There’s a story in economics known as the
‘Tragedy of the Commons’.
It goes something like this:
There was once a group of farmers, grazing
their cows on common land.
The land can comfortably support twelve cows,
three for each farmer.
One of the farmers thinks: "if I add a fourth
cow, I can have a bigger share of the spoils.
So he adds a cow.
The next farmer notices what the first farmer
did.
She thinks "Hey, my cows are now producing
less milk because there are more cows on the
land.
I'd better add another cow to compensate."
Each of the farmers in turn goes through the
same logic and adds a cow of their own.The
reasoning remains the same: the cost of adding
one more cow is borne by the whole group,
but the benefit goes only to the owner.
Even though the farmers know this isn't sustainable,
they know they will lose out if they don't
add more cows.
Eventually, the land becomes so overused that
it can no longer support any cows, and everyone
loses.
The moral of this story, we’re told, is
that ‘commons’ are a bad idea.
Every resource should be held in private hands,
so that someone has a strong incentive to
look after it.
Wherever there is common property, there will
always be selfish people who overuse that
resource.
But there’s a problem: some things can’t
easily be privatised.
The air doesn’t respect property boundaries,
so the atmosphere becomes a dumping ground
for our fossil fuel waste.
The water flows where it will, carrying whatever
plastic and chemical waste we fill it with.
Infectious diseases don’t care about our
imaginary lines, and even the economy as a
whole is a shared resource that a few bad
actors can ruin for everyone.
So this is further verification of the theory,
right?
Anything that can’t be privatised will inevitably
be destroyed.
But hold on, let’s go back to the farmers
and ask why do they behave this way?
Why do they need to get as much as they possibly
can from the land?
They have families and loved ones that they
want to support.
They need food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare
but the big businesses that they sell to are
getting bigger and paying lower and lower
prices.
They have debts they need to service: farmers
are among the people most indebted to the
banks.
And they need insurance in case the unexpected
happens.
Below them, they have workers, who are demanding
higher pay, because they have all these same
pressures, and more.
And at the top of the heap, there's the government.
They're democratic in theory, but somehow
they always seem to be taking care of the
ones who have the money to get their voices
heard.
The farmers know that if they don’t get
what they can for themselves, they run the
risk of losing their house, their farm.
They could lose everything.
In a world of everyone for themselves, everyone
has to screw over their fellow human beings
in order to survive.
And a society set up in such a way that people
must compete in order to survive is exactly
the society that causes us to mis-manage our
common resources.
In other words, the tragedy of the commons
is really the tragedy of capitalism.
The destruction of our environment and the
exploitation of each other is an inevitable
consequence of the system which pits us all
against each other in endless destructive
competition.
The only way to avoid this tragedy is to work
together.
That’s why we need to restructure society
along cooperative lines.
We need to destroy the hierarchies that divide
us from one another.
The social hierarchies of race, sex, gender
and sexuality.
The economic hierarchy of capitalism.
We must remove the walls between peoples,
and the states and rulers that send their
children to die.
When people are divided, they will act solely
in their own interest, but when we take care
of one another as a community, there’s no
longer any reason to feel alone.
