A Model of The Tragedy of the Commons
http://military-technologies.net/2016/11/29/game-theory-shows-how-tragedies-of-the-commons-might-be-averted/
How can we encourage cooperation between parties to preserve a resource? This article discusses a new model of the tragedy of the commons. For reference, the tragedy of the commons is the situation where there is some shared resource between people, i.e. the commons. The people can each use the resource to profit, but if too many use the resource it becomes worth less, thus making everyone suffer. We can see this happen in situations such as antibiotic use. By using antibiotics, one ensures that they are healthy, but can also create an antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria, making the antibiotics worthless. An important part of this is that each person sees the abundance of the commons and sees little harm in taking from it, but the collective actions are sufficient to cause measurable harm.
The model discussed in this article discussed a way to reduce this feeling. They created a model of this phenomenon using evolutionary games where incentives for selfish actions are tied to the changes in the resource. The evolution of these factors can then be modeled and the outcome predicted. The model finds that it is impossible to avert the tragedy of the commons without such an incentive to cooperate even when the resource is depleted. According to the article, ‘“another lesson is that idealism matters,” said Weitz, continuing, “A small group of cooperating individuals can, over time, change the social and environmental context for all and for the better.”’
This links to our discussion of the tragedy of the commons and property rights. We discussed that enforcing some kind of property rights upon the commons would help to prevent the tragedy. This model provides a better understanding on how to give incentives to avoid the tragedy. The article notes the example of the depletion of water supplies. People have different incentives to use water for their own purposes when there is little water available. Thus, we see that cooperation might be encouraged with further decreases in water supply. As noted earlier, this kind of factor is necessary to avert the tragedy of the commons. Thus, we see that water consumption can decrease when less water is available, helping to protect that shared resource. This kind of model thus provides a deeper explanation to solving the tragedy of the commons.