Given that the ability to gain personal control of commons is based upon the ability to make a political sale, there are several prerequisites:
* A simple justification to maximize the applicability of the claim to individual perceptions and desires.
* A majority perception that acquisition comes at minimal personal cost.
* Collective benefits that are difficult to measure or long deferred.
* Powerful beneficiaries with sufficient personal interest and resources to fund and execute the taking.
* Control of communications media to influence majority opinion then becomes the cheapest means to control factors of production and the key to controlling wealth.
Does the need to maintain a sense of crisis lead to shortsighted decisions? Does it lead to the unconscious realization of self-fulfilling prophecies? Does it create a smokescreen for the exercise of corrupt intent? Does it overtax the ability to generate capital? If we adopt an ill-conceived plan, could such an exercise irreversibly damage the resource? Could the repeated application of mechanics like this lead to the unwitting vengeance of self-destruction?
There are those who have come to regard the exercise of external claims upon private property as a structural evil, a distorted exercise in "ends" justification for personal gratification disguised as altruism. It is truly curious that the same people, who warn us that the cause of ecological problems is a lack of individual motivation to care for commons, propose solutions that are in structural antipathy to maximizing the value of the assets. The very act of collectivizing the factors of production has historically destroyed their value. That loss can propagate rapidly. People get desperate because the process of political acquisition of private property is unsustainable.
Love it. Absolutely love it.