Tragedy of the Commons

In his 1968 classic, “Tragedy of the Commons”, Garrett Hardin developed the thesis that it is to an individual’s advantage to exploit a common resource as thoroughly as possible and that the implementation of this strategy by many individuals leads to exhaustion of the resource. In other words, we will always opt for an instantaneous benefit at the expense of less tangible values such as the availability of a resource to future generations. When you look around you, it is immediately obvious, if your eyes are open, that the tragedy of the commons is an accurate description of human nature.

Interestingly, most of capitalism’s cheerleaders have never mentioned the tragedy of the commons, or denied that such a thing even exist. The all wise invisible hand of the marketplace, some claim, is as competent to keep us out of future trouble as it is to grant us future benefit.

But we must truly have blinders on to believe this, as the visible effects of human behavior prove it is not so. The degradation and devastation of the Atlantic fishery is painfully obvious to anyone remotely interested and the cause is patently apparent.

Decades of over-fishing has pushed most of our stocks to the brink of extinction. Despite the scientific evidence of a total collapse of the marine ecosystem on the Atlantic coast, expanding fleets are fishing harder and spending more time, effort and money than ever before trying stay competitive.

Despite the 1992 closure of Canada’s east coast fishery the stocks have continued a precipitous decline. The most recent figures released show a resource in serious trouble. Human and corporate greed devastated the resource and ultimately distressed the balance of nature to a point where it may never recover.

It would be easy and convenient to suggest that the tragedy of the commons was a modern phenomenon, that humans were not capable of doing much damage until their population exceeded certain numbers or their technological tools became powerful beyond a certain point. Unfortunately, this threshold was crossed in human prehistory when the wooly mammoth and the dinosaurs were also hunted to extinction.

Free market capitalism teaches us how to better our lives by reaching out and taking in the most efficient and productive way we can. Capitalism, though, is very bad at teaching us when to refrain from taking. History illustrates that the destruction of the commons will not be stopped by shame, moral admonitions, or cultural mores anywhere near so effectively as it will be by the will of the people expressed as a proactive mandate – in other words, by government.

Foreign fishing fleets unquestionably played an important role in the devastation of the cod stocks along our coasts, but Canada must also share a significant portion of the blame. While Canada criticized over-fishing by foreign fleets, it also ignored warnings from both its own scientists and an independent review of the northern cod stocks that clearly indicated a disaster looming. As usual, they did nothing until it was too late!

What went wrong? Why have the cod and so many other species been fished to the point of extinction? There is more than enough blame to be shared by all the fishing nations for sure, but in my estimation the disaster may be summed up in three words – protein, profit and plunder. The fishing nations were greedy and over-fished the stocks as they ignored the regulations that they themselves had put in place to maintain a sustainable industry. Technology became devastatingly efficient, though we cannot blame the ecological disaster on technology. The blame must be shared by governments, fish processors and fishermen.

Governments refused to implement tough conservation measures despite the mounting evidence of declining yields. Fish processors were driven by profits and greed while deep sea trawler captains regularly underreported catches and discarded at sea as a means of maximizing the dollar value of each voyage.

So there you have it – a simple theoretical explanation for the serious ecological disaster that began either with the advent of capitalism and/or the creation of man. Whichever came first! It will end with the total collapse of our current ecological disorder. That prediction is precipitated by the fact we can easily level blame for our past mistakes on others, and even accept some responsibility ourselves, but seldom do we change our abhorrent ways.

That is the real catastrophe in this whole situation – we really don’t have enough common sense to know the consequences of our actions or the conscience to give a damn. After all, common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and being responsible for doing things as they ought to be done. In this case it may be easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we will never dodge the consequences of doing so.