|
Under the common property condition
described by Hardin, each herdsman,
acting rationally, will try to keep
as many cattle as possible on the
commons, even if the capacity of the
commons is exceeded and it is
ultimately depleted to the detriment
of all. Individually, each herder
receives the benefits from his
additional animals, while the damage
is shared jointly by the entire
group. This asymmetrical division of
costs and benefits gives rise to the
tragedy of the commons inherent in
communal systems devoid of private
property rights.
Any resource held in common is owned
by everyone and by no one, thus
everyone has an incentive to overuse
it, and no one has an incentive to
preserve it. Aristotle expressed it
succinctly, “For that which is
common to the greatest number has
the least care bestowed upon it.”
Economic history shows that
individual owners take better care
of their own property than they do
of common property. And yet, the
utopian chase of the commons and its
attendant governmental controls
persists.
On the eve of the Cuban Revolution
about 80 percent of Cuba’s arable
land was under cultivation (or used
for grazing) and domestic production
supplied 70 percent of the country’s
food consumption. The comparable
figures today are 60 percent and 20
percent respectively.
The extraordinary degree of
Communist Cuba’s unproductivity is
most dramatically shown by
comparative analyses of purchasing
power. A study by the University of
Miami’s Institute for Cuban and
Cuban American Studies shows for
example, that to purchase a 400-gram
box (fourteen ounces) of powdered
milk, the average Cuban worker has
to work 57.5 hours. To make the same
purchase, the average worker in
Costa Rica has to work only 1.7
hours. Comparable inefficiencies
hold for the other items in the
consumer basket analyzed. In
contrast, in 1957, Cuba’s income per
capita was fourth in Latin America,
and real wages in Cuba were higher
than any country in Latin America.
Even though Cuba was certainly a
corrupt and politically inept
republic, many economic and social
milestones were achieved, anchored
on private property rights during
its 56 years as a republic
(1902-1958). In the following 56
years, since the abolishment of
private property rights, Cuba has
descended into its current
pauperized and tragic socioeconomic
situation. But longstanding beliefs
are difficult to shed and private
property rights are still vilified.
John Locke, the father of modern
political philosophy, argued that
people have natural rights — that
is, rights that we possess prior to
the existence of governments. These
rights are not granted by government
or any other human. Locke also
articulated clearly the idea of
property rights: “Every man has a
property in his own person . . . The
labour of his body, and the work of
his hands, we may say are properly
his.”
The ownership of property is a
necessary implication of
self-ownership. Indeed, all human
rights can be seen as derived from
the one fundamental right of
self-ownership.
The Cuban tragedy of the commons,
rooted in its disdain for private
property, and thus for human rights
exemplifies, as Karl Popper once
noted, how “the attempts to make
heaven on earth invariably produce
hell.”
|
