Machan's Archives: The Pitfalls of Public Spheres
Tibor R. Machan
"Each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect..." (Thucydides)
Everyone
has an incentive to use resources freely available to all...but none
has a corresponding incentive to conserve or replenish the resources.
Parcels privately held are better cared for. The resource that ends up
ravaged will be freedom itself.
"The
tragedy of the commons," a phrase coined by Garrett Hardin, in a famous
1968 article, refers to the cumulative depletion or spoliation of
natural resources to which no one holds deed but to which everyone may
use. The commons in question might be a pasture in which every
herdsman's cattle can graze, a lake every fisherman can trawl, a park
every tourist can trash or the atmosphere. Because people pursue their
goals with the means available to them, perhaps perfectly innocently,
everyone has an incentive to use resources that are freely available to
all, but none has a corresponding incentive to conserve or replenish the
resources.
"Picture
a pasture open to all," Hardin notes. "It is to be expected that each
herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons.
Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries
because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man
and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally,
however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the
long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point,
the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy."
Hardin's
principle was known as early as the ancient Greeks (as well as to
Thucydides ). "That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in
which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable,"
explained Aristotle in his Politics.
"For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care
bestowed upon it…. For besides other considerations, everybody is more
inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in
families many attendants are often less useful than a few."
When
parcels are privately held, owners have good reason to ensure that the
resources of their lands are properly cared for. They may, for example,
charge users in proportion to the amount of usage. They may plant seeds.
They may send in cleaning crews. Because they receive definite benefits
as a result of paying the cost of maintenance, they will most likely
pay it. So, many agree now that extensive privatization of what are now
treated as public properties -- certainly all public enterprises, as
well as lakes, rivers, beaches, forests, and even the air mass -- will
help sustain those resources and lead to more efficient development and
exploitation of them.
Ducks
Unlimited, a free-market wildlife conservation organization, was
founded in the Great Depression in North America to preserve duck
hunting for the next generations. Wildlife biologists were hired to
determine the basic problem, which was habitat reduction and degradation
from agricultural pressures in the Canadian and American northern
plains "pothole country" where the waterfowl breed, and in the American
flyways where they rest during their annual migrations.
Ducks
Unlimited raises money to purchase sensitive breeding areas and way
stations, thereby preventing their development; manages those lands as
waterfowl refuges; and works with farmers to manage their lands in ways
that will be more hospitable to wildlife populations. The organization
has rehabilitated well over 8 million acres of wetland in the US,
Canada, and Mexico. It does not practice an unlimited free market: many
of its properties are turned over to State and Provincial Fish and Game
departments for long-term management, and it contracts with the
government for many of its projects. Its shows, though, how an
enlightened pursuit of private goals can promote environmental advantage
-- even in a 40-percent-plus tax regime.
Worldwide
the biggest danger to wildlife populations is the destruction of
habitat wrought by the pressures of population growth and agricultural
expansion. The problem is exacerbated by the dominant model of wildlife
ownership, which is socialist. Wildlife is deemed "property" of the
state, even when it inhabits or encroaches upon private property. Then
it’s the exerciser of property rights who becomes the endangered
species.
The
problem is acute in sub-Saharan Africa. There subsistence farmers in
the outback must continually if illegally combat the encroachments of
"state-owned" wildlife. In many areas, hunting is outlawed, leading to
local explosions in wildlife populations, which then spill out of their
native habitat. That poaching is rampant under such circumstances should
not come as a shock.
The
solution? To turn over "ownership" of the wildlife to the villages or
landowners. Wildlife then becomes a benefit, bringing in hard currency
from tourists, for example. Poachers now benefit from protecting and
managing a valuable resource. The results have been a gratifying
reduction in poaching, an increase in wildlife populations, and more
effective containment of it.
In
the US "preservationist" organizations like the Sierra Club seek to
“save” swatches of habitat by lobbying the government to purchase
environmentally sensitive and exceptionally beautiful land for parks and
preserves. But the bulk of ongoing environmental funding has been
contributed by those "conservationists" (chiefly hunters and fishers)
who believe, not just in the preservation of environmental resources
(under glass case, perhaps), but in the wise use of them.
And
therein lies both the key to the success of current Fish & Wildlife
policy, and a clue as to how a non-coercive, libertarian environmental
policy can proceed. For, in spite of the basically socialist ownership
scheme, State and Federal Fish & Wildlife programs are almost
totally financed by user fees and (more nebulously) excise taxes on
sporting arms, ammunition, and fishing tackle. (An excise tax is no
voluntary fee but at least it has a plausible connection to the purposes
being funded -- if the moneys collected are indeed funneled as
promised, something that doesn't always happen with, say, the gas tax.)
User-funded
Fish & Game programs are among our biggest environmental success
stories. Many big-game species have made quantum leaps from their low
points at the turn of the last century–there are more deer in North
America now than there were at the time of Columbus, and once-endangered
alligators are now endangering golfers in parts of Texas, Louisiana,
and Florida! And no managed game species has ever gone extinct since the
advent of managed sport hunting early in this century.
