Blog 2 - - - Section 7

The tragedy of the commons
Commonly owned resources are doomed, people will over use for personal gain, and not look at their impact on the system as a whole.
People enjoy using technology to understand and solve problems. Overpopulation is a result from neither. Therefore it has no technical solution. The problem isn’t completely understood by the human race yet ether. Many scientist are searching for new ways to grow food and adapt the world for a ever growing population, instead of trying to control, or reduce, the population and current, wasteful, ways of life.
Freedom within the commons brings ruins to all, abuse of a general source, will allow people to use without a limit, to only have maximum gain for themselves, not understanding the effects of a limited environment. Both cattle and children can be blamed for over grazing.
Educations of impacts can counter act the damaging actions of “Denial of impact”. Agriculture and commons go hand in hand with their existence. Enough history to understand the process and downfalls of the two, and people still fall victim to abusing a given amount of common land. Current commons are pasture land, Maritime (oceans), and natural parks, all of which are degrading from abuse.
Add in toxins to a public space, such as air, water, advertising and results can be devastating. One main problem arise with common ground, is when personally generated waste products, are cheaper not to deal with, and are left as a common area problem. This happens with population growth, the mass of surround people is too large for the given common ground, and is unable to sustain its naturally occurring cleaning and purifying systems. The system becomes overloaded, like a pasture has become “over grazed”.
In the natural environment, population is a self controlling operation. Too many offspring, cannot be supported by the current supplies the family can provide, some experience “die-off” and a sustainable population is reached. The problem is with the humans take on nature. Believes everyone has the right to the commons, the motion completely eliminates the natural way of controlling populations. Welfare allows inadequate families to over breed for self benefit and personal gain, while only adding to the downfall of society’s overpopulation problem.
The U.N. understands the problems humanity faces around the world, and aids situations with truth and justice. There population policy shows no understanding of everyone’s problem right now, of unsustainable living. The policy need to reevaluated, to aid the people it supposes to serve, with population control. Society needs to be able to call out an individual that abuses the commons, and use restrain to better the whole by the individuals conscience.
Mutual coercion allows the control and use of a commons in a not completely free way, but to add responsible use, so everyone can benefit from it, and to punish the over users. An example can be taxes. The commons don’t have to be perfect to be tolerable ether. Changes can be made to the system, negative and positive, to understand the impacts compared to the previous settings.
Today the commons are controlled as much as possible, but abuse from pollution, media, and pleasure are still a major problem. Population is still the major cause of over drawing on the limited resources of the common. Restraint is possible, as it was done in the past. Present restraint will be meet with resistance at first, but will become slowly accepted, as history has also showed.
Education of impacts and problems faced in the commons, allows people to understand necessary actions to keep the common ground sustainable and equal.

Putting the public system in terms of the “commons” really allowed me to understand the strain the system faces with population growth. The system itself contains the flaws that need to be fixed, in order to find a solution to the problem. It’s also frustration to know the system can be abused by individuals today, and the system is willing to deal with the problem of overpopulation and not population control.


Reference

Easton T. (2009) Environmental Studies, Sections 7. New York: McGraw-Hill