Week 43 - Harvest Game 2.0

Although all of the classmates would have agreed that an ocean with fish resources that can replenish itself is ideal when we played the harvest game. The ocean was not able to replenish itself before the fishing boats exhausting it. The tragedy of the commons took place in a class full of people that are environmentally conscience.

Taiwanese fisherman (my brother) and his catch. 

As Hardin (1968) described in his paper, when all people try to go full speed in maximising his/her interest in a society that upholds the value of freedom of the commons, this freedom eventually take us all to ruin for everyone. To improve this "remorseless working of things" and avoid the eventual exhaustion of common resources, some mechanisms are suggested as below.

Assumptions

Assuming all the conditions of the harvest game remain the same except that the 6 teams are able to communicate with each other. We can distribute the resources with communications. The maximum number for each team to catch remains at 4 in order for the sea to double the fish for next year to have 50 fish. One team might be able to get the extra fish and the total fish next year would still meet 50.

In the previous game, the actors are individual fishing boats which cannot talk to each other. Even if we could calculate the maximum number of 4 fish per boat per year, some boats thought one more fish can't hurt. This overfishing based on individual rationality led to an empty sea after 5 years. When a team exceeds 4 fish per year, a crisis occur and the population of the fish is reduced to a level that is hard to come back. Therefore we need to establish a mechanism to ensure that no fishing boat goes beyond 4 fish every year and the maximum number of fish in total can be caught every year. 

One boat scenario

Of course it is also possible to just let one boat each year taking turns to go out to do all the fishing and comes back with 25 fish to distribute among all other teams. But that way the whole society would depend on that boat to supply all the fish to make a living. In real life this will seem risky since all the resources is only held by one actor and there is nothing to leverage with the boat. 

Six boats scenario

To distribute the risks more evenly to secure fish supply, we should let all the boats go catch their fish. On one hand we want to have the largest number of fish. On the other hand, the fishing boats needs to be checked to ensure that the catch number is below the maximum quota. The surveillance can be done by inspection at the port. The inspection group is formed by one member from each of the six teams to ensure the impartiality during inspection work. The team found to overfish will be punished. The team that failed to respect the 4 fish rule is banned from fishing the next year, allowing the reduced fish population to come back under less stress.

Possible challenges
It is foreseeable that some challenges may emerge. Since there is no way to find out if the boats overfish until the boat is back to the pier, the only way to ensure that the fishing boats stays within the 4 fish limit is to count on the fishermen's compliance. However, if more than one boat violate the rule, or one boat exceeds significantly beyond the limit, the punishment might not even help to recover the population. By then, the damage might have been irreversible. More rules are needed to secure the surveillance mechanism to prevent the violation of the rules while the fish is still in the sea. We need to make the action of overfishing a less rational option. This means that the benefits of staying within the limit needs to outweigh the benefit of catching every extra more fish. Or, put it in another way, to make the disadvantage larger than the advantage of overfishing.

Can human's desire of owning more resources be
restricted when we are reminded of the finite resources?
(Seafood buffet in Queichou, 

an inland province 

in China.)

Internal policing - sense of honour
So how do we make the collective rational choice of not overfishing attractive to the individual boats? We can further break down the actor structure and see the actors as individual members of the fishing boats. The external surveillance will be shifted towards internal surveillance to let all the fishing boat crew members take part in preventing overfishing. The number of fish that the boat aims to catch needs to be agreed among all the crew members. The crew members will be aware of each other's decisions. Therefore when someone on the boat proposes to catch an extra fish, the desire of proposing to overfish would be overcome by the fear of shame and greediness in others' eyes.

Through a combination of establishing 4 fish limit, surveillance, and sanction. The members of the fishing teams are involved in the rule enforcement and their interests are tied with the enforcement of the rules. Therefore the chances of the number of the fish in the sea being overfished could hopefully be lowered through this coordination.