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Comment by duncan_bayne | Hacker News Reader

Tragedy of the commons. If people owned areas of the ocean in the way they own areas of land for farming, this would be less of an issue.

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There are plenty of examples of well-managed fisheries but it takes cooperation with/from the fisherman and enforcing the regulations so that fisheries remain sustainable.

Here's a list of North American fisheries, some of which are well managed: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/statusoffisheries/2011/second/Q...

Look how Victor Harbour in South Australia managed its fishing allocations for a great example of how to pull this kind of thing off. But it’s not easy.

Unless the oceans had a low rate of return, then you would kill all the fish as quickly as possible and invest the proceeds in higher-returning assets.

For others interested in solutions, look at the traditional Swedish farmer's methods of managing common resources. Actually a Nobel Prize was awarded based on work documenting and implementing these and similar practices in far-flung areas of the world in need of them (e.g. cod fishing in the Atlantic, common resources in Africa, etc).

Just convince the fish to stay in their registered area.

It's not quite as easy with the ocean. Land doesn't tend to flow around freely.

And the ocean is _deep_, too, and it's much easier to pollute your neighbours.

But the basic principle is the same: private property rights can help mitigate these problems.

Tell that to the 1322+ Superfund sites in the US costing ~1 billion per year.

The optimum strategy for small land ownership is often maximum exploitation. In the case of the ocean fishing people would fish as much as possible, and just wait for more fish to wonder back.

Yeah that's because your bankruptcy laws are broken AFAICT - it's too easy to hold insufficient funds for post operational clean-up, then transfer assets elsewhere and declare bankruptcy.

That is, private owners in this case are able to socialise the cost of their operation, which is no more private ownership than when the profits are socialised.

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