Evolution & Trends Week 7 – Reading Reflection Essay – Feb. 17, 2008

“The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin

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Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” is an article about the dangers of human over-population. Hardin uses a metaphor of a common land used by farmers. As soon as one farmer adds more sheep to this common land, it affects the community. If farmers keep adding sheep, then the commons cannot be sustained.

The “commons” as Hardin explains, is the communal space that we all occupy. To keep the commons from failure, everyone should feel responsible for maintaining this space. Everyone should sacrifice to keep the commons from being overrun. They should also be conscious of their own actions and how their actions affect others. Because the commons is a finite resource, if everyone acts selfishly it will doom the community to failure. But inevitably someone will act in their self-interest  and the commons will be overrun. In addition, our society is built upon personal freedoms, which run against the requirements of maintaining the commons. There is no technical solution to this problem or “the tragedy” of the commons.

This metaphor can be applied to many other societal issues. Listed below are two examples: 1)  smoking in public places and 2) internet security.

Thank You for Not Smoking

As a society we believe in responsibilities and in certain rights and freedoms, but it gets a complicated when the action becomes more personal. Smoking is an example of an individual action that affects the community. Until recently, smoking was often cast as a personal choice that only affected the smoker and their pocketbook, when in reality smoking affects everyone around the smoker as well… not only with the unpleasant smell, but the amount it costs a society in health care bills from the second-hand smoke, decreased worker productivity (because of illness and death), and government regulation (How much should a pack of cigarettes be taxed? Who should be allowed to smoke? Where can cigarettes be sold?, etc.)

In this case the commons is being used as a trash can, so gradually legislation has been passed to ban smoking in many public spaces, thus reducing the effect of second-hand smoke on the community. In addition, cultural mores have changed so that it is no longer considered acceptable to smoke. However,  these laws combined with societal disapproval,  has denied someone’s freedom of choice. By adding in another law or another wall to the commons,  personal freedom is encroached.  However, the commons is better maintained.

A New Internet

The article “A New Internet” by John Markoff in this Sunday’s New York Times is about how the Internet is vulnerable to a malicious attack. Never built to carry the world’s communication and commerce, it was originally an academic and research network and expanded rapidly and haphazardly into this tremendous system. It never has had true security despite years of work on the issue. The current method of security is to create strong firewalls, but little else. Unfortunately, this allows an attacker to gain access to the “soft chewy center” once a firewall has been breached.

The alternate answer to this problem is to make a new Internet from scratch, one that is a world-wide “walled garden” of sorts, where a user would have to give up at least some of their anonymity for protection. Privacy, a dearly-held Internet (and American) belief, would have to be relinquished to a degree to have the network be secure. And that would be a big trade-off for many Internet users.

Here is another case where the commons (the Internet) might need to change and new rules and laws will have to be created (by removing anonymity) in order to keep it protected (from malicious attackers).  But the change in laws goes against a strongly held belief system by the users (about online freedom.) Markoff argues that will be hard to change the legacy of libertarianism of the Internet before a devasting attack has occurred. Hardin would argue however, that this triumph of “freedom” will most assuredly bring about ruin. Only by seeing the necessity of mutual responsibility and benefit (he calls it “mutual-coercion”) by giving up our dearly-held privacy in this case will we become truly free.

Additional thoughts

A couple of additional thoughts on Hardin’s essay:

1.  Hardin states that “education counteracts the natural tendency to do the wrong thing” (the “wrong thing” in this case being not being responsible to the commons.) There are plenty of well and/or over-educated people who believe that needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. For example, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations “invisible hand” theory (refuted by Hardin in this essay) states that decisions made by individuals will be the best decisions for an entire society… which goes against someone doing the “wrong” thing.

2.  Hardin focuses exclusively on people and government’s roles in decision-making. He doesn’t include other influential relationships, such as peers, family and parents, religious organizations, and other societal groups and institutions (like, say,  a motorcycle club) that might have authority with an individual. These relationships are also affected by the outcome of the commons.

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Hardin, G. (1968, Dec. 13) “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science, 162 (3859), 1243-1248.

Markoff, J. (2009, Feb. 15). “A New Internet?”.  The New York Times, pp. 1, 4.