Tragedy Of The Anti-Commons
ServiceSpace
--Nipun Mehta
2 minute read
Aug 25, 2008

 

One of the biggest challenges for a gift-economy is the "tragedy of the commons."  In today's society, though, we seem to have the opposite problem.  Michael Heller, in The Gridlock Economy, present the Tragedy of the Anti-Commons:

Start with something familiar: a commons. When too many people share a single resource, we tend to overuse it—we over-fish the oceans and pollute the air. This wasteful overuse is a tragedy of the commons. How do we solve such a tragedy? Often, by creating private property. Private owners tend to avoid overuse because they benefit directly from conserving the resources they control.

Unfortunately, privatization can overshoot. Sometimes we create too many separate owners of a single resource. Each one can block the others’ use. If cooperation fails, nobody can use the resource. Everybody loses. Consider the example of a brother and sister who jointly inherit the family home. “All of us as parents want to believe our children will be friendly when we’re gone,” says an estate planning expert, but leaving the house to the kids is “a sure recipe for disaster.” One wants to rent the house out; the other, tear it down. If they can’t strike a deal, neither can move forward. The house sits empty. That’s gridlock.

Heller points out that this gridlock is the root of many of our problems -- 25 new runways would eliminate air travel delays in America but we can't build them; 50 patent owners are blocking a major drug maker from creating a cancer cure, but they won't get out of the way; 90% of our broadcast spectrum sits idle in America, but we can't come to utilize it.  When too many people own pieces of one thing, whether physical or intellectual, cooperation breaks down, wealth disappears and everybody loses. Today's leading edge of innovation requires the assembly of separately owned resources, but "as the joke went, anyone can turn an aquarium into fish soup, the challenge is turning soup back into an aquarium."

 

Posted by Nipun Mehta on Aug 25, 2008