Not all may have heard the term “the tragedy of the commons”, but all will be familiar with the reality it describes. Think of, say, a movie house interior. The lights dim, a shimmer of expectation ripples through the patrons, the first flickers of a much-anticipated cinematic treat floods the screen, and nek minnet a couple of bozos start loudly scoffing crinkly wrappered treats while they snigger on about who did what to whom at last Saturday’s party.
The ‘commons’ is the movie theatre, the shared space of a group of patrons at any particular time. The ‘tragedy’ is the one or more individuals who trash the ability of the utility to satisfactorily deliver its common intended purpose. In other words, the bad behaviour of the few who spoil it for the many. Aristotle talked about the problem, and no doubt many before him. It’s been around a long time, but now it’s got serious. Seriously serious.
In 1833, an English economist, William Foster Lloyd, published a pamphlet addressing the issue. At the time, the practice of farmers sharing designated plots of ‘common’ pasture to graze their cattle was still relatively widespread. Lloyd exemplified this to discuss the problems involved, such as some farmers exceeding their stock allocation with resulting over-grazing threatening the viability of the whole commons. (Lloyd was primarily concerned with the wider issue of human over-population, but that’s by the by.)
Then, in 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin used Lloyd’s example to coin the actual phrase “The Tragedy of the Commons” to title an article he penned on the general subject, published in the Science journal.
Like Lloyd, Hardin was primarily focused on human population growth, but he widened the debate to include the finite limitations of Earth’s natural resources and the welfare state, arguing that selfish egocentrics and venal corporations ignoring the relationship between individuals and wider society imperilled all – not least the planet itself. He believed bad actors would come to treat others merely as units to be exponentially multiplied for use merely as future labour and consumption fodder to the point of total systemic collapse.
“Therein is the tragedy”, Hardin wrote. “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.”
I’d suggest that it’s not the element of “freedom” that is the agent of ruin, but simply the failure to use that freedom responsibly for the good of wider society. No surprise, then, that today we see wreckage from the tragedy of the commons writ large. On an existential planetary scale, in fact.
We now not only get to daily witness ample evidence of both social and environmental breakdown even in our own neck of the woods, but have salt rubbed into the wounds when oligarchs feeding off that dysfunction buy citizenship to bunker-up in luxury bolt-holes in what sanctuaries remain in the hope of weathering a doom-loop they’ve helped create.
Those with even shortish memories will recall a recent prime minister by the name of John Key globe-trotting to expound to any willing ear the magnificence of New Zealand’s purported “100% Pure” environment, and the resulting virgin products and pristine landscapes supposedly abounding in it.
Of course, this was an arrant lie. Even then, abundant studies testified to frighteningly high levels of toxic by-products from a plethora of shonky, mainly agricultural practices literally poisoning our own nest.
Key had the sort of glib demeanour and cheesy smile that enabled him to peddle this pap through most media events relatively unchallenged, until a fateful day he struck an old-school BBC interviewer who had the nerve to reference the stats listing how Key’s homeland had some of the most polluted waterways in the OECD. Waterways a long, long way from being the mythical “100% Pure”!
“Oh,” Key valiantly responded. “Of course, the “100%” is not a literal figure – it’s aspirational only! Granted, we’re not quite there yet, but in the not-too-distant future we look forward to at least not being on the bottom of the OECD poisoned waterways ladder.”
The hardened BBC interviewer was momentarily taken aback, not quite believing what he was hearing. “So what you’re saying, Prime Minister, is that if you sit a geography exam and only score 22%, you’re allowed to say you bulls-eyed a 100% pass, because that’s your aspirational result..?!”
“Well, I wouldn’t put too fine a point on it, but in a nutshell, yes..!” replies Mr Key. (I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but not much.) Unbelievable, but unfortunately true. The sort of BS that we’ve got used to with Donald J Trump, except Key beat him to it.
So to sum up then, when we talk about the Tragedy of the Commons we’re talking about the here and now of our own not-so-fair land. The insistence of some farmers that they have the God-given right to overstock ‘their’ land to the nth degree, feed the cattle on it with huge carbon footprint palm oil products, lace the soil with toxic nitrate artificial ‘fertilizers’, and strip any shred of plant life in the vicinity that’s not cow-edible to the point where gross soil erosion is the default position and bio-diversity’s non-existent, and that it’s all fine and benign, no longer cuts the mustard.
Thankfully, attitudes in the farming fraternity are now changing for the better, but Dr Mike Joy, the nation’s pre-eminent freshwater ecologist, estimates that, for every dollar of NZ export farming product earnings achieved, equivalent dollars would have to be spent to fully remediate the environmental damage incurred in their production. No wonder the majority of our waterways and lakes are no longer safely swimmable, let alone drinkable.
So while primary produce is our dominant export earner, to achieve it in essence we’re shipping a huge chunk of our environmental integrity offshore. Granted, a balance has to be struck between production and downstream damage in the interests of basic economic survival, but as we speak that’s a distant prospect.
