Introduction:

Dear Friends, there is a literary genre in literature, a way of using and writing language that presents a hypothetical situation in order to teach some important/ lessons of life. The Bible does that a lot; and calls them parables. But, it is not only the Bible that creates and presents hypothetical situations to teach lessons of life; other sciences do it. This morning, under the tragedy of the commons, we shall look at a non-biblical parable: a non biblical instance of the presentation of a hypothetical situation of economics that teaches lessons for coexistence, mutual ventures and the protection of common interests. We shall then go on to look at how the tragedy of the commons finds analogies in the administration and the exercise of leadership of states and international bodies and situations. This should dispose us to describe some principles which spawn off coefficients of leadership for the common good!

The Reality/Existence and Forms of Commons:[1] What are they?

The Industrial Revolution which began in Great Britain in 1760 had spread into the rest of Europe and north America by the middle of the subsequent century (1820-1840). The accompanying agrarian revolution and its agrarian culture quickly replaced the Feudal system, only to quickly adapt to the euphoria and optimism of the development of machines and industrialization in the shadow of capitalism. But an experience of the agrarian culture, in the form of the stipulation and holding of open access resources/spaces, called “commons” persisted and metamorphosed into different confraternities and solidarity groupings to ensure people’s access to their means of livelihood!

Commons were, in normal practice, as in Anglo-Saxon communities, a shared resource, which is co-owned, co-organized and administered by its users and or stakeholder communities in a well-organized community land management (regulatory) structures for mutual sustenance. It could be a ‘thing’, an activity, space, resource or their combination whose “commoning”involved the maintenance and co-production of that resource, and a mode of governance. It involved the pooling/mutualizing of a resource, whereby individuals exchange with the totality of an eco-system. As such, commons and “communing” served as a way of distributing the fruits of a resource: a mode of exchange.  

The commons evolved from (pre-capitalist) natural resource commons that kept people close to their source of livelihood. This coexisted often with other cultural commons, such as folklore, folk knowledge (savoir-faire). With the emergence of capitalism and the markets, commons and commoning took the form of social and solidarity groups (social commons), such as guilds of craftsmen, merchants etc., where “welfare” systems were mutualized and self-governed.With the emergence of markets and capitalism into ascendency, and with it land enclosures, workers and former landless people of commons were estranged from their source of livelihood. In their vulnerability they formed worker cooperatives and unions, as forms of social commons. With welfare state, the administration of most commons were taken over by the State (state-ified); and it is debated, whether “social security systems” are not commons governed by the State.

So, commons are formed to organize mutual trust structures which serve to safeguard mutual access to livelihood and social securities for the commoners. Commons, commoning and commoners, therefore, are about securing livelihood, social security through mutual trust and assistance (fraternity). But what could go wrong?

The Tragedy of the Common:

In 1833, the challenge of the fair use and administration of commons led the English economist, William Forster Lloyd, to publish a pamphlet which included a hypothetical case of an unregulated common which would be destroyed by its overuse. The hypothetical case of Lloyd was a situation of cattle herders sharing a common parcel of land on which they were each entitled to let their cows graze, (as was the custom in English villages). There was an agreement about how many animals each family would have grazing on the parcel of land held in common. If a herder put more than his allotted number of cattle on the common, ”overgrazing” could result. For each additional animal, a herder could receive additional benefits, and he could argue that he had the right to this additional benefit. But, as a result of the exercise of the right to this additional benefit, the whole group shared the resulting damage to the commons (negative externality, as economists would call it). And if all herders made this individually rational economic decision (of their right to increase benefit), the common could be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all. This was a hypothetical case which had lessons to tell and to teach. It was a parable! And Forster Lloyd used it to illustrate, in his day (1833), how for economic benefits, the abuse of rights could happen.

The Boston Common:  

A century later (1968) and with reference to another common, the Boston common, an ecologist, Garret Hardin referred to Lloyd’s hypothetical case of a detrimental treatment of the commons to write about “the tragedy of the commons”.[2]

(The Boston Common these days is a fifty-acre public park in downtown Boston; but its name and its public purposes date back to the 17^th century, when an English settler, William Braxton, sold 44 acres of his 50-acre property to the Governor (1634). The property became the town commons of the Puritans in the Boston area; and until 1830, the parcel of land, called common, was used by many families as pastureland for cattle. In the early years of the use of the common, as pastureland (1646), grazing was limited to seventy (70) cows at a time. When, however, rich and affluent families brought large herds to pasture on the common, there was an overgrazing and a subsequent collapse of the common, as pastureland).

