Post date: Oct 17, 2012 11:00:25 AM
In 1968, Garret Hardin published his article “The Tragedy of the Commons,” and 18 years later, Carol Rose (1986) wrote her essay “The Comedy of the Commons,” objecting him:
As will appear, service to commerce was a central factor in defining as “public” such properties as roads and waterways. Used in commerce, some property had qualities akin to infinite “returns to scale.” Thus here, the commons was not tragic, but comedic, in the classical sense of a story with a happy outcome. And customary doctrines suggest that commerce might be thought a “comedy of the commons” not only because it may infinitely expand our wealth, but also, at least in part, because it has been thought to enhance the sociability of the members of an otherwise atomized society.
This sets the stage for a return to the beach. I conclude by suggesting that in the twentieth century there may be other versions of the comedy of the commons, and other practices that share with commerce the power to enhance our sociability. We might even think that properties devoted to such noncommercial uses as recreation or speech could achieve their highest value when they are accessible to the public at large (p. 723).
And,
One can find analogies to scale returns in the doctrines of “inherently public property,” but this is more evident in the customary doctrines than in the doctrines relating to roads and waterways. The British courts’ acceptance of customary claims, especially those concerning recreation, suggested a rationale similar to scale economies. One example was the customary right claimed by some communities to hold periodic dances, a custom held good over a landowner’s objections. At least within the community, the more persons who participate in a dance, the higher its value to each participant. Each added dancer brings new opportunities to vary partners and share the excitement. British cases reveal other sporting and festive events that appeared to be part of some regular community gatherings. Activities of this sort may have value precisely because they reinforce the solidarity and fellow-feeling of the whole community; thus the more members of the community who participate, even if only as observers, the better for all.
In a sense, this is the reverse of the “tragedy of the commons”: it is a “comedy of the commons,” as is so felicitously expressed in the phrase, “the more the merrier.” Indeed, the real danger is that individuals may “underinvest” in such activities, particularly at the outset. No one, after all, wants to be the first on the dance floor, and in general, individuals engaging in such activities cannot capture for themselves the full value that their participation brings to the entire group. Here indefinite numbers and expandability take on a special flavor, relating not to negotiation costs, but to what I call “interactive” activities, where increasing participation enhances the value of the activity rather than diminishing it. This quality is closely related to scale economies in industrial production: the larger the investment, the higher the rate of return per unit of investment (pp. 767-8, original emphasis).
After 16 years since Rose’s essay, in the form of synthesizing ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’, the National Research Council (2002) edited the book titled The Drama of the Commons:
Three decades of empirical research have revealed many rich and complicated histories of commons management. Sometimes these histories tell of Hardin’s tragedy. Sometimes the outcome is more like McCay’s comedy. Often the results are somewhere in between, filled with ambiguity. But drama is always there (Dietz et al. 2002: 4).
On the other hand, Michael Heller (1998) published his thesis “The Tragedy of the Anticommons.” So far as I know, nobody has titled his/her work ‘The Comedy of the Anticommons,’ or ‘The Drama of the Anticommons.’
But notice that, arguing about the Central Park in New York City or Native American burial grounds in Arizona, ‘conservation easements,’ and the veto power of China, England, France, Russia, and United States in United Nations Security Council, M. Heller (2008: 48) has written as following:
The ‘comedy of the anticommons’ insight suggest that sometimes, for some resources, we should promote gridlock. Most of the time, for most resources, however, some positive level of use will be socially most valuable. Gridlock is rarely the optimum.
On ‘underuse’ rather than ‘gridlock,’ he has also written as below, just recalling the Central Park in New York City or Native American burial grounds in Arizona, and ‘conservation easements’:
The ‘comedy of the anticommons’ insight suggest that sometimes, for some resources, we should promote little or no use. Most of the time, for most resources, however, some positive level of use will be socially most valuable. Underuse is rarely the optimum (M. Heller 2009: xxiv).
When will the ‘Comedy of the Anticommons’ or ‘Drama of the Anticommons’ appears? ;)
APPENDIX:
Some quotations from Bonnie J. McCay (1996)
The National Research Council (Dietz et al.) (2002: 4) refers to B. J. McCay (1996). She use a phrase ‘comedy of the commons’ in the following manner:
The first is concerned with taking care of the fish (or birds or forests); the second with the pursuit of economic returns. Conservation in America has long been marked by tension between the two. But there is a third paradigm, “the social/community paradigm,” involving questions about distributional equity, community welfare, and other social and cultural benefits.
The “social/community” paradigm is absent in most discussions of tragedies of the commons and natural resource management. It is, however, expressed in the metaphor “comedies of the commons,” people as social beings, trying to come to some collective agreement about common problems (pp. 111-2).
The “tragedy of the commons” approach leads to arguments for strong, centralized governance or for privatization, letting the market do the job. From the revisionist point of view, a broader, more complex range of alternatives comes into view. These includes a stronger emphasis on the potentials of people as social actors to manage their affairs and on more decentralized and cooperative management, what is here meant by “comedy of the commons” (cf. Smith 1984; Rose 1986). Tragedy in the classic Greek sense is the drama of an individual with a tragic flaw or relationship with the gods who is inevitably propelled to some tragic destiny. In a comedy, people recognize that something is wrong and try, for better or worse (often “comically”), to do something about it (p. 117).
When I first ventured to use the metaphor “comedy,” what I had in mind was what M. Estellie Smith (1984) had defined as comedy in an encyclopedia’s version of classic Greek comedy: the drama of humans “as social rather than private beings, a drama of social actions having a frankly corrective purpose” (Smith 1984). It might be better then, to try the metaphor of “the romance” of the commons. In romance, conflict drives the narrative and is not overcome in the manner of neoclassical analysis (Donham 1990). Romance implies a far more complex development of character, situation, and plot and hinges upon the tension of not knowing what the outcome will be, but hoping for the best. As a literary metaphor, it comes closer to the anthropological endeavor (p. 123).
Here, she refers to “The Triage of the Commons,” a paper presented by M. Estellie Smith to annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, March 14-18, 1984, Toronto, Canada.
Relevant Note:
Relevant short note:
the First appearance of the word “Anticommons” ?
REFERENCES
- Dietz, Thomas., Nives Dolšak, Elinor Ostrom, and Paul C. Stern. 2002 “The Drama of the Commons,” in National Research Council (eds.) The Drama of the Commons, Washington, DC: National Academy Press: 3-35
- Hardin, Garrett. 1968 “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 [13 December 1968]: 1243-1248.
- Heller, Michael A. 1998 “The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets,” Harvard Law Review 111(3): 621-688.
- Heller, Michael. 2008 The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives, New York: Basic Books.
- Heller, Michael. 2009 “Introduction: Commons and Anticommons Reader,” in Michael Heller (ed.) Commons and Anticommons, Volume 1, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar: xi-xxvii.
- McCay, Bonnie J. 1996 “Common and Private Concerns,” in Susan Hanna, Carl Folke, and Karl-Göran Mäler (eds.) Rights to Nature: Ecological, Economic, Cultural, and Political Principles of Institutions for the Environment, Washington, D.C.: Island Press: 111-126.
- National Research Council (eds.) 2002 The Drama of the Commons. Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. E. Ostrom, T. Dietz, N. Dolšak, P.C. Stern, S. Stovich, and E. U. Weber, Eds. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
- Rose, Carol. 1986 “The Comedy of the Commons: Custom, Commerce, and Inherently Public Property,” The University of Chicago Law Review 53(3): 711-781.