Farmers feel persecuted, but of course they aren’t the only perpetrators in this wider tragedy of the commons. As current global climatic mayhem unfolds as a result of proven anthropogenic – or man-made – factors (mainly through massive fossil fuel consumption and land clearance), one wonders at what point the main offenders concede that eventual total climatic collapse might actually be bad for business.
I’m reminded of, say, ornithologists from a century or two back who bush-whacked forested hill and dale trying to find specimens of birds facing extinction, usually through various human predations. Then, on finally – ecstatically – flushing out a few survivors, the response was not to initiate measures to facilitate their continuing survival but to shoot them, stuff them, then flog the taxidermied carcasses off to fill a few missing slots in museum collections.
(One such barbarian stalked New Zealand in the late 1800s – an Austrian by the name of Andreas Reischek, ostensibly a botanist. In a few short years he reportedly despatched 212 pairs of huia at a time when it was already known to be seriously endangered. The last confirmed sighting of one was in 1907.)
Globalisation has been happening for a very long time, ever since the first knuckle-grazers stood up a bit straighter, slung a hook, and wandered over the next hill to see what was there. But the mega-industrialisation of recent years has put the process on steroids – not only in purely geographical terms, but ramped up even more via super-tech communication tools.
The result is a ‘commons’ a very far cry from a village paddock shared by a clutch of straw-chewers and their modest flocks. The ‘commons’ is now a global paddock, no longer adjoining a Marshall McLuhan-sized ‘global village’ but abutting a teeming techno-city frothing with super-polluter mega-consumers. Thus, while the imperative to positively and genuinely co-operate for the common good has exponentially exploded, we’re equally spectacularly dragging the chain.
On an international scale, occasionally glimmers of such dynamics peep through the sludge. Round about the middle 1900s, just when it looked as though humankind might finally be getting sorted, that gruesome world wars were behind us, and people were generally much better fed, clothed, housed, transported, and entertained, uh ohh… the hammer and tongs are out again and we’ve got another Ukraine or Iran or South Sudan or someone else decides it’s a good idea to poison the village well.
One of the poisons in question is a toxic pottage that has come to be known as neo-liberal economics – a ragout of false economics if ever there was one, that has helped sluice probably the biggest transfer of wealth from the many to a select few in human history.
The resulting social inequalities have shredded the social fabric that – for a time – made community living equable, affable and affordable, and replaced it with an ethos that allows Darwinian alpha-predators free rein to ransack and plunder. To the point, in fact, where one individual can personally command a hoard of lucre greater than that of all but a few dozen of the richest nations on the planet. Or allows the current leader of the world’s most powerful nation to treat its treasury as his own personal vault, yet begrudges paying a pittance tax rate less than his toilet cleaners.
If ever the dial needed nudging, surely it is now. The English political economist Richard J Murphy perceptively lists five broad types of capital that comprise most modern nations: Financial, Physical, Environmental, Human, and Societal. Financial capital is non-tangible and depends entirely on the legal constructs that constrain and direct the other four forms of capital. Underpinning all these, he calls for an ethos of ‘care’ encompassing not only the planet at large but all members of the global community, without which we ultimately crash and burn.
As Murphy points out, two concepts quietly shape everything around us. “They are capital, and capital maintenance. Importantly, capital is not just money. It is the accumulated stock of financial, physical, environmental, human, and societal resources that make future well-being possible. When we fail to maintain those resources, societies decay. In that case, I argue that because modern economics focuses obsessively on financial capital while neglecting the others, including their capital maintenance, we get collapsing services, environmental breakdown, and political anger. Care, then, is not a sentiment. Care is capital maintenance in action.”
Murphy is UK-based and therefore usually references UK examples to illustrate his points, but these are the exact same ‘economic’ dynamics that currently beset other nations that also drank the Neo-Liberal Kool Aid and are succumbing accordingly.
The main take-away from his work is that healthy societies are where these five main elements are in balance, with a national ‘commons’ that works for all members of the commons’ constituency. Where here, as in the UK, the financial capital with all its ramifications has been allowed to subsume the crucial other forms of capital, the result is a massive wrenching of the social fabric such as we witness now.
For those still with the luxury of functioning and credible ballot boxes, the need to vote for those who champion the prospect of genuine paradigm change is more critical than ever. If not now, the prospect for change may forever go up in smoke, along with that from the multiple forest fire infernos currently ravaging the Last-Chance Saloon we call planet Earth.
Frank Greenall has been a copywriter, scriptwriter, artist, political cartoonist, adult literacy tutor and administrator, and Whanganui Chronicle columnist for many years, amongst numerous other sundry occupations. His cartoons and articles have appeared in most major NZ newspapers at various times. He has a BA in politics and a Masters in adult literacy/numeracy. https://stevebaron.co.nz/author/frankgreenall/