Ken Schoolland’s “The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey” was my first introduction to the tragedy of the commons. In the story, a lake that belongs to everyone has run out of fish and been turned into a dumping site. The lesson we learn is that when everyone owns something, no one takes care of it.

At first, I couldn’t think of any examples that related to me, so I read other sources, which cited an example such as “borrowing someone’s car.” At first, I didn’t understand -- why wouldn’t people treat other people’s property better than their own? My thinking was so counter to the tragedy of the commons that I skipped the chapter in utter confusion.

Ever since I was young, I would always take better care of someone else’s property than I would my own. If someone let me borrow a Gameboy game, I would return it with a protective case -- in spite of the fact that I didn’t borrow it with a case. If I made a mess at someone’s house, I would clean it up -- even though I rarely cleaned up messes at home. “I can live with that mess,” I said, “but there’s no way I’m making a mess at Thomas’ house.” Everything from school assignments to CD’s I would take care of someone else’s better than my own.

Maybe the tragedy of the commons is wrong, I thought. Maybe it doesn’t apply to some people. After all, my friends would clean their house every time I came over—but it wasn’t as clean every time they came home. However, at it half a year later, I realize that I had made several errors to reach this conclusion.

In the first example of borrowing someone’s car, or CD, or Gameboy game, the transaction in question was not just for the object itself. Rather, I was also conducting a transaction of my public image. Every transaction results in mutual beneficiaries, and my public image was one of them. I valued my public image over the Gameboy game case, so I traded my case in exchange for a positive public image. Because the viewer of my public image is the same person that I borrowed the game from, that person also received the game case.

This first perspective affirms that we engage in transactions that benefit ourselves, a process in which I had failed to include non-monetary items. However, that does not completely explain why I had trouble with the tragedy of the commons.

Borrowing someone else’s car was an easy example to counter the material explanation of the tragedy of the commons, because the end result was exactly the opposite of the intended lesson. I would treat someone else’s car better than my own. In this case, I knew exactly who the viewer of my public image was. The question the tragedy of the commons answers is not, “what happens to the property you borrow?” which refers to the car example, but instead, “what happens to property for the common public?”

The “tragedy of the commons” is most effective and indeed most useful, in explaining situations where a single participant cannot easily identify the viewer of the public image.

Going back to the lake Jonathan Gullible encountered, when one person took fish from the lake, he was engaging in a transaction where no one was reviewing his public image. He had no one but himself to judge how much fish he should take, and if he were patient enough wait for the fish to reproduce next season. Given my track record with caring for my own messes, I can now understand the problem with this situation and how the tragedy of the commons does describe human behavior. When no person directly receives his public image, one tends to neglect his public image, and therefore loses investment in the transaction. In other words, getting something for nothing.

Now that I understand this, I can see why the government can work so well at reducing individual liberties. When a government says it must restrict smoking to “private” areas, it hides under the guise of “public good.” No one is really held accountable—the government can point fingers at someone else. “The people” are really the ones we should behave for. The government dilutes the public image transaction with a lack of direct accountability.

“Everyone” operates on both sides of this transaction. The government taxes the people, meaning the people give away in this transaction, and “everyone” “benefits” from systems like the proposed rail. It’s hard to see who’s held accountable for what in this perspective. The government is the fostering place of the commons, and to avoid the tragedy, we must limit the government. Only real personal interaction results in productive beneficial work. Let’s keep life that way—interactions in win-win situations.

Reid Ginoza is an Intern with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and will be entering his Sophomore year at Bennington College in Vermont.

A Fresh Perspective is a project of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Submit proposed articles to mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com