Elinor Ostrom’s global research showed that commons work for everyone when they are properly managed
The bad news is that in this era of market absolutism, the commons itself is under threat like never before.
In some cases, what belongs to all of us is being privatized—stolen, really—for the benefit of a few. Since the 1980s, owners of radio and TV stations have had almost no responsibilities to the public interest in return for the fortunes they make on our public airwaves—a free ride now being sought by web providers who want to shred net neutrality rules that ensure everyone equal access to the Internet.
In other cases, the commons is simply neglected or nibbled away until it becomes less valuable to everyone—reinforcing the market mantra that you cannot depend on anything you don’t own yourself. Although this never made sense to Americans left behind by the economy, many middle-class people came to accept that logic over the past 30 years. Who cares that Social Security appears shaky and the recreation center at the park is falling down, when you can stash your cash in a 401K and buy into a private health club?
That’s all changed with the economic distress of the last five years. Suddenly what we share—parks, libraries, transit, public schools, a social safety net, a sense of community cooperation—has become increasingly important. Yet, ironically, at a time when demand for public and civic services is rising, sharp reductions in tax revenues and charitable giving mean they are being cut back or eliminated altogether.
It’s crazy that library hours are being slashed at a time when increasing numbers of people can’t afford private Internet service or new books. It’s ridiculous that transit fares are rising and routes being cut at a time when it’s harder than ever for some people to afford cars or gas, and when it’s clear that auto emissions are affecting the world’s climate. It’s criminal that programs helping the poor, both in government and the nonprofit sector, are struggling to find money when so many more people now depend on them.
This amounts to full-scale retreat from the greater good, which we can call “a tragedy of the commons.” Of course that’s the opposite of how this phrase is generally understood—that the commons itself is the tragedy, not its destruction or theft.
This negative view dates back to 1968 when wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin published “The Tragedy of the Commons,” a hugely influential essay in Science magazine where he speculated that collective ownership of resources was a major factor in environmental destruction. He described a hypothetical common pasture and argued that because no one owned it outright, no one has an incentive to take care of it, meaning that everyone will graze as many cattle as possible there until the land turns barren and worthless.
Zealous free market advocates seized on Hardin’s parable as proof that any system other than rigid private property leads to ruin. It took the work of the late political scientist Elinor Ostrom—co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics, the first woman so honored—to finally debunk the belief that commons inevitably lead to tragedy.
Ostrom’s field work in Kenya, Switzerland, Guatemala, Nepal, Turkey and Los Angeles shows that real people in real communities generally create rules and systems to protect the precious resources they share. These can be enforced by government regulation, local customs or other means to make sure that common property and livelihoods are protected. Other examples include the rules New England lobstermen developed through the years to prevent overfishing or irrigation systems in New Mexico that have been successfully and fairly governed by community groups for four centuries.
Garrett Hardin eventually admitted that what he was talking about were unmanaged commons, not all forms of commons.
In situations when there is no governance of what belongs to all, the tragedy Hardin describes still goes on. We see this today in the collapse of ocean fish stocks, and the increase in greenhouse gases, which are disrupting our climate. This is because selfish national interests have stymied any international agreements to protect our global commons.
—JAY WALLJASPER
Photo of Elinor Ostrom courtesy of Augsburg College.
