"Communal resources are available to everyone, so everyone has an economic incentive to use them; but no one has an equal incentive to husband the resources,” writes Tibor R. Machan in his introduction to The Commons: Its Tragedies and Other Follies (Hoover Press, 2001). “The tragedy of the commons occurs because people pursue their goals with the means available to them.”
The Commons, building on a well-known essay by University of California at Santa Barbara professor Garrett Hardin titled “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Science, 1968), examines various aspects of the public realm, addressing the inherent usage and management problems that can plague a society’s commons.
“In the commons it is supposed that everyone has an equal entitlement to what are designated as public resources,” Machan explains. “Nothing belongs to anyone, yet everything belongs to everyone. So when people make use of things, they use what everyone else also owns.”
Although there are many reasons the commons “remorselessly generate tragedy,” most often cited is human greedhuman beings “tak[ing] advantage of free resources beyond what would be wise and prudent.” Even among those with the best intentions, Machan points out, access to communal resources naturally leads to overuse.
Without clearly defined property rights to discipline us, “when common ownership exists over valuable resources, [those resources] will tend to become exhausted,” writes Machan. Thus, the issue of rational, dependable constraints is at the center of the problem of the commons.
With a variety of approaches, this authors in this book tackle the many difficulties associated with the commons. “Some focus on the environment. Others look into related problems such as public finance, collective responsibility (pride or guilt), and democratic decision making or management,” writes Machan.
“What the authors share is a realization that linking actions and consequences to individuals is usually a vital and just social policy for human community life with the best intentions.”
Tibor R. Machan is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a distinguished fellow and professor in the Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. He is the author of Initiative: Human Agency and Society (Hoover Press, 2000) and editor of Business Ethics in the Global Market (Hoover Press, 1999), Education in a Free Society (Hoover Press, 2000), Morality and Work (Hoover Press, 2000), and Individual Rights Reconsidered (Hoover Press, 2001).
The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs.