It was at the collapse/ failure/ cessation of the pastureland to serve as a common for the use/needs of the community that inspired the ecologist, Garret Hardin, to write about the tragedy of the commons.

Garret was an ecologist, and he wanted to make a point for sustainable development, namely, the need to protect creation/nature from uncontrolled exploitation of its resources, and to control the increaseof population.[3] For this Garret would later be accused of having been an eugenicist. But, he sought to illustrate the argument that free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately reduces the resource through over-exploitation, temporarily or permanently. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals or groups, each of whom is motivated to maximize use of the resource to the point in which they become reliant on it, while the costs of the exploitation are borne by all those to whom the resource is available (individuals, communities, etc: again, an instance of negative externality).[4]

So, Garret’s conclusion is: “Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons”.

Lessons of a Parable/Hypothetical Case of “Tragedy of the commons”:

As we have observed already, Garret lamented the collapse of the common for ecological reasons; but it is possible, already now, to describe what the tragedy consisted in: It was “Greed”! Greed prevented a common resource/common endowment from fulfilling its purpose, namely, from serving the common needs of the commoners. For, if individuals, acting in rational self-interest and even by right, claimed that all members in a group can use common resources for their own gain and with no regard for others, all resources would cease to be truly common, serving the commoners. They will eventually be depleted; and when they are depleted, the problem of under investment comes up: namely, who will finance replanting, restoration and maintenance? It is a conflict for resources between individual interests and the common good; and a popular commons’ dilemma is a social dilemma in which people’s short-term selfish interests are at odds with long term interest and common good of the group.

Clearly then, the tragedy of the commons is an economics problem in which every individual has an incentive to consume a resource, but at the expense of every other individual—with no way to exclude anyone from consuming. The ensuing social and political problem is that either each individual is incentivized to act in a way that will ultimately be harmful to all individuals, or that the tragedy becomes a pretext for Government or powerful private companies to introduce regulatory agents to exploit resources or outsource them.  So, the lesson is clear: Self-interest alone cannot guide decision making when it comes to resources which serve a group.!

One thing was clear, therefore, for Garret: in the use of commons, one cannot rely on conscience as a means of policing commons, because this favours “selfish” individuals over those who are more altruistic; and this is really the tragedy, and the reason for me to complement Garret’s presentation of the tragedy of the commons:

Garret entitled his essay: “the Tragedy of the Commons”, but did not pay much attention to the specific sense of the word, tragedy, which he had used. For, tragedy derives from the Greek word: “tragoedia”. It was the name of atheatrical performance in ancient Greece in which flaws[5] in a character combined with fate to bring about his/her ruin. Human flaws, often hubris, caused the ruin of noble men/women and their noble projects. (cf. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a later example of the Greek literary genre, “tragoedia”).

The flaw(s)in one’s character that cause(s) one’s ruin in Greek tragoedia[6] corresponds to the “selfishness” that Garret mentions. But he does not pay much attention to this; for it would have underlined how virtue and the moral disposition of people: such as, fairness, justice, solidarity, sympathy, are useful in the leadership and the management of commons, beside external regulatory bodies.

This, dear friends, has been a reading of Garret’s Tragedy of the Commons; and it is about what can happen when people/persons, with their hubris/flaws, come together to form commons to hold and to administer common resources for the common good. The hubris tends to ruin things!

Analogical Experiences of the Tragedy of the Commons in our Day:

Analogies to the commons and their tragedy exist everywhere: Look at the current climate and ecological crisis; look at the mineral/gold exploitation in Ghana; look at the state of rivers; look at the Bukavu region in the DRC; look at Sierra Leone that has no tropical forest anymore etc. But, a common analogy of the tragedy of the commons is a free state or an independent nation whose people freely constitute and choose for themselves a leadership and administrative structures, under whom they mutually work in expectation of mutual flourishing and the attainment of the goods of the earth, but receive only negative externalities: air pollution in India and China, rivers reduced to puddles in Ghana, Kilimanjaro without its icecap in Tanzania etc.

So, “living in world of greed, but longing for a world of good, what to do? What leadership helps?

Leadership for the Common good and Integral flourishing of People:

Living in a world of greed, but longing for a world of good, in light of the tragedy of the commons, will seems to require a leadership for stewardship and protection that is deeply rooted in transcendental and integral humanism: a sense of human life that does not only respond to a vocation live on earth and for one’s self, but to a vocation to live also for others and for God, and in a way that satisfies all his/her aspirations (social, religious, cultural, occupational, health, educational etc.).

