Reply #5: That is why natural resources are held in trust [View All]

[alarimer]

and regulated. The tragedy of the commons is a famous paper written by Garrett Hardin. This model has been applied to fisheries because (as we have seen) of the tendency of users to grab as much of the resource as they can. Hardin's suggestion was either government or collective ownership of the resource. In fact, most natural resources like fish and wildlife are held "in trust" for all the people to use or enjoy. "Mutual coercion mutually agrees upon". So states and the feds set up systems to allocate those resources (licenses, bag limits, etc). One could argue that in fisheries management this has not worked terribly well as most fisheries are currently considered overfished. There have been some success stories, mainly through limiting the number of commercial fishing licenses sold or systems in which an individual is allocated a "share" of the available catch rather than setting a total quota and having a sort of derby until the quota is met (see Alaskan halibut fisheries for example).