The tragedy of the commons revisited : Hardin meets Ostrom

Abstract

Hardin’s seminal 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons” has generally been interpreted as advocating the enclosure or privatisation of the commons as the only means of conserving it. It will be argued that this interpretation with its exclusive emphasis on “the commons” fails to address what is actually at stake for Hardin – “the tragedy” of the recalcitrant belief in limitless economic growth. This article revisits Hardin’s essay and its critical reception to refocus our attention on its actual object of critique: the limitless growth incentive. If it is this capitalist logic that leads to ruin, as Hardin maintains, he could not have meant to advocate this same logic with its emphasis on property rights as a way to avert the tragedy. Nobel Laureate in Economics, Elinor Ostrom’s research refutes Hardin’s draconian pessimism by unearthing how numerous communities across the world had been deftly avoiding the tragedy of the commons for centuries. She investigated collaborative management systems across the globe in which communities have successfully preserved a shared resource and provided for their members without relying on privatisation or top-down government control. More than merely providing empirical counter-evidence, Ostrom discovered that humans have a much more complex motivational structure and a far greater capacity to solve social dilemmas than posited in earlier rational-choice theory with its assumption of egoistic, self-interested individuals who maximise utility. Hence, rather than being diametrically opposed, it is argued that Ostrom discovered the solution to the problem that Hardin in part misdiagnosed.