(important)(common property)(property rights)

(Thank you for asking me to answer this rather … challenging question.)

—-”**How do libertarians address the tragedy of the commons?”—**

Ostrom’s argument is identical to the libertarian argument, although far more articulate, supported by exhausted research, and articulated in a FORMAL LOGICAL GRAMMAR.

**Ostrom’s argument**, is that:

1 – Common property organizations, meaning ‘**private corporations**’ will form as a means of managing scarce assets, with or without state interference, and with or without issuance of shares of title.

2 – **States create the tragedy of the commons** when the INTERFERE with the development of those private corporations, by violating the property rights of the participants in the ‘natural corporation’ that manages the asset.

3 – If states (groups, polities, governments, judiciaries) merely **INSURE all forms of property** (exclusivity of benefit, and exclusivity of management), people will, out of natural self interest, maintain any asset of any kind.

In other words, Ostrom explained the evolution of the corporation – before we created the corporation in order to obtain outside investment, and therefore limited liability,

OSTROM’S RULES (REORDERED FOR CLARITY) FOLLOWED BY RESTATEMENT OF EACH, IN OPERATIONAL TERMS

2B – Appropriation and provision: The benefits obtained by users from a common-pool resource (CPR), as determined by appropriation rules, are proportional to the amount of inputs required in the form of labor, material, or money, as determined by provision rules. *

****[ ‘People only get out of the corporation what they put in to the corporation, in the form of labor and assets.’].***

1A – User boundaries: Boundaries between legitimate users and nonusers must be clearly defined.

** *****[‘Those who have contributed labor and assets into the corporation in exchange for returns on those labor and assets, shall exclusively benefit from the common pool resource.’]***

1B – Resource boundaries: Clear boundaries are present that define a resource system and separate it from the larger biophysical environment.

***[‘The assets of the corporation shall not impose costs by externality.’]***

2A – Congruence with local conditions: Appropriation and provision rules are congruent with local social and environmental conditions.

***[‘Broader communities insure (defend) Personal, familial, Private Corporate, Public Corporate, and Public Assets, from violation, and the corporation must be insured by those same institutions.’]****

*

3 – Collective-choice arrangements: Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.

***[‘Only shareholders who have contributed labor and assets shall participate in the management of the assets of the corporation.’]***

4A – Monitoring users: Monitors who are accountable to the users monitor the appropriation and provision levels of the users.

4B – Monitoring the resource: Monitors who are accountable to the users monitor the condition of the resource.

***[‘Contributors to the corporation monitor one another just like we monitor one another in all aspects of personal, familial, private corporate, public corporate, and public life’]***

5 – Graduated sanctions: Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and the context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to the appropriators, or by both.

***[‘Corporations produce their own internal laws for violations of corporate assets’]***

6 – Conflict-resolution mechanisms: Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.

7 – Minimal recognition of rights to organize: The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities.

***[‘Natural private corporations must exist, and will exist, but like all forms of property require defense, even if that defense includes defense from the interfering state.’]***

8 – Nested enterprises: Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.

***[Humans must organize defense of the various forms of property in order to gain the benefits, of decreased opportunity cost, from increased numbers and increased density, and the benefits of numbers, and density, and velocity (everything becomes cheaper) are directly proportional to the degree of suppression of parasitism upon property, where property consists of material physical and asset investment in the production of multipliers, and therefore returns.]***

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine