I guess I don't understand your motive in what you call a "subtle shift" of trying to redefine away the concept of the tragedy of the commons.
You say 'There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want".' But to the contrary, that's basically always been the case. Fishing boats were limited by technology and the size of their local markets, but once those limitations disappeared because of inevitable technological progress, then that's exactly what happened. And we see this happening especially with Chinese overfishing today.
You're claiming that supposed "systems of control" existed in the first place and then were attacked, but that seems entirely counterfactual to me. There was no system of control for a problem that technological progress hadn't created yet -- humans don't see that far enough into the future. And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen?
I don't see what benefit there is in attacking the concept of tragedy of the commons. It's not some kind of fatalistic viewpoint of what must happen (which you seem to be claiming -- "that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common"), but rather a warning of what will happen when resources aren't properly managed. Claiming the tragedy doesn't exist seems like it would only benefit the people who want to to exploit our shared resources. By recognizing its validity, we can do our best to create and improve systems of management (especially international systems) to prevent the tragedies from occurring.
Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. When Hardin first wrote about it, the message was (and was for some decades after it) that holding resources in common is doomed to failure and that is why private ownership/control of them is a good idea.
Even with your view, there's a subtle shift involved in talking about it as an issue of whether or not resources are properly managed or not, because the question is, quite directly, what is the best way of ensuring that this happens?
TOC has been routinely used over the last half-century of so to justify the answer to that being "privately owned", and reasonably given the name Hardin came up with: it's a tragedy of the commons, implicitly not affecting privately held resources.
> And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen
It depends a lot on scale. If country #5 plans to sell the fish to countries #1-4, it won't work (or at least, it may not work). If country #5 plans to eat all the fish it catches and has no effective internal population that will be able to gain control over its fishing behavior, then ... tragedy.
But notice the key point here: it's not as if country #5 is ignorant about the situation. Countries #1-4 will be quite belligerent in their objections to #5's behavior. So the problem here is not that "people just blindly take from a commonly held resource and destroy it". It's the people (in this case, country #5) willfully ignore the social structures in place to protect the fish in order to pursue their own greed and selfishness.
I don't think so. I'm just regurgitating what I learned in political science classes decades ago, and what the mainstream understanding still is today in the general media.
And what you're omitting is that while yes, the solution from the point of view of the political right is privatization, the solution from the point of view of the political left has always been more active government management/regulation, international treaties, etc.
You seem to be ignoring the entire history of solutions on the left, and treating the problem as if it's solely an invention of the right. I don't know why.
And with the fishing example, I never suggested country #5 was ignorant, or that countries #1-4 wouldn't object. I never used the word "blindly". But you're claiming that people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and that's false. There are no structures and never were. (Again, see: Chinese overfishing.) And you're admitting "then... tragedy" in my very example.
So I still don't understand why you're claiming ToC doesn't exist, except that you think it's a justification for privatization. But you're ignoring it's also a justification for regulation and cooperation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater?
What you're omitting is that the solutions to ToC style problems already existed throughout time and space until they were ignored/destroyed/captured by selfishness and greed.
Think about it: if I set you the challenge of "come up with a regulation model for this fishery" the nature of your solutions will be fundamentally different than if I set you the challenge of "prevent selfishness and greed from overriding the cultural, social and historical patterns for this resource use". Depending on your own particular political outlook, it is possible that given the first problem you would still focus more on the type of problem described in the second but that's not inevitable at all.
> There are no structures and never were.
Chinese overfishing ... when I look this up, the most common word associated with it is "illegal". Perhaps you mean the overfishing they carried out in their own waters before increasing (and now decreasing) the size of their distant fishing fleet(s).
> But you're claiming that people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and that's false.
In reading up a bit more about this (with China being country #5), I come across articles with titles like "China’s IUU Fishing Fleet: ariah of the World’s Oceans". So I don't think it's false at all.
> But you're ignoring it's also a justification for regulation and cooperation.
That's not an unfair point, but what I'm really getting at (mostly based on Ostrum's work) is that regulation and cooperation have always existed historically, and telling the story of ToC-style problems as if they haven't bends the solutions in ways that do not reflect the history.
Why do they qualify as ‘solutions’ in the first place, if the ‘solution’ cannot withstand some percentage of people pursuing self interest above all else? (Which has always been the case to varying degrees since the first organized polities arose ~5k to ~10k years ago)
It sounds more like a hodgepodge of brittle norms.
If you (as a culture) manage to successfully run a fishery for 500 years and then someone invents capitalism and yourexisting mechanisms can't withstand the new morality and motives it endorses and encourages ... I am not sure that you've failed.
You say 'There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want".' But to the contrary, that's basically always been the case. Fishing boats were limited by technology and the size of their local markets, but once those limitations disappeared because of inevitable technological progress, then that's exactly what happened. And we see this happening especially with Chinese overfishing today.
You're claiming that supposed "systems of control" existed in the first place and then were attacked, but that seems entirely counterfactual to me. There was no system of control for a problem that technological progress hadn't created yet -- humans don't see that far enough into the future. And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen?
I don't see what benefit there is in attacking the concept of tragedy of the commons. It's not some kind of fatalistic viewpoint of what must happen (which you seem to be claiming -- "that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common"), but rather a warning of what will happen when resources aren't properly managed. Claiming the tragedy doesn't exist seems like it would only benefit the people who want to to exploit our shared resources. By recognizing its validity, we can do our best to create and improve systems of management (especially international systems) to prevent the tragedies from occurring.