life: Tragedy of the Commons
The
basic idea of “Tragedy of the commons” is that if everyone holds a resource in
general for use, then eventually that resource will be destroyed. Tragedy of the commons is often thought
of on a larger scale, such as over fishing or hunting a certain area. We may not realize this, but tragedy of
the commons is a frequent theme that people experience throughout a
lifetime. For this specific blog I
decided to find examples in my daily life that would display tragedy of the
commons.
I live on campus with two roommates.
Living with roommates is extremely beneficial because the cost of
utilities is reduced. This brings
me to my first two examples: electricity and water consumption. Firstly, when someone leaves a light on
throughout the coarse of the day, this will in turn be a deficient for us
because the Duke energy bill will be higher causing us to fork over more money. The second example is over consumption
of water. When we leave a faucet
running or shower for too long our water bill will experience an increase
causing us to have to pay more. I
know showering is beneficial for our hygiene, but cutting shower times by 2
minutes each day (for each of us) would mean that we could reduce the time the
water is running by 42 minutes (3 total roommates, assuming we shower 7 days a
week). Little things like
remembering to turn off the lights before walking out the door, unplugging
electronic devices that aren’t being used or cutting back on water consumption
can help to reduce the tragedy of the commons.
Groceries
are another example of tragedy of the commons. Between the three of us we rotate on who buys the milk and
eggs. If one roommate decides to
use all of the milk or eggs then the other two roommates suffer by not getting
the chance to make an omelet and have a glass of milk for breakfast. I view this as non-excludable because
it’s not useful to exclude people who do not pay for a good from the benefit of
receiving the good. A great
example of a non excludable good would be the beautiful architecture that can
be found all around the University of Cincinnati.
Hi, Brian:
ReplyDeleteOverall, good job. There were a few missteps here and there that I should point out. For example, you say that "The basic idea of 'Tragedy of the commons; is that if everyone holds a resource in general for use, then eventually that resource will be destroyed." That is part of the idea (non-excludability), but the other key aspect is rivalry (also called subtractibility). If you don't have that latter quality, you have a public good and it generally suffers from under-provision. Relatedly, you say that the goods in question are "non-excludable because it’s not useful to exclude people who do not pay for a good from the benefit of receiving the good." Non-excludability, however, is an inherent property of the good at issue; whether or not excludability is useful does not matter.
These issues aside, I liked that your journal showed that you gave the prompt thought and connected activities and phenomenon in your daily life to class concepts. When you live in a shared environment, as with roommates, you realize the common-pool nature of many of the goods upon which you rely. You did a good job of highlighting some relevant examples.
Journal content: 1.5/1.6
Journal writing quality: 0.25/0.3