The tragedy of the commons and the GPD

From time to time here at the GNU Public Dictatorship we take time to ensure that our supporters understand what we're all about.  Today we would like to discuss something that Garrett Hardin called "The tragedy of the commons."  The argument, essentially, is that individuals who share property each have a rational motivation to exploit the shared property for their own benefit, even when doing so ruins or otherwise damages the common property.

Mr. Hardin explained this concept in terms of cows grazing on common land.  Each farmer could put an extra cow on the land and therefore increase the benefit to himself as he is able to support an extra cow.  The detrimental effects of additional cows on the common property are not born by the individual farmer, but by the group, which means that each individual farmer either puts more cows on the property and overgrazes the property, or stands by while other farmers put more cows on the property and overgraze it.  Without some mechanism to regulate the common property, the farmers will destroy it.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we follow the open source model, which implies that everyone shares in the ownership of the government.  We expect each of you to dedicate some of your time to being well-informed and knowing what we're up to, which is why we take the time to write these posts.  While the Board of Dictators will be running the world, we all live in it, and so we all need to take ownership of it.  The problem, of course, with common ownership, is what we referred to earlier.  Everyone individually has an incentive to use up the common resource for his or her own benefit.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not prepared for such a situation, as we have enforcers placed at GPD County offices around the world.  Any time someone is found to be consuming too much of the world, an enforcer will be dispatched to ameliorate the situation.  If an individual world citizen is implicated too many times, his or her privileges as a world citizen would have to be revoked, and assuming we have interplanetary spacecraft by then they will be shipped to some other planet not under GPD control.

Just to be clear, the enforcers are only one of a suite of motivational tactics we will use, but they are the most prominent.  We expect our supporters and all world citizens to respect each other and to not incite the tragedy of the commons, but if they won't do it on their own, we will certainly be glad to help!