Raison D'Etre

In 1968, a year which rightfully claims a place as the great divide of our era, Garrett Hardin, a biologist, published The Tragedy of the Commons, an essay that has greatly influenced the way I think about the world. Indeed, I believe that if we fail to come to grips with the problem Hardin identified, we are virtually guaranteeing the decline of our country and peril for our descendants. I believe that The Tragedy of the Commons must be the starting point for any discussion of the future.

Hardin asked us to imagine a vast meadow suitable for grazing cattle. Upon reaching the meadow, what, he asked, would a rational cattleman to do? Following his own self-interest, the cattleman would increase the size of his herd. If the meadow is vast, the cattleman reasons that adding to his herd increases his own profit without adding cost, at least as far as the meadow is concerned. If he overgrazes his cattle in one part of the meadow, he simply moves to another part of the meadow, allowing the overgrazed part to regenerate.

What happens if more cattlemen discover the meadow? They make the same calculation as the original cattleman did. Adding to the herd makes individual sense, regardless of its effect of the meadow. Soon, the cattlemen, thinking selfishly, have reached the limit of the meadow's ability to support all of the herds, overgrazing occurs, and the meadow "dies" in the sense that it can no longer support the herds of cattle that have come to graze on it.

As Hardin points out, this "tragedy of the commons" raises a challenge to Adam Smith's notion that an individual who "intends only his own gain," is, “led by an invisible hand to promote…the public interest." In a "tragedy of the commons" scenario, each actor has complete freedom to use the commons as he or she wishes; he or she takes all of the profit, but distributes the cost to others.

Of course, it matters how "vast" the commons is in order to assess whether an action or inaction will lead to tragedy. "A hundred and fifty years ago," Hardin argued "a plainsman could kill an American bison, cut out only the tongue for his dinner, and discard the rest of the animal. He was not in any important sense being wasteful. Today, with only a few thousand bison left, we would be appalled at such behavior." In earlier ages, when the human population was small and its impact on the natural world insignificant, the possibility of tragedy was remote. Today, we live on a world with 6 billion other people, each, morally, at least, having an equal claim to the planetary commons, and it is no longer possible for anyone to move off the commons for greener pastures, as our lone cattleman could have.

One way of addressing the tragedy of the commons is to make an appeal to the reason or the conscience of the resource users and insist that they take voluntary action to avert the tragedy. Hardin argued, though, that this tack is likely to be ineffective for two reasons. First, a person who voluntarily complies with a conscience-oriented appeal merely frees up resources for the others who don't or won't comply. Second, because these "ethical" people will be at a disadvantage, in the short run, evolution will make those who maximize the use of the resource stronger than those who don't, and, eventually, "ethical" people will be "bred out" of the system.

Citing Hegel's observation that "freedom is the recognition of necessity," Hardin concluded that the only way to avert the tragedy of the commons was to institute a system of coercion that has been "mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected." Hardin's language is sufficiently vague on the matter of who would actually be responsible for applying this coercion and how this coercion would be applied. This vagueness leaves space for liberals to argue that averting the tragedy of the commons is the function of government while leaving it to conservatives and libertarians to argue that private associations will form naturally to administer each resource. Regardless of whether the liberals prevail or the conservatives/libertarians do, the result is the same: only groups capable of limiting the freedom of individuals by democratic means can preserve the commons for all.

I am squarely in the camp of the liberals. For me, while Hardin's commons is a sublime metaphor, it doesn't capture the complexity and interdependence of the world in which we now live. The global commons is far too big to be managed locally. In prior decades, we could talk about the water quality in a particular town or the smog in a particular city. We could form ourselves into groups intent on "saving the baby seals" or "protecting the Chesapeake Bay," and devote our energy to those causes. But the baby seals and the Chesapeake Bary are all part of a huge and vastly complex interacting system. Actions taken with respect to the Chesapeake Bay may well have some impact on the baby seals in the arctic, and we cannot leave it to these two groups to worry about that interaction, because if they are working independently on their causes, they may be unwittingly working at cross-purposes.

I believe that only a powerful government can tap the financial, intellectual, technical and coercive resources necessary to coordinate and address all of these problems simultaneously. Our challenge as citizens is to keep our government on task while keeping its functions as transparent and as accessible as possible without concentrating tyrannical powers in its hands. Given the damage both parties have done (and continue to do) to our system of governance, this will be no mean feat.

I will be writing periodically about the world as I see it, always informed by Hardin's insight about the tragedy of the commons. I hope that anyone who reads this will take time to think deeply about the issues I raise and find ways to act. We are quickly approaching the point where our global commons will face tragedy. Help me make sure that there is something left for our children.

All images courtesy of Freefoto.com