Discuss the view that overuse of common access resources is best addressed by the government

Common access resources are resources which are not owned by anyone, do not have a price and are available for anyone to use without payment. They are rivalrous but non-excludable. Since they are free and non-excludable, this means that there is over-consumption of the good, which could lead to the depletion of the resource. A common example is that of fishing grounds. If all fishermen act to their best self-interest to try and fish as much as possible, the river and fish will eventually be degraded. Therefore, common access resources are difficult to sustain, which is why governments should intervene to prevent the depletion of such goods. Other stakeholders such as the fishermen are not incentivized to invest in the preservation of the resources, as their investment would be enjoyed by other free-riders. The government could intervene to make CARs accessible through payment. Since the CAR is no longer free, it is no longer non-excludable, meaning that not everyone is going to be able to have access to it, thus conserving and sustaining the resource, and thus the demand for the good is no longer ‘infinite’. This is common on resources such as roads, where a small toll is paid to make use of them. This prevents the overuse of the resource, doesn’t cause traffic or congestions, where the money could be re-invested towards the maintenance of the resource or in other areas. This therefore leads to the prevention of the degradation of the resource. Equally, governments could put a general tax on its public, the revenue from which they can then direct towards sustaining the quality of common access resources. However, this does not reduce the demand for the good, so can be seen as inferior to a toll tax.Similarly, governments could simply put a cap on the usage of the common access resource, such as limitations on fishing in the sea, to preserve the number of fish. This ensures long term sustainability and attempts to avoid the overcrowding of the good. A limitation of government intervention is that often, policy makers overlook long term negative effects, in favor of seeking long term political advantages. For example, a policy maker may abolish toll roads in an attempt to win favor with the users of the roads in the lead up to an election. As such, the political agendas of members of the government may disrupt the government’s ability to prevent overuse of common access resources.