PROPERTY RIGHTS
Cuba: a tragedy of the commons
BY JOSE AZEL
jazel@miami.edu
Over half a century ago, the Cuban Revolution abolished all private
property rights, pursuing heaven on earth on the communist premise that
the entire community would own all property and a "new man" would emerge
that would be communal in outlook and sacrificial for the common good.
That experiment turned out as an economically bankrupt dystopian society
featuring enormously repressive social control systems and a government
with unlimited power over its citizens.
Today, the collapse of the Cuban economy can be clearly traced to its
communal ideology and actions against private property rights. The
fallacy of communal approaches was vividly described by Garrett Hardin
in his influential 1968 scientific article titled: "The Tragedy of the
Commons." The article describes a dilemma of herders sharing a common
pasture on which they are entitled to let their cows graze. The "tragedy
of the commons" is thus a shorthand metaphor for a structural
relationship and its consequences; specifically, common versus private
property ownership.
Under the common property condition described by Hardin, each herdsman,
acting rationally, will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the
commons, even if the capacity of the commons is exceeded and it is
ultimately depleted to the detriment of all. Individually, each herder
receives the benefits from his additional animals, while the damage is
shared jointly by the entire group. This asymmetrical division of costs
and benefits gives rise to the tragedy of the commons inherent in
communal systems devoid of private property rights.
Any resource held in common is owned by everyone and by no one, thus
everyone has an incentive to overuse it, and no one has an incentive to
preserve it. Aristotle expressed it succinctly, "For that which is
common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."
Economic history shows that individual owners take better care of their
own property than they do of common property. And yet, the utopian chase
of the commons and its attendant governmental controls persists.
On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, about 80 percent of Cuba's arable
land was under cultivation (or used for grazing) and domestic production
supplied 70 percent of the country's food consumption. The comparable
figures today are 60 percent and 20 percent respectively.
The extraordinary degree of communist Cuba's unproductivity is most
dramatically shown by comparative analyses of purchasing power. A study
by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American
Studies shows for example, that to purchase a 400-gram box (14 ounces)
of powdered milk, the average Cuban worker has to work 57.5 hours. To
make the same purchase, the average worker in Costa Rica has to work
only 1.7 hours. Comparable inefficiencies hold for the other items in
the consumer basket analyzed. In contrast, in 1957, Cuba's income per
capita was fourth in Latin America, and real wages in Cuba were higher
than any country in Latin America.
Even though Cuba was certainly a corrupt and politically inept republic,
many economic and social milestones were achieved, anchored on private
property rights during its 56 years as a republic (1902-1958). In the
following 52 years, after the abolishment of private property rights,
Cuba has descended into its current pauperized and tragic socioeconomic
situation. But longstanding beliefs are difficult to shed and private
property rights are still vilified.
John Locke, the father of modern political philosophy, argued that
people have natural rights, that is, rights that we posses prior to the
existence of governments. These rights are not granted by government or
any other human. Locke also articulated clearly the idea of property
rights: "Every man has a property in his own person . . . labor of his
body, and the work of his hands, we may say are properly his." The
ownership of property is a necessary implication of self-ownership.
Indeed, all human rights can be seen as derived from the one fundamental
right of self-ownership.
The Cuban tragedy of the commons, rooted in its disdain for private
property, and thus for human rights exemplifies, as Karl Popper once
noted, how "the attempts to make heaven on earth invariably produce hell."
José Azel is a senior scholar at the Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, and the author of book,
Mañana in Cuba.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/09/2443885/cuba-a-tragedy-of-the-commons.html#storylink=misearch
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