The tragedy of (some) commons in New York City
Can’t we have anything nice?
Living in New York, it’s easy for me to be cynical. The photo below seems to sum it up. Who would do such a thing?
The problem isn’t just dogs and dog owners, of course. It’s the litter everywhere. The inconsiderate behavior on the subway. The state of public toilets. Shared spaces, treated as if they belong to no one.
The tragedy of the commons
“The tragedy of the commons” (a term from Garrett Hardin’s famous paper in 1968) asserts our selfishness makes such outcomes inevitable. He argued that when resources are shared by all but owned by none, people inevitably act in their own self-interest — overgrazing, overfishing, overusing — until the commons is depleted or destroyed.
“Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.”
It’s not a new perspective. Aristotle said as much two millennia ago:
“That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest.”
Behavioral science adds its own cynical twist: people notice when others ignore the rules, and the more they see it, the more likely they are to do the same.
Is tragedy inevitable?
Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, offered a different view. In her book Governing the Commons (1990), she resisted the usual calls for government control or privatization. She showed that communities can and do create their own systems of cooperation — for fishing grounds, forests, pastures, irrigation systems — that are equitable and sustainable.
She documented numerous examples of “rich mixtures of private-like and public-like institutions.” In other words: tragedy isn’t inevitable.
My own counterexample
The turnaround of the public parks in New York City is an example of what Ostrom wrote about. Growing up, the parks were dirty and dangerous. Now, they are glorious. I live near Central Park, managed by a public-private partnership called the Central Park Conservancy, and I am continually amazed by its beauty, by the extraordinary number of people who enjoy it (42 million visited last year), and by the army of 3500 volunteers who help maintain it.
The work for a better way
Ostrom was fully aware of the tragedy of some commons. She just didn’t agree with the increasingly widespread belief that tragedy was inevitable, that people are “helpless individuals caught in an inexorable process of destroying their own resources.”
Like Ostrom, I don’t believe the tragedy of the commons is “self-evident.” But avoiding it will require different solutions for different kinds of commons and contexts. It will require innovations in organizational structures (like the Central Park Conservancy) and processes (like dealing with free riders who exploit the shared resources). It will take applying what we know of behavioral and motivational science to make it easier for people to be at their best (like the Fun Theory).
Whether it’s for our local park or our planet, I believe this is some of the most important work we can—and must—do.
Can’t we have anything nice?