Dave,

Timely for me that you mention the financial crisis in the same sentence as global warming.

One of the things that some people seem to misunderstand about global 'warming' is that there isn't suddenly going to be palm trees in (for example) Canada. The scientists instead point to increasingly complex and erratic weather systems as the primary effect of climate change, and this is what we are seeing here on the East Coast of Canada. Last week it was 15C in Halifax one day. On the weekend it was -6C. Today it is supposed to be 11C. Snow on the weekend. This has been going on for weeks.

My point is this. As the amplitude and frequency of these weather patterns increase, I can't help but notice that the same thing is happening to the global financial systems.

The connection may not be as obtuse as some imagine... your point to the 'commonns' is very, very important I think. I have been characterizing this same idea, in my own words, as an issue of leadership. For me this is the thread running through all of this.

I believe leadership is a good way to think about the problem because it encompasses the many things we think about when we consider these problems... ethics, decision making in complex environments, understanding human behavior, etc.

Our institutions (public and private) generally need a new kind of leadership and central to that is an understanding of how to work in complex systems.

So, once a group hits a resource limit, networking with name-and-shame, scorecards, early warning etc. won't allow self-regulation. We are to be in bondage to a dictator in the hope that (s)he is benign, because the alternative is mutually assured destruction. Well, that is quite a limit to World 2.0. Surely early detection of someone putting too many cattle into the commons could lead to a 'wisdom of the crowds' tarring, feathering and abandoning at the parish boundary? Good emplyoment for some of your wiki-stalkers.

Ray
Leadership is greatly overdone in US/UK
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0605/feature_leadership.html

Pfeffer and Sutton's writings have some good ideas on what works and what doesn't e.g.
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/leadership-vs-management-an-accurate-but-dangerous-distinction.html
Their thinking seems compatible with working in the complex domain.

I fear, with you, for the prospects for liberal democracy. On the brighter side, Jared Diamond in "Collapse" cites a couple of examples of management of the Commons. One was the Japanese Shogunate who enforced a limit on the use of wood, preserving Japan's forests. But another is Iceland's protection of its Cod stocks which is a rigourously enforced government scheme to avoid overfishing -- unlike the expensive vandalism of EU policy.

The rest of Collapse is too scary to read.

When social democrats read "The Tragedy Of The Commons", they conclude regulation is necessary. When libertarians read it, they conclude that private ownership is the only way. It's Hobbes v Rousseau all over again. But the real lesson of TTOTC is "don't build naive social models". Since naive models are abundant in business strategy and government policy making, the paper is still relevant! But let's be clear about why.

If I own a cow and you own a cow, and we own the pasture, is it in my self-interest to look after the pasture? Of course it is. I may fancy my chances as a "free-rider", and try to persuade my neighbours to do more than their share, but ultimately, I need that pasture.

Can I maximize my self-interest without communicating with my neighbours? No. Homo economicus is not homo clausus, and Hardin's paper works through the implications of that.

Is this problem unique to capitalism? No. Consider this African proverb: "Uninitiated, young men will burn down the village just to feel its warmth."