The current human population is about 7.5 billion (when I was a kid, it was more like 5 billion). Right now, the population is doubling about once every 64 years. If it continues to double at that rate, and humans don’t colonize other worlds, then you can calculate that, less than 3000 years from now, the entire earth, all the way down to the core, will be made of human flesh.

  • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    The tragedy of the Commons though is not the idea that sometimes Commons are mismanaged. It is an economic theory that says Commons inevitably are mismanaged as simple self interest causes people to “rationally” renege on any collective agreements. Therefore, so it goes, we need to sell everything for only by appealing to base, short-term, greed will things flourish as private property encourages people to make their land more productive.

    This is deeply flawed, as Elenore demonstrated time and time again. By repeating this notion you spread the sort of flawed thinking uses to justify the neoliberal ideology that has so poisoned the world.

    There is no such rule of Commons mismanagement, like all things systems can break but it is not inevitable or even particularly likely except under other pressures. Indeed commons are often extremely resilient, and so we should not overemphasise times when they fail.