[PEN-L:29911] RE: over-fishing

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:29910] over-fishing

Because I was thinking in terms of oceans and the over-harvesting of whales, I forgot something below: the explicit socialization of production needed to prevent over-use of "common property resources" doesn't have to be in the form of restrictions imposed by the central government. It can be done in a more decentralized way, for more local common-property resources. See Eleanor Ostrom, GOVERNING THE COMMONS.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

-----Original Message-----
From: Devine, James [mailto:jdevine@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 9:03 AM

[was: RE: [PEN-L:29907] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Russia turns to yuan"]

It's pretty basic economics that the existence of so-called "common-property resources" such as fish leads to over-fishing, the depletion of stocks. (For these CPRs, there is no way to define individual property rights unless some capitalist monopolizes the ocean, so they are "common property.") This in turn implies the need for some sort of governmental (or, in the case of the oceans, world-governmental) control to make sure that the fisheries don't undermine their own existence. (A fishery that monopolizes the ocean ends up being very much the same as a government, though not a democratic one. Either way, it's an explicit socialization of production.) Of course, the fisheries lobby like crazy to avoid this kind of regulation: their attitude seems to be one of short-term survival and jump ahead of the competition, rather than a concern with the long-run health of the "industry." Even when there are agreements, there is often "free riding." So we see over-fishing.

Oil has some aspects of a CPR (as with slant-drilling), but it's not the same thing at all.
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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine