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Tragedy of the commons

Tragedy of the commons
Self-interests causing depletion of a shared resource The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed, and criticised, in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result being a tragedy for all. The metaphor is the title of a 1968 essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin. As another example, he cited a watercourse which all are free to pollute. The principal concern of Hardin's essay was overpopulation of the planet. Some scholars have argued that over-exploitation of the common resource is by no means inevitable, since the individuals concerned may be able to achieve mutual restraint by consensus. Expositions[edit] Classical[edit] Application[edit] Related:  Science in Transition - Netherlands

A Short History of Enclosure in Britain | The Land Magazine Over the course of a few hundred years, much of Britain's land has been privatized — that is to say taken out of some form of collective ownership and management and handed over to individuals. Currently, in our "property-owning democracy", nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population,1 while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line. There are many factors that have led to such extreme levels of land concentration, but the most blatant and the most contentious has been enclosure — the subdivision and fencing of common land into individual plots which were allocated to those people deemed to have held rights to the land enclosed. Those of us who have not spent a lifetime studying agricultural history should beware of leaping to convenient conclusions about the past, for nothing is quite what it seems. The Open Field System

Science in Transition gaat niet ver genoeg | Active Science Gastbijdrage op persoonlijke titel van Jelmer Renema, fysicus. Jelmer is te vinden op twitter onder @Jelmer_Renema. Iemand die het lukt om een aula vol wetenschappers te laten luisteren naar wetenschapsbeleid heeft zijn zaken goed voor elkaar: de meeste wetenschappers willen zo min mogelijk met het universitaire bestuur te maken hebben. De spreker, dekaan Miedema, stond voor een volle zaal omdat hij sprak namens Science in Transition, een werkgroep die de structurele problemen binnen de wetenschap wil aanpakken. Helaas bleef de discussie beperkt tot technocratische voorstellen, waardoor de rijkwijdte van de voorgestelde veranderingen nooit groot genoeg kan zijn om echt het verschil te maken. De feiten die in het verhaal aangedragen werden waren schrikbarend: als we Miedema mogen geloven is de wetenschap door en door rot. Diepe crisis De crisis die Science in Transition aankaart, zit heel diep. Niet neutraal De grenzen van technocratie Dit bericht werd geplaatst in Geen categorie.

Fallacy of composition The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part). For example: "This fragment of metal cannot be fractured with a hammer, therefore the machine of which it is a part cannot be fractured with a hammer." This is clearly fallacious, because many machines can be broken apart, without any of those parts being able to be fractured. This fallacy is often confused with the fallacy of hasty generalization, in which an unwarranted inference is made from a statement about a sample to a statement about the population from which it is drawn. The fallacy of composition is the converse of the fallacy of division. Examples[edit] If someone stands up out of his seat at a baseball game, he can see better. If a runner runs faster, she can win the race. In economics, the Paradox of thrift is a notable fallacy of composition that is central to Keynesian economics. Modo hoc fallacy[edit]

Left2Right: How Not to Complain Against Taxes (II): Against Natural Property Rights « previous post | Main | next post » January 20, 2005 How Not to Complain Against Taxes (II): Against Natural Property Rights Anderson on Political Economy, Anderson on Taxes, Elizabeth Anderson: January 20, 2005 In a previous post, I argued that the claim "it's mine" does not by itself constitute an argument against taxation. Now I'd like to take on the idea of such a comprehensive theory of natural property more directly. By a theory of natural property rights, I mean a theory that (a) identifies first principles by which individuals may initially own or acquire property without the help of a state; (b) upholds principles of virtually unrestricted voluntary transfer (freedom of contract, gift, and inheritance); and (c) limits the state (if it is to exist at all) to enforcing these strict property rights and whatever obligations arise from unrestricted freedom of contract. I think this picture of capitalism is misguided. Consider, for example, the limited liability corporation. TrackBack

Geld Wat zijn de overeenkomsten tussen de bankenwereld en de universiteiten? Frank Miedema, decaan geneeskunde aan de Universiteit Utrecht, weet het wel: in beide gevallen zitten medewerkers gevangen in een systeem vol perverse prikkels. En als het systeem niet goed werkt heeft niemand enige schuld, we gaan er allemaal gewoon mee door. Miedema zei dit op een debatbijeenkomst van het Rathenau Instituut over vertrouwen in de wetenschap. Zijn tegenspeler, VSNU-voorzitterl Karl Dittrich spuwde vuur: 'Dat is zo verkeerd, gaat volstrekt mank! Miedema stelde ook dat universiteiten meer ruimte moesten krijgen om een eigen onderzoeksbeleid te vormen: 'laat het talentenbeleid toch niet dicteren door NWO met zijn Veni's en Vidi's. Op een discussieavond van het JongeAlumniNetwerk (JAN) over 'Perverse prikkels in de prestatiemaatschappij' ging het ook over geld, misschien wel de meest perverse prikkel van alle.

Laser Cooling and Trapping Group Homepage The Laser Cooling and Trapping Group studies the physics of laser cooling, electromagnetic trapping and other radiative manipulation of neutral atoms and dielectric particles. These fundamental studies are used to develop applications to new kinds of physics measurements and processes such as high resolution spectroscopy, atomic clocks, atomic collisions, quantum information processing, quantum simulation, atom optics, and bio-molecular interactions. Nonlinear Optics and Non-classical Light—Nonlinear optics provides a way to generate light with different frequencies and different quantum statistical properties. Multi-Photon Laser Cooling—Laser cooling of atoms is a powerful and widely used tool in atomic physics. Quantum Computation and Simulation with Neutral Atoms—Quantum information processing seeks to use the features of quantum physics to accomplish otherwise intractable computational tasks.

The Right to Private Property If one doubts that a political economic system rests on certain ethical precepts, the quotation from Peter Unger should help dispel the doubt. Suppose it is true, as Unger claims, that we are immoral if we do not “give away most of [our] financially valuable assets.” Indeed, more strongly put, suppose we are immoral if we do not support a system of law that requires this of us—that is what’s meant by saying we “must” give our wealth away. What sort of legal system follows from this? Surely one in terms of which we do not even own our wealth but share it all with those who lack wealth. From this alone it is clear enough that ethics are essential for laying out a system of laws. How, then, could we ever hope to unite sufficiently on ethical principles to recognize why a system of laws is justified? Thus it makes sense for us to explore what ethical foundations if any might be identified and agreed on in support of the kind of political economy we consider just, namely, libertarianism.

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JQI Researchers Create 'Synthetic Magnetic Fields' for Neutral Atoms Achieving an important new capability in ultracold atomic gases, researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute, a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland, have created “synthetic” magnetic fields for ultracold gas atoms, in effect “tricking” neutral atoms into acting as if they are electrically charged particles subjected to a real magnetic field. The demonstration, described in the latest issue of the journal Nature, not only paves the way for exploring the complex natural phenomena involving charged particles in magnetic fields, but may also contribute to an exotic new form of quantum computing. As researchers have become increasingly proficient at creating and manipulating gaseous collections of atoms near absolute zero, these ultracold gases have become ideal laboratories for studying the complex behavior of material systems. * Y.J. Lin, R.L. Compton, K.

espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv.php?pid=UQ:10897&dsID=mb-ii-03.pdf

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