RE: The tragedy of the commons

["Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven R. Newcomb [mailto:srn@coolheads.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 3:13 PM
> To: jlowery@scenicsoft.com
> Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: The tragedy of the commons
> 


> Strong leadership -- a Gardener -- is preferable to
> anarchy and confusion.  A Garden Plan is preferable to
> No Garden Plan.

Ah, but who gets to be Gardener, and who makes the plan? 

And what if an idiot steals the election for Gardener, poisons the garden
with his friends' petroleum products, and spends all his energy planning how
to defend against the woodchucks rather than watering and fertilizing?
<grin> 

Many prefer confusion to incompetent leadership.

> Here is an exercise for the reader: if you were
> well-funded, and you wanted to begin to position
> yourself as a Gardener to whom the public would turn in
> desperation when the weediness of the Web becomes
> totally intolerable, what would you do?
 
what the Gardener calls a weed, I might call a medicinal herb. I don't want
no "Gardener" telling me to dig up my Common XML and plant PSVI's :~)  And I
don't want to become Gardener and do the opposite.  Natural Selection makes
for messy gardens, but few Gardeners are wise enough to know in advance what
will survive a drought or early frost.