Outgoing SMTP Servers

Fri Oct 28 12:54:37 UTC 2011

The alternative to centralization is enclosure: segmentation and private ownership of portions of the formerly common resource. Since the internet is already thus enclosed, with each portion completely owned by one autonomous agent or another, the problem at hand is not a commons problem at all but merely one of negotiation and market force. Internet Death Penalties, blacklists, and unilateral de-peering and blackholing are exactly the sorts of responses an economist would expect to see to a rogue actor in the network community, precise analogs of various types of economic ostracism going back to the merchant consortia of the middle ages.

-Gabriel

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Carah [mailto:pete at altadena.net] 
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:29 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Outgoing SMTP Servers

Maybe he is concerned that the Wikipedia article gets into nit-picking about the ownership of the commons that isn't relevant to our problem, and also is rather long-winded.  Hardin got into some things at the end of his paper that probably aren't either (but then, he was a population biologist and not an economist).  BTW - that paper is a good read and not too long.  The journal link (reference 1 in the wikipedia article) actually works openly (AAAS only blocks full access for a while...)

For our purpose, the ownership of the commons in question truly isn't relevant; the fundamental statement of the tragedy for us is that a "useful" resource that is incrementally free (or even cheap enough) to a large number of participants will get exploited and probably overused.

I'm not aware of any solution to this problem with commons that doesn't involve a central authority :-( In feudal practice the landlord could do some enforcement; the spanish alcaldes were another good example of a semi-central solution to the commons problem (water rights in their origins, though their authority grew over time).

Classic economics says that market pricing is the solution, but that tends to result in another kind of tragedy.

-- Pete

On 10/27/2011 05:38 PM, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:17:22 -0000, Brian Johnson said:
>> So... I'm in complete agreement with your statement, but The 
>> Wikipedia
reference is not pertinent.
>
> So I point out the tragedy of the commons, you agree with it, but the
Wikipedia
> reference that talks about the same exact thing isn't pertinent? How
does that
> follow? :)