On the contrary, examples exist (sea mink, cod) of animal communities being > greatly diminished at the hands of the very people turning a profit from > their harvesting. > > Phil
The tragedy of the commons. The benefit from harvesting a resource accrues only whoever collects it (and probably to some middlemen), while the costs are shared by everyone with a stake in the resource. The economically rational thing to do, on the individual level, is to harvest as much as you can, but this produces the collective result of putting all the harvesters out of business. The only way for them to stay in business is for them to accept some set of rules (either their own or someone else's) that keeps them, collectively, from over-harvesting. If the resource is very scarce, the rules might say not to harvest at all, on the assumption that all the rule-breakers will harvest at unsustainable or barely-sustainable rates. It's an economic theory, but while almost every ecologist I've talked to about it seems to be familiar with it, every time I've mentioned it to an economist, I've gotten a blank stare in return. Jim
