Money as the Potential Cause of the Tragedy of the Commons

Kozo Mayumi () and Mario Giampietro ()
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Mario Giampietro: ICREA Research Professor, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain, Phone: +34 93 586 8770

Journal for Economic Forecasting, 2018, issue 2, 151-156

Abstract: This paper draws attention to the potential cause of “the tragedy of the commons”, which locks people into economic systems that compel the pursuit of self-interest and eventually bring ruin to all. The potential cause consists in numerous issues of money and money equivalents that defy the first and the second law of thermodynamics under the legal arrangement. Money has a dual nature: a form of wealth from an individual person’s perspective and a debt from a communal perspective. Money’s dual nature perfectly corresponds to the phenomena associated with the tragedy of commons that are caused by the inherent conflict between the individual’s concern with self-interest in economic welfare and the community’s concern with long term sustainability.

Keywords: money; interest; disgregation; structural decay; functional decay; mutuum; cash credit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G00 G21 H80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rjr:romjef:v::y:2018:i:2:p:151-156

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