“The point of Hardin’s article was that “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” was necessary to prevent overuse of a common resource. He thought that the restrictions could come either from privatization OR from state regulation. This article simply ignores the “or regulation” half of Hardin’s argument, thereby creating a nicely puffed-up straw man for ideological purposes.

Now, Hardin was indeed wrong in one of his critical assumptions. He thought that the restrictions on use could come only from private property or from the state. That assumption has been exploded through a lot of good field work; some communities do successfully self-regulate, and a lot of very good economic work has been done trying to figure out which ones succeed and which ones fail. The linked article is half-right in pointing out that sometimes communities get it right, but pretty much everything depends on situation-specific factors.

Elinor Ostrom’s work is the go-to reference here: she started a now decades-old conversation on exactly which factors matter and how much. For example, it’s not small farmers vs. large corporations — there are plenty of farming communities that have blown the task of commons management in irrigation, and some large corporations who’ve done well at commons management in pumping water out of the ground. Instead, it matters a great deal whether others can tell that you’re grazing your metaphorical sheep on the metaphorical pasture, and it matters whether there’s a good forum for everyone to come together and talk about what to do, and it’s easier when the pasture is smaller and used by fewer people, and so on.”

Please note that Bauwens is not suggesting anything, the article is by Ian Angus, who mentions stinting as a historical practice. I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that private rights in pre-capitalist societies where quite different, i.e. feudal property created all kinds of mutual obligations.

Stinting is just one of the mechanisms needed to manage physical commons, but the context is quite different in digital commons dealing with non-rival goods.

See for background:

– http://p2pfoundation.net/Comedy_of_the_Commons

– http://p2pfoundation.net/Tragedy_of_the_Anti-Commons

– http://p2pfoundation.net/Cornucopia_of_the_Commons

“Bauwens suggests stinting as a mechanism. But stinting
essentially is private ownership: the privately held
rights have value. There are many societies without
such a structure where TotC is very relevant. I suppose
one solution would be to create stinting rights instead
of ownership rights, and this may be appropriate in,
e.g., fisheries where the fish move about too much to
be owned.

“Bauwens says commons can be managed; Hardin has said
this in articles subsequent to his original essay and
explained that it’s the unmanaged commons that leads
to tragedy…

“Fisheries are a good example of the tragedy today.”

So yes, the tragedy of the commons as commonly understood is problematic… but perhaps it’s like Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” where the followers are more narrow and much less nuanced than the original writer.

(I predict that the point about stinting is private ownership is likely lead to an objection from someone… but I think it’s partly a terminology thing, and there it’s similar enough that the arguments in tragedy of the commons would still apply.)