These
examples from Africa and North America show that the environment would
not get short shrift in a private market. It’s very difficult to subject
all valued resources, including air and water, to privatization --
although not impossible, as some argue. Personal and property injury law
could deal with much of what goes awry in these spheres.
The
tragedy of the commons extends far beyond the environment; as Hardin
himself argued, it has hitherto been best understood in special cases
"which are not sufficiently generalized." The tragedy can afflict any
arena in which resources are produced and then used—and in which in the
link between causes and effects, benefits and costs, has been severed.
Consider the US Treasury, which so many groups work hard to raid.
Even
alleged solutions to the tragedy of the commons can suffer that same
tragedy. Hardin, for example, despite an otherwise often astute
analysis, believed that the way to solve the problem is ratcheting up
the government controls. But such controls are themselves imposed by
bureaucrats who are not obliged to directly bear the cost of that
control. They cause further problems which invite yet more controls as
remedy, and so on. If the process continues unchecked, the result is a
fully state managed system. Hardin would have shied away from that end
game, but he mentioned no principle that could definitively interrupt
the approach to full socialization at any point, once the regulatory
premise is ceded.
Under
such a system all resources whatever are treated as a vast blob of
commons. Goods are extracted from all "according to ability,"
distributed to all "according to need." The link between cause and
effect, costs and benefits is severed in such a society-wide commons. As
a result, not a mere pasture but an entire economy is devastated (as
well as the spirits of the people). The more vigorously a given society
strives for the "ideal" of full socialism, the more rapidly the pasture
will be plundered.
It's
fantasy, of course. There is no way to forcibly refashion human beings
into the angelic ants they'd have to be to approach the socialist dream
of absolute and full equality. Individuals will rarely think first and
foremost of the common interest. Even those who give it a serious try
won’t succeed because they will not be able to obtain the needed
information to learn exactly what that alleged interest is. The common
good consists of a lot of varied individual goods, the requirements for
the fulfilling of which can be known best and acted upon best by the
individual whose interests they are.
Indeed,
the only universal, common good is a general framework that enables
everyone to seek that which he deems to be important. The provision of a
system of laws makes such diverse pursuits of the good life possible.
The American Founders identified such a system, one that accommodates
the rights of to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—with what
that pursuit consists of left to each individual.
Welfare
states and the tragedy: Although our own welfare state permits much
more autonomous action than a fully socialist one would, it manifests
the tragedy of the commons as well in the growing public sphere. An
individual acting on his own must work hard for his paycheck. He expends
time and effort. He may bear further costs if he thoughtlessly fritters
away his funds. If he manages his budget responsibly, however, he
enjoys peace of mind in addition to the goods and services he can
obtain. So there is a direct and cordial relationship between how
carefully an individual deploys personally earned resources and the
benefits he achieves.
The
market rewards those who behave responsibly. By contrast, the only cost
that pleaders for government largesse must directly expend in return
for the largesse they receive is that involved in pleading for their cut
of the take. In other words, they must incur the cost of lobbying. The
typical recipient of the benefits of government subsidy or regulation
has little economic incentive to spurn what he's "got coming" -- whether
or not he or she proclaims, when polled, that taxes are too high or
that "something must be done about the federal debt."
The
democratic vote itself is an indirect means of seeking benefits from
scarce resources without the inconvenience of any limits to what those
voting may consume. Whether it's labor unions or educators or
scientists, everyone gropes for as much from the public treasury as
possible, and many elected officials faithfully play along. Sometimes
this means appointed people who favor one’s projects to the appropriate
regulatory bodies. Thus the denizens of the Departments of Labor,
Agriculture, or Energy may well engage in the same unfettered
exploitation as the cattle owners whose cattle graze in a common
pasture.*
Wait,
there's more. One of the most difficult of legal dilemmas is how to
protect individual rights to free expression in public realms. For
example, citizens may wish to express their urgent dismay about
something on public roads to which others citizens believe they are
entitled for purposes of transportation. During the Gulf War, traffic
was brought to standstill in San Francisco when residents there wanted
to protest U.S. involvement in the conflict; someone suffering a heart
attack at the time might have preferred his goal of getting to the
hospital.
Perhaps
as a matter of common sense public roads must clearly remain available
to serve their intended purpose. But other conflicts of interest are
more ambiguous. The reason so many conflicts involving religious
observance at public schools seem so intractable is that whenever one
acts in public spheres, one falls, at least de jure,
under the rules of public policy. In a public high school, therefore,
any kind of religious expression, even the most innocuous, comes into
conflict (or at least is said to come into conflict) with the
constitutional prohibition of the state’s establishment of religion. And
of late, school officials have even gone so far as to ban the Boy
Scouts from their premises, on the grounds that the Boy Scouts
discriminate against gays. There may be no constitutional issue there,
and it may seem unreasonable to punish local kids for an organization's
national policy. But do public officials exercising publicly granted
authority in public places have this kind of discretion or not? If you
don't like a company's policy, you go somewhere else. That has not been
so easy to do under the public school monopoly (especially prior to the
recent growth in home schooling, charter schools, vouchers and other
educational privatization).
*For more check out Tibor R. Machan, Ed., The Commons: Its Tragedy and Other Follies (Hoover Institution Press, 2001)
