The tragedy of the commons, yes, but is the government our only hope?

Alex Masters’ article in Islander VI has good points and bad points; a more exhaustive discussion of both you’ll have to wait for, as it’ll be up on Creational Story whenever the posting schedule allows. Today, I’ll be focusing on a question he brings up by implication and which, as the full response will show, I disagree with his conclusion on (probably; he does not directly address it). The question is: “Is the government the best agent to handle the economic commons, such as utilities, radio frequencies, fishing rights, water reserves, and the like?”

Ought – The Morals

The government has no positive right to handle such matters; they are not within its assigned demesne. I do not believe it outright evil for the government to handle such matters, however, provided they stay within a boundary. That boundary, unfortunately, is most difficult for a government to avoid in practice, both because of practicality and because of human sinfulness.

The government has no authority to carry out this economic function; as such, it may not exercise authority in carrying it out, except as it would exercise authority over any economic actor. In other words, it has a moral duty not to use government power or authority in carrying out its administration of the commons, except in preventing theft and otherwise enforcing the laws applicable to a private enterprise. The government must proceed in handling the commons as if it were a private corporation.

Such a divorce from power is very difficult in practice, not the least because being a part of the government, the bearer of the sword (Rom. 13:1-7), implies to men some connection with the sword. Moreover, the presence of the power to coerce is a constant temptation to the governors entrusted with the commons, a temptation to which many unwise people in the populace may encourage them, telling them to use their power to get a better outcome from the commons, regardless of the illegitimacy of that application of power (an illegitimacy which will curse the enterprise to lesser fruitfulness in the long term (Matt. 7:24-27).

As such, while it is not integrally immoral to place the stewardship of the commons in the civil government’s hands, such a trust is imprudent. Civil government, like church government and family government, does not prosper when loaded with duties not integral to its God-given nature. The question is: do we have something else that could work at least as well?

Is – An Alternative

Ownership of the commons resides, I believe, in the people domiciled (i.e. those who are residents for the long-term) in the area it affects, on grounds similar to those expressed in this article. Moreover, the commons are typically invulnerable to competition or at least hostile; setting up two separate systems to deliver electricity is obviously economically impractical, with an impossible price of entry (to reach economy of scale). In other words, these are often natural monopolies and they tend to be what might be called a collective monopsony- an economic sector with only one buyer, even if that buyer is the people-as-a-whole.

The government in our modern society acts as the people’s representative-bargainer, buying on their behalf. But…

We really have no reason to make the civil government our only public-scale institution. While such does not exist to my knowledge apart from government participation, in principle a people could form a corporation in which long-term residents would control the use of the commons via voting, with membership in the corporation being accorded to those affected by the common good. The civil government’s role then would be minimal and exerted through the judicial system righting wrongs (such as enforcing the voting membership of one affected, when the corporation sought to unjustly exclude him, or ensuring the protection of private property from the corporation, including in enforcing fines for damages its decisions cause).

Such a corporation would have no coercive power except as issues from its necessary economic role, would be bound by justice not to refuse normal interaction to any of the people whose ownership right it represents (or legal sojourners, permitted by the people and given certain rights to the commons thereby), and would be accountable to the people who own its stewarded common, provided they took care to keep that control.

This alternative avoids the pitfalls of trusting civil government described above. It requires, of course, much development to become a practical possibility; as Masters observes in politics, such a system is complex (and such a corporation would be political, though not a part of the civil government, by reason of its public scale). Nevertheless, it more closely accords to God’s design for our lives than the current corrupted cludge.

God bless.