Tragedy of the Commons revisited
The Tragedy of the Commons is a brilliant idea originating in about 1833 about which all of us are aware. With a shoutout to William Forster Loyd, I will recap the concept; In a nutshell, he observed that property which is not privately owned is subject to behaviour contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. Put simply, people don’t take care of things unless they have a private stake in them.
An obvious example is to look at the garbage that people throw on the street. Smokers especially think that some invisible angel is there to pick up their smouldering detritus that they throw on common property. By the way, what’s with smokers wearing a mask to protect themselves from a cold but filling everyone’s lungs with second hand smoke with no second thought? The mask brigades yell at people for not wearing one while giving a pass to people spewing a carcinogen into everyone’s faces. Just one of dozens of examples of the absurdity playing out during this Covid overreaction.
By transferring Forster’s theory to the present covid hysteria, it highlights what is at the root of my astonishment regarding the way this has been handled from the get-go. What is the rationale behind the putative ‘re-openings’ that are being arbitrarily directed by our mostly unaccountable public health officials? Pot and liquor stores were essential but dentists and cancer therapy were not? Now they might be allowed but what changed? How do they square this with the rationale for the near total lockdown? Are people really buying it?
In this past few months I have seen two types of people - those who are believers in the voice of Government, and those who are thinkers and therefore sceptics. Coincidentally or not, the former seem to be more fearful people who have a lower risk tolerance than the latter group. They also prefer Government mandated social engineering over individual responsibility. Without delving into the host of issues that I could, I pose one question here; If the ‘officials’ are correct as some would have you believe, and therefore the political and economic total shutdown was justified, why is there anything different now that the Government has decreed a so-called reopening? What has mitigated the existential threat that is said to define this cold virus?
I am lucky to have spoken with many people daily who do not buy into the lockdown and its anti-science zealotry and over the top cost to society. I also know several ( particularly baby boomers ) who have bought in with 100% of their being, despite the dim memory of Boomers opposing Government ‘tyranny’ in the 1960s. Now, they are personally threatened and afraid. They watch CNN, they are obsessed with the United States and not interested in Canada’s, Asia’s or Europe’s results. They are willing to foist any cost upon society to save themselves from their own perceived danger as outlined by Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo. Until those two luminaries say it is ok to come out of the basement, there will be no movement, I surmise.
Ok. Let’s leave that where it is….in the basement, like dotty old Joe Biden who just said today that 160 MILLION people have died of Coronavirus!
My question hinges on this - now that the Grand Wizards whom the Canadian Corona Club worship - Mayor Tory, Premier Ford and Manflower Trudeau - have decided that we can go to Phase 2 and then Phase 3 ….what exactly has changed? Literally, if one buys the Fauci CNN hysteria, what has changed in any way that would justify any re-opening which is now being sanctioned by the Governments who locked us down.…patio restaurants, hair salons, hotels, bigger gatherings etc.. Just today I posed this question to a couple of Believers. I added a polite suggestion that the government could have been more surgical in their protection of vulnerable people. Their reaction was to become extremely angry and say ‘ Hey watch it. You are getting personal here and it is not up for discussion!’. It was as if I had challenged their belief in God, and that in itself revealed the dogmatic backdrop of this Covid stuff.
Let’s face it, much of the hysteria is American based hype being prolonged by the media and the Dems to bring about Trump’s defeat in November. Nevertheless, even though we are theoretically sovereign, Canadian Covid Believers do not want to avert their gaze from CNN and MSNBC and American numbers lest common sense might rear its sober head. Never mind that Europe and Asia are more or less back to normal, never mind that our own numbers are extremely modest. For these people, the good old US must always be our role model.
The new Tragedy of the Commons is the tragedy of an absence of Common Sense, which makes the Common Good depleted through the collective action of the Government officials and its pusillanimous supporters. I have been amazed at some of those who railed against Doug Ford in the old world but suddenly are big fans in the new world. Mayor Tory is even worse, who with Trudeau, exhibits a dithering and fearful leadership style that is all too Canadian in nature. Yet these citizens who now enjoy their paltry welfare payments are suddenly weepy loyal fans of the Three Amigos who ineptly sacrificed our future for their polls. Trudeau, Ford and Tory are the Corona threesome..
If there was such mortal danger in those prohibited activities before the ‘reopening’, the legalization of those same activities now makes no sense. In logical terms, nothing has changed in terms of this putative danger. If an existential threat existed before reopening, it still exists now. If there is no existential threat now, then there was none then and the lockdown is revealed as an act of politics and not science that it is.
The image of Trudeau joining a jostling crowd to take a knee for George Floyd while people were being charged criminally for doing a chin up in a playground says it all. If you point it out to the believers they cry foul.
Religion does that to you.