Except of course when it's true.
or... do, do that
THE SOLUTION IS TO REGULATE, except that capitalists use their enormous wealth to lobby against any and all effective regulation, but that's not capitalism's fault lolz
But whose fault is it now that someone is trying to apply the system to public/common ownership ?
It's not like even die-hard supporters of capitalism claim that applying it to public property works well. From Mises.org:
On the contrary, when the individual is merely a tenant, either of
a farm or a dwelling or a business site, his interest is in taking
out all he can to compensate for the cost of the rent he pays. This
is true whether his landlord is a private person or a government.
Actually, in those cases where government has become the landlord,
the evidence abounds that tenants are even less interested in
improving or even maintaining the property they occupy.
There is no homogenous group of "capitalists". Many regulations are the product of collective wishes of 99% and its absurd to blame some non-existent group for lobbying against "any and all" effective regulation.
I swear someday I will write browser extension to analyze and hide such hand-wavy arguments like this one.
But the owner of the fishery/cannery is lobbying against quotas, the owner of the fishing boat is lobbying against worker protections that would slow down the harvest, and the restauranteurs sure have a significant interest in keeping the price of fish as low as possible.
Heterogeneous groups, acting in their own interests, end up working towards the same goal - preventing regulation that would slow overfishing. That's the tragedy of the commons.
That naturalistic argument (don't blame it on the missing rain, that your crops died) is good for natural processes. But you are talking about a cultural/societal process here. So this system was designed in a special way. It could have been designed in a more ethical way. In a way to internalize externalities.
It was designed intentionally is what I wanted to say. And that invalidates a naturalistic argument.
In other words, don't blame capitalism (a natural set of incentives aligned around gain from profit) for the disruption of the fish supply in the small town. Blame the Mexican (per the parable) government for not either licensing the fishing rights to a single charter or regulating the amount of fishing in the area. Properly managed, either approach would incentivize business to reign in the take-all (free capitalism) approach for long-term sustainability (and thus, greater overall profit).