A Libertarian Response to the Tragedy of the Commons
“How do you explain the libertarian response to the tragedy of the commons?”
Truthfully, the question took me off-guard. I was in a car with my coworkers after a long day of hiking and exploring Mughal architecture at Fatehpur Sikri. I was tired, hot, thirsty, and not expecting a political theory question.
“Uhh, I don’t know honestly, I don’t think I have a good response right now.”
Well, this is the response, albeit slightly delayed.
Firstly, for those that may not know, the Tragedy of the Commons is a philosophical concept primarily used in social science to describe the situation of a community consuming finite resources (you can find some good videos here and here explaining the concept). If you don’t want to watch those videos, the best explanation I can make it is the example of a fishing pond with a finite amount of fish that reproduce at a certain level (this is the example given in the TedX video). Essentially, multiple fishermen will fish at the pond to feed their family. Now, they know how many fish there are in the pond and the rate at which they reproduce. They also know the maximum number of fish each fisherman can carry home in order to maintain the pond sustainably. The tragedy comes from the innate desire of all humans to maximize their utility as much as they can. In this case, it means each fisherman will go over the sustainable limit in order to benefit themselves the most. Any fisherman that acts in the interest of sustainability, or chooses not to fish, will then lose out because of the others’ behavior. This means each fisherman is incentivized to overfish because not doing so will make them worse-off. This will eventually deplete the pond, meaning the fisherman have no source to fish.
My response to how libertarianism approaches the tragedy of the commons is from my own research and experiences, and I am not a trained political theorist, so I don’t know if this may sound correct or not, but it’s my perception of it.
How libertarianism approaches the tragedy of the commons is mostly through the lens of classical liberal theorists, especially of John Locke and his Second Treatise of Government (see chapter 5 of his treatise). In this, Libertarians advocate for the privatization of resources and property so that the owners are the stewards of those resources. This is to be preferred over government ownership which Libertarians believe is less efficient in being a steward to these resources than a private owner. This is assuming that these owners will cultivate and manage these resources efficiently so that they are able to benefit from it as well as their customers. (Side note: how this concept of private property is defined and how far it actually goes is a very interesting debate in Libertarianism. Many Libertarians will point to the Lockean Proviso as developed by Robert Nozick as a good example of turning common goods into private goods ethically, which could potentially be applied to this concept, though that would require much more conversation. Needless to say, it would be an interesting debate).
This is opposite of how most resources have historically been understood and only have recently been moving away from in that resources should be available to everyone and consequently are owned by everyone as a common good. For example, the Mississippi River is not owned by any one person or group, but rather by all Americans represented by our government who is responsible for its maintenance. Even before the government created agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service or the EPA, rivers like the Mississippi were never owned by one person or regulated by government, and citizens could freely move through its waters. This is a viewpoint maintained primarily by environmental activists, but one I and many others think shows the problem of common ownership. If everyone is entitled to the resource, then the resource will be totally consumed without some kind of control or consequence for abusing the resource. This is where government acts now through legally enforcing environmental law.
Remember the Dodo bird? The reason we no longer have the Dodo is because of the tragedy of the commons. Invasive species, habitat destruction, and hunting by mostly European sailors led to the extinction of the species. Massive hunting reduced the Passenger Pigeon from having a population in the tens of millions in the United States to being extinct by 1914. This destruction of wildlife has even garnered its own term called the Holocene Extinction, meaning wildlife destruction directly from human activity. The problem of resources being depleted is from over-consumption and the non-consequential approach humans have historically had to bad behavior perpetuated by the tragedy of the commons.
The solution to the tragedy of the commons is to remove the commons from the picture. These resources must be owned by someone for the sake of keeping these resources alive and healthy and counteracting man’s innate desire to consume everything. The debate surrounding resources and the tragedy of the commons now becomes who is able to better steward the resource? This means making sure the resource is not depleted by preventing over-exploitation and punishing bad behavior. Libertarians believe private ownership achieves this more efficiently and ethically. Environmentalists tend to favor “public” ownership through the government (though many I have seen still advocate for a common good approach).
To say definitively whether one is the best or not needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis, but for the most part, I think there is always a private sector option to most of what the government does, especially in this case. Looking at it theoretically, if the fish pond mentioned earlier was owned by one of the fisherman and they allowed people to fish at the pond, what would the incentive for the owner be in allowing the pond to be depleted? He is one of the fisherman, so it is in his best interest to maintain the pond. This can be done through rules he sets for fisherman at the pond, and consequences for breaking the rules. In this case, it could be stripping fishing rights to the pond, levying a fine, or if the breach is serious enough, legal action. The owner could also charge a fee to access the rights to fish, thus bettering the owner and allowing them to profit from the pond and potentially use the money to continually protect the pond.
Now, I do believe government is capable of doing this. This is why the US government has multiple agencies related to environmental protection and maintaining our forests and resources. Instead of a private owner, the government puts the pond under the US Fish and Wildlife service managed by a government employee. The reality, however, does not seem to show that the government is the best steward. For one, the government tends to treat natural resources as a public good, so it tends to not react or react inadequately when a problem arises. Many environmentalists often blame state and local governments for inactivity or favoritism when it comes to government management of natural resources. This is one aspect I believe environmentalists and Libertarians can agree on in that the current government is not the best steward. However, while environmentalists advocate for reforming government, Libertarians want to reduce government in this picture and give it over to private management.
When I say that private management is better than government management, this does not necessarily apply to only private companies or corporations. Rather, this may apply to NGO’s and non-profits that buy land in order to manage them. One example cited by Robert J. Smith of the Cato Institute in his article RESOLVING THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS shows the that nongovernmental organizations like the National Audubon Society do a better job of maintaining their wildlife refuges than many government refuges (pg. 457). His article also explains the history of the concept of commons goods and the tragedy of the commons within a Libertarian aspect, so I highly recommend reading it. It goes into much more detail and eloquence than what I could every write!
If these resources are to be managed by private enterprise, this is not to say government has no role in maintaining these resources. As almost all Libertarians will agree, one of the key roles of a limited government is to protect private property through the law. To say that the government will have no say is false as putting resources under private management is not mutually exclusive to government. The existence of government is what makes private property hold any weight because the act of having private property is enforced by government to protect the rights of citizens and their property (a very Lockean ideal). This would mean private property that is trespassed, over-exploited past the owner’s preference, and in violation of its established resource contracts would fall under legal protection of the owner by the US government, or any government where that land falls within. This also allows private owners to make a profit from the land where current government ownership is treated as a cost liability. I saw this first hand in my local community. For a long time, a local historical park was threatened with closure by the state government because it wasn’t making money for them, and they considered it a liability. Local community members ended up saving it, but there was a lot of talk of buying the park and privatizing it because of the potential it had in revitalizing the town (which only had about 900 people). I believe this approach can be applied to natural resources and nature reserves.
This explanation is just scratching the surface, but I hope this gives you an overview of what Libertarians view the tragedy of the commons (at least from my perspective).
