has contributed to where you are and what you want.
Where I am is a big subject, as is the investigations of the commons. I will try to show where there is some overlap with the racial discussions that lead to this.
If I could put that entire article into a paragraph or two it would be thus: Much of American policy, especially economic policy is based on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in which the notion of enlightened self interest drives prosperity for groups. In actuality the policies are based on a distortion of his work carried to extreme insistence on individualism.
ssu.missouri.edu
In The Tragedy of the Commons the idea of individual endeavour leading to public good is affirmed, but the boundaries of it's applicability are explored by Hardin. In the years since it's publication in 1968 many things have been noted to be in common amongst Americans besides the obvious, air, water, or a shared plot of grass.
To bring this closer to the discussion on race, In the Jim Crow days the black and white population did not compete for many things. They did not compete for an empty chair at the lunch counter, the seat by the door on the bus, or admission to Universities. Seperate resources are the opposite of common resources. Those days are over and gone.
In an integrated society these opportunities are now part of a common pool. The problem is there is not as much opportunity as there is demand.
Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man's population problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another
....
Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody's personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of "rights" and "freedom" fill the air. But what does "freedom" mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is the recognition of necessity."
In summary, as the population of the U.S. increases there was naturally more competition for choice resources (like appointment to a prestigous class). Integration brought even more competition as nearly all people began to compete for the resources formerly available only to whites. This was no different than the trends that were already going on, except that it was a "step function", a sudden change instead of a gradual. As with other tragedies in the common, this one will ultimately have to dealt with by Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon and not self interest.
TP
(I know it's still not clear, but I would need to think of better examples and phrasing and that takes time) |
