Timothy Noah, The Tragedy of the Commons, and Awareness Bracelets

Slate: The Wristband Gap, Part 2

Perhaps you're familiar with "the tragedy of the commons," a social dilemma outlined by the late biologist Garrett Hardin in a famous 1968 essay of the same name. The dilemma is that when individuals pursue personal gain, the net result for society as a whole may be impoverishment. (Pollution is the most familiar example.) Such thinking has fallen out of fashion amid President Bush's talk of an "ownership society," but its logic is unassailable:

Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. … As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another …

At that point, Timothy Noah proceeds to complain that "awareness bracelets" have choked the market with too many causes and colors.

But re-read the first part again: The dilemma is that when individuals pursue personal gain, the net result for society as a whole may be impoverishment. This is manifestly incorrect, as formulated.

It ought to say: The dilemma is that when individuals pursue personal gain in a system where some property is owned collectively, the net result for society as a whole may be impoverishment. Some quotations will illustrate what I mean.

Tibor R. Machan:

Back in 1968, drawing on materials from ancient and modern thinking about the topic, Hardin observed that commonly owned and freely accessible resources tend to become depleted when or if the population exploiting the resources is large enough.

For example, a common grazing area is made available for use to numerous ranchers will be overgrazed and its replenishment neglected. A tragedy occurs because people pursue their goals with the means available to them but the results are disastrous for all concerned. 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. And that is just what goes on at the beaches that are of such deep concern to environmentally concerned citizens, including news reporters and bureaucrats.

One would think, however, that this concern would impel them all to pay closer attention to what exactly is going wrong here. They would discover that the main problem is the lack of private ownership. Plainly put, if the beaches were owned privately, they would be clean or at least cleaner than they are.

Robert J. Smith

Why was the American buffalo nearly exterminated but not the Hereford, the Angus, or the Jersey cow? Why are salmon and trout habitually overfished in the nation's lakes, rivers, and streams, often to the point of endangering the species, while the same species thrive in fish farms and privately owned lakes and ponds? Why do cattle and sheep ranchers overgraze the public lands but maintain lush pastures on their own property? Why are rare birds and mammals taken from the wild in a manner that often harms them and depletes the population, but carefully raised and nurtured in aviaries, game ranches, and hunting preserves? Which would be picked at the optimum ripeness, blackberries along a roadside or blackberries in a farmer's garden? In all of these cases, it is clear that the problem of overexploitation or overharvesting is a result of the resource's being under public rather than private ownership. The difference in their management is a direct result of two totally different forms of property rights and ownership: public, communal, or common property vs. private property. Wherever we have public ownership we find overuse, waste, and extinction; but private ownership results in sustained-yield use and preservation.

Mr. Smith goes on to say:

The overuse of common property resources and the preservation of private property resources are both examples of rational behavior by resource users. It is not a case of irrational vs. rational behavior. In both cases we are witnessing rational behavior, for resource users are acting in the only manner available to them to obtain any economic or psychological value from the resource.

In essence, the economic costs of using the resource are either fully or almost entirely borne by the rightful property owner and therefore the rational owner - the very same one in Hardin's example - seeking to improve his or her economic situation, will not mindlessly deplete what he or she owns because it goes against the long-term interest of allowing or helping that resource to replenish itself.

Unfortunately, Mr. Noah has effectively cemented in the minds of more people the regular error made when talking about these things. They assume the overall economic pie is static and one person's growth is another person's diminishment. This is only the case when the resources in question do not have delineated property rights regulating them, when the resources are "owned by the public" or some such nonsense.

As Mr. Hardin says in the rest of the quote that Mr. Noah didn't copy:

Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit-in a world that is limited. 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. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Mr. Smith summarizes: Nowhere does Hardin state that the tragedy of the commons is the result of free enterprise, the profit system, or the existence of private property.

The solution, then, is to abolish the commons and establish private property rights in them.

Of course, how does this apply to the problem in Mr. Noah's article? The "commons" in question is literally everywhere: outside buildings, inside buildings, on streets...wait a minute. This is a question of the property ownership extended over one's line of sight, what he refers to as the "visible spectrum."

It would be, in my opinion, silly but perfectly reasonable for the owner of a building, street, sidewalk, parking lot, or household to have posted the meanings of each color and style of bracelet in accordance with the "cause" associated. I assume most people using such structures who have already purchased "awareness" would take issue with someone attempting to change the meaning of their bracelet. Again, I think declaring that red bracelets worn within the confines of specific property lines mean toenail fungus when the majority of red bracelets sold are for (or against, I guess) heart disease is a foolish waste of time but one that wouldn't be at fundamental odds with a private property system.

Notice I said "style of bracelet." Visually differentiating one bracelet from another doesn't have to be limited to solid colors. Stripes, checkerboards, and polka-dots are all possible patterns that greatly (exponentially? geometrically?) increase the available visual differences. Hell, if the manufacturer wanted to, it could change the width of some bands and make some glossy rather than matte, metal rather than plastic, wood rather than glass. The possibilities are not as limited as Mr. Noah suggests.

However, there is a practical limit to what human eyes can distinguish at distances greater than a few feet...or are even willing to distinguish. In that regard, Mr. Noah is correct:

At this late hour, it's impossible to look at somebody's awareness bracelet and learn precisely what that person is trying to raise awareness about, because there are simply too many possibilities. Purple, for instance, now signifies support for Alzheimer patients, abused animals, battered women, epileptics, children in foster care, or people with irritable bowel syndrome, among other things. Teal invokes the fight against ovarian cancer, except when it invokes the fight against myasthenia gravis, drug addiction, or sexual assault. Gray can raise awareness about brain cancer, diabetes, disabled children, emphysema, lung cancer, multiple sclerosis, mental illness, or a couple of diseases I've never heard of; or it can raise awareness about asthma or allergies. ("Please join me in the fight to cure hay fever.")

With so much to be aware of, awareness bracelets have reverted to signifying nothing more than color itself.

©2005 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Personally, I don't need to witness someone wearing a yellow bracelet to know people are suffering from cancer and a world-renowned cyclist is leading a fight against the disease. I don't need to see a green bracelet (or a camouflage magnetic ribbon attached to a car) to know the United States is fighting a war in other nations. My "awareness" of these issues is acute. Perhaps others' is not. I do find it trite to reduce the complexities of a cause down to an accessory for one's wrist, but I've never been much for fashion statements or cause-stumping anyway.

Posted by Drizzten at February 02, 2005 10:09 AM