POSTSCRIPT
presents no problem to the theory of
The tragedy of the unmanagedcommons
n science, as in other human endeav-
Ibyours, progress is sometimes delayed
a ‘double-take’, to borrow a term from
the comic theatre. The message is first
met with silence, only later to be followed
by a painful dawn of understanding.
Recall the silence that greeted Mendel’s
theory of heredity in 1866. Not until 1900
did three scientists experience a double-
take and alert the world to genetics. Delay
of the ‘take’: 34 years.
Human ecology furnishes another
example. In 1833 William Forster Lloyd
published his Oxford lecturesr. Little
notice was taken of this work until 1968,
when I expanded the theory in my essay,
‘The tragedy of the commons’z. Contribu-
ting to the long neglect, no doubt, was a
43-word summary in a massive review
published in 1953 by the United Nations3.
This book, the work of an anonymous
committee, had the thrust of Lloyd’s
argument exactly wrong4. Duration of
the ‘double take’: 135 years.
The intellectual climate of the times no
doubt contributed to the delay. Laissez-
faire was the dominant attitude after
Adam Smith published The Wealth of
Nations in 1776. The prevailing spirit was
wholly optimistic and non-interventionist.
Let each man pursue his own interest,
economists said, and the interests of all
will be best served in the long run.
Not necessarily, said Lloyd. Let a
number of herdsmen turn their cattle
loose in a pasture that is jointly owned
and soon the common will be ruined.
Why? Because the pasture has a limited
‘carrying capacity’ (to use a modern
term), and each herdsman gets the
full benefit of adding to his herd, while
the disbenefits arising from over-
exploitation of the resource (e.g. soil
erosion) are shared by all the herdsmen.
Fractional losses are not enough to
deter aggressive cattle owners, so all
the exploiters suffer in an unmanaged
common5.
Alternatives to the unmanaged com-
mons can be classified under two head-
ings. In privatism, the resource is sub-
divided into many private properties.
Each owner is responsible for the man-
agement of his plot: those who manage
well, prosper; those who manage poorly,
suffer. In socialism, the resource is ‘com-
mon property’, but the property-owners
(‘the people’) appoint a manager to con-
trol its exploitation. Theoretically, an in-
competent manager can be fired. In prac-
tice, when ‘the people’ is a nation of many
millions, it is all too easy for empowered
managers (bureaucrats) to survive by
hiding their mistakes.
Both privatism and socialism can
either succeed or fail. But, except in the
smallest of communities, commonism
cannot succeed. An unmanaged common
fails because it rewards individual ex-
ploiters for making the wrong decisions
- wrong for the group as a whole, and
wrong for themselves, in the long run.
Freedom in the commons does not pro-
duce a stable prosperity. This is Lloyd’s
revolutionary point. Popular prophets,
intoxicated by laissez-faire, simply could
not hear Lloyd.
Apparent exceptions to the theory
need to be accounted for. First, a trivial
case. When a resource is present in abun-
dance, an unmanaged common may actu-
ally be the most efficient. The general
rule, ‘freedom of the seas’, led for cen-
turies to the economical exploitation of
oceanic fisheries.
Second: ‘scale effects’ must be kept
in mind. People of the Hutterite faith in
northwestern United States and adjacent
Canada live by the Christian ideal that
(ironically) Karl Marx expressed best:
‘From each according to his abilities, to
each according to his needs’. Farms are
owned in common: and everybody is
supposed to pitch in and do his share of
the work, while taking out no more than
a fair share of the products. Conscientious
Hutterites make a nominally unmanaged
commons work - but only so long as the
operational unit is less than 150 people.
As the number approaches this, more
and more commune members shirk their
tasks. (Perhaps we should say a com-
munity below 150 really is managed -
managed by conscience.)
If such devout and hard-working
people cannot make an unmanaged com-
mon work, there is no reason to think
that anyone can. And it’s a long way
from 150 to the millions that make up a
modern nation. Scale effect rules out the
unmanaged commons as an important
political possibility in the modern world.
Modern nations are a changeable hodge-
podge of socialism and privatism.
Some ecologists have failed to see
subtle signs of management in traditional
societies. For instance, the survival of
the Turkana people in Africa under a
system of common ownership of grazing
was recently cited as an instance of the
success of commonism6. Yet the same
account noted that access to resources
was effectively controlled by the elders
of the tribe. Such a managed commons
C 1994. Elsevier
unmanaged commons.
The survival of today’s industrialized
nations is now threatened by a different
sort of commonization. Decades of well-
intentioned propaganda in favor of a
‘world without borders’ have stripped
sophisticated moderns of psychological
defences against truly entropic forces.
‘To each according to his needs’ im-
plies that needs create rights. Such rights
can be fulfilled on a global scale only
if national borders are effectively liqui-
dated. The resulting poverty will accel-
erate the destruction of environmental
wealth. Gresham’s Law of economics -
‘bad money drives out good’ - has, under
a global system of laissez-faire, its cog-
nate in the environmental sphere: ‘Low
environmental standards drive out high’.
Poverty displaces wealth - globally.
‘To each according to his needs’ is an
immensely seductive phrase to religious
people, but in a world without national
population controls it is a sure recipe
for disaster. Those who are really con-
cerned with the environment - concerned
with the well-being of posterity - must
give the carrying capacity of the environ-
ment precedence over discontinuous hu-
man needs, however much these needs
may tug at our heartstrings. Of every im-
pulse to globalize wealth the ecologist
must ask his ultimate question, ‘And
then what?’ What happens after global-
ized wealth degenerates into globalized
poverty? What happens then to the en-
vironment for which posterity will hold
us responsible?
Garrett Hardin
Dept of Biologicul Sciences, University of
California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
References
Lloyd, W.F. (1833) Lectures on Population,
Value, PoorLaws and Rent [Fats. edn (1968);.
Augustus M. Kelley
Hardin, G. (1968) Science 162, 1242-1248
United Nations (1953) The Determinants ond
Consequences of Population Trends, United
Nations
Hardin, G. (1993) Liorng Within Limrfs. Oxford
University Press
Hardin, G. (1991) in Commons Without Tragedy
(Andelson, R.V.,ed.). pp. 162-185,
Shepheard-Walwyn
Monbiot, G. (1994) .%I.Am January 140
Scienw Lttl 199