Patronage and donations are voluntary funding. Taxation is involuntary funding.

This is the fundamental point.

If you have to subsidize it, then it ain't culture; it's history.

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Are the regulators not also individuals? In the real world, they are not a class of special, noble beings; they are also individuals with the same failings of which you speak, and their industry is not set apart from the laws of the universe under which all other industries exist.

Voluntary interaction provides the only fundamental regulation that is required: Bankruptcy. The only way a bad organization can sustain itself is through forced funding by involuntary interaction (that is, coercion). This is also true of regulatory agencies; like any other company, a regulatory agency should instead be founded on capitalism as a "private" company.

In particular, what is "Government"? Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".

Government inevitably becomes just another bad company in the market place, one that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable. It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, Government is actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization.

Indeed, the easiest way for a company to secure its own funding by coercion is to employ a specialist, Government, to "legalize" bad behavior, or "regulate" competitors out of business, etc. The fundamental problem here is a foundation of coercion, which is itself fundamentally a lack of regulation (as per above).

You are correct in that the free market does not promise an immediate solution to every problem, particularly ones that are completely unforeseen. But that's not the point of the free market; rather, it's about allowing a solution to emerge organically over the long term through evolution by variation and selection. Even under relatively mindless influences, this is much more likely to yield sustainable results than an attempt at Intelligent Design—the fantasies of bureacrats—because an evolved solution is necessarily aligned with reality.

Easy. It is in their self-interest to avoid a society based on the theft of resources.

In the real world, "regulators" or "officials" (or whatever you want to call them) are not a class of special, noble beings; they are also individuals with the same failings of which you speak. However, a capitalist organization must secure funding through voluntary interaction, while a governmental organization secures its funding via coercion. A bad company can only sustain itself by coercing resources from people; indeed, bad companies tend to employ another bad company—the government—to provide the service of coercion for them (by "legalizing" bad behavior, or "regulating" their competitors out of business, etc.). However, getting someone else to do your dirty work makes no difference; it is not capitalism to coerce resources from people.

The Free Market does not assume everyone has access to sufficient information; the free market does not promise an immediate solution to every problem; the free market is about allowing a solution to emerge organically over the long term through evolution by variation and selection. Even under relatively mindless influences, this is much more likely to yield sustainable results than an attempt at Intelligent Design—the fantasies of bureacrats—because an evolved solution is necessarily aligned with reality.

A common waterway, you say? That sounds like a... tragedy of the commons... not a tragedy of private ownership of resources.

So, now there's an organization called "the EPA". Great. Regardless of how well they perform, they get paid. If they do a lousy job, they don't go brankrupt, they get more money, which is coerced from people they call "citizens". Meanwhile, they are coercing not only individuals but entire industries into solutions that may have more to do with bureaucratic fantasy than workable reality. Also, a big bad energy company could use the EPA to regulate rival technology companies out of existence.

Seeing a river burn on national television probably changed the way a lot of people thought about the environment. Perhaps environmental consciousness became prominent regardless of the EPA—perhaps even despite the EPA.

Are the regulators not also individuals?

You're correct in that the free market does not promise an immediate solution to every problem; the free market is about allowing a solution to emerge organically over the long term through evolution by variation and selection. Even under relatively mindless influences, this is much more likely to yield sustainable results than an attempt at Intelligent Design, because an evolved solution is necessarily aligned with reality.

Voluntary interaction provides the only regulation that is required: Bankruptcy. The only way a bad organization can sustain itself is through forced funding by involuntary interaction (that is, coercion). Indeed, the easiest way for a company (such as a regulatory agency) to achieve this is to employ another bad company that specializes in coercion—an organization known colloquially as "the government", which can be used to "legalize" bad behavior, or "regulate" competitors out of business, etc. However, employing somebody else to do your dirty work makes no difference; it is not capitalism to take resources by coercion.

Learn how to read.

The free market does not promise an immediate solution to every problem; the free market is about allowing a solution to emerge over time through evolution by variation and selection. Even under relatively mindless influences, this is much more likely to yield sustainable results than an attempt at Intelligent Design.

If choosing `A' proves too harmful in the long run, then choosing `B' (among other actions) will become all around a matter of self-interest. Let the bad actors poor all the money they want into a shiny PR campaign; a polished turd is still a turd; you can piss in people's mouths and tell them it's rain, but that doesn't mean you can sustain the lie, because the laws of reality won't allow it.

Voluntary interaction provides the only check that is necessary: Bankruptcy. The only way a bad organization can sustain itself is through forced funding by violent coercion, and that is a precarious foundation anyway. The government is just another bad company, and employing the government to coerce people for you (by, say, "legalizing" your behavior) is still just coercion; it is not capitalism to take resources by coercion.

So, saying that "capitalism quickly turns into corporate oligarchy" is really just saying: Under capitalism, you will at worst end up with... government.

Note that governments subsidize the fishing industry, providing the incentives to keep up the reckless behavior, rather than allowing a market correction towards sustainable business models such as farming and fishing rights via private property.

While some governments establish regulations in the forms of quotas and fishing licenses, etc., the subsidies and indirect management of these resources has led to distortions and thus misappropriation. Were a private organization to make the same mistakes, it would go bankrupt and thus the resources would pass into the control of more capable hands. However, because the government controls these resources, it need not go bankrupt; the government coerces funding from its citizens regardless of how well or poorly it performs—it is a bad business that won't go away.

So, essentially, nobody owns the waters or the fish; hence, there is the beginning of a tragedy of the commons, but it will eventually be in everyone's self-interest to avoid it (at least with other industries that will have the benefit of this hindsight); the fact that you're worried about it and that it's being reported on at all is proof of this.

The solution is capitalism: The control of resources (i.e., ownership) derived through voluntary interaction (i.e., not coercion).

Your comment and my response have both already been made here.

The idea is that individual self-interest will lead to a tragedy of the commons, yet it is in the self-interest of each individual to avoid the tragedy of the commons. "A tragedy of the commons generally arises from individual power and freedoms." Well, ownership is a restriction of such individual power and freedoms; the question, then, is how to define ownership. Capitalism is ownership defined through voluntary interaction, which is the best approach because it embraces—rather than ignores—individual self-interest and is therefore ultimately the most likely to be the most widely aligned with reality over some sufficient interval; indeed, voluntary interaction yields the most sustainable emergent constructs.

The owner gained control of the resource through voluntary interaction.

Nope. I am being very careful with language.

I was responding to: "Even if the depletion of that resource is bad for the group it is good for each individual doing it."

The idea is that individual self-interest will lead to a tragedy of the commons. However, a tragedy of the commons is in no way in the interests of any individual! Individual self-interest will, thus, correct for it.

As the OP said: "A tragedy of the commons generally arises from individual power and freedoms." Well, ownership is a restriction of such individual power and freedoms; the question, then, is how to define ownership. Capitalism is ownership defined through voluntary interaction.

So, regulation is necessary, and I'm saying that the best form of regulation is capitalism (by which I mean the Free Market, by which I mean a market free from involuntary interaction). It is not capitalism to take resources by coercion, and yet all of the disparaging examples that people are listing involve gaining control of resources in just that manner.

Your comment is self-contradictory.