The exercise of leadership from such an understanding of human life leads first and foremost to the need to discover the hubris that is one’s self: the need to know one’s self. This disposes one better to understand what the human person is when he/she leads and when he/she is led; when he/she governs and when he/she is governed! As you can see, a lot of our socio-economic (politics included) issues are deeply anthropological; they have to do with the human person who harbours hubris deep within his/her heart or who lives under the bondage of sin, as Christian would put it.

Leadership from and for this genus of people is a supernatural task. That is why leaders and kings/rulers in the past were anointed: they were approximated to the divinity with their anointing, because rule of any kind was divine function.

What I shall proceed to do now is to introduce you to a set of principles: social principles from my area of work in the Vatican, with which we seek to position leaders: leaders of governments, leaders of Mining Companies, leaders of Oil and Gas Industries, CEOs of Companies and enterprises etc. for a credible exercise of their roles by helping them answer the question: what is the man?  For, people responsible for public authority must have a valid conception of the human person and of the common good, to promote and implement “the sum of those conditions which permit and foster in human beings the integral development of their persons” (Mater et magistra, n.51).

Human Person and Human Dignity^[7]:

A leader must be prophetic in his knowledge of himself/herself and others. He must know and understand four basic things about himself and the people he serves:

1. They are Persons. They have the dignity of a personhood or Personality, which is a supreme social principle. No human government or institution confers dignity on another. People are born with it. A Government only protects and nurtures it.
2. The free development of the human person is the central measure of social order. A social order is flawed, if it does not promote people’s free development.
3. The dignity of persons is the basis of all their rights!
4. Though persons and individual, people exist as relational beings. Persons are made for relationship in which they develop their humanity and dignity.

Created in the image of God (Gen 1:27), every man, woman and child possesses the dignity of personhood; and when, Scripture, for example, presents brotherhood (sisterhood) as the basis of the human family, then it underlines the common dignity of all persons (Eph. 1:5; Rm 8:29).^[8] No person has more intrinsic dignity than the other. Therefore, ideally, no human activity of any kind may cause a “deficit in basic human dignity” of a person, such as impoverishment, enslavement of persons, or the privation of freedom of any kind. In this sense, personal advancement and progress, as the realization of human flourishing, wellbeing, or dignity, must apply to everyone. Any true development of human potential must be universal: it must be a development of what every person possesses by nature, namely human dignity.^[9] Each and every person is also an end in themselves, never merely an instrument, valued only for utility’s sake (labour force). A person, therefore, is not something, but someone,^[10] the realization of whose dignity is his/her vocation: a vocation to integral human development.^[11]

Summary:

•  Is human freedom enhanced or degraded?
• Are human rights fully respected?
• Are opportunities fair and equally accessible?
•  Are negative externalities borne fairly by the beneficiaries

o  The Common Good:  deriving from the dignity and equality of every person is the principle of the common good. The common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”. A powerful synonym for the common good is ‘integral human development’, a central and unifying principle of social ethics”.[12] It encompasses the good of each person, of the whole person, especially in his/her threefold fundamental relationships (physical-natural, social and spiritual), and those of all people. It is the goal or the responsibility, of a group or community, therefore, to ensure the conditions that guarantee the personal, familial and associative good of its members,^[13] allowing them to live a dignified life and to realize their full and personal integral development. Aristotle envisioned this;^[14] and Popes in the Church have called in every society for “men invested with public authority” who “take account of all those social conditions which favour the full development of the human personality”.^[15]

Summary:

• Are social values uplifted or neglected?
• How specifically does the community benefit?
• Is others’ participation included or excluded?
• Are persons’ capabilities allowed to thrive?

• Solidarity: is the form taken by the relational obligation to care for common interests. It is rooted in the notion of the fraternity of the human family and its consequent living of social love.^[16] It is, thus, an active commitment towards the common good that tangibly expresses love of the other and concern for his/her social condition. And such “gestures of generosity, solidarity and care well up within us, because we were made for love”, according to Pope Francis.^[17].Indeed, solidarity may entail a sense of compassion, but it is really, according to Pope John Paul II, “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all…”^[18] Solidarity, when it is enabled to build a solidarity-based society engenders and defends the effective conditions of everyone’s free participation in the common work of society.^[19] It is ultimately, the primary way of fulfilling one’s personal responsibility towards the common good of other persons and of creation (integral ecology).

Summary:

• Are other persons respected or commodified?
• Is the social impact unifying or divisive?
• How is nature’s bounty valued and preserved for future generations?
• Will this investment grow or fray social trust?

• Social Justice: another form that the relational obligation to care for common interests takes is Justice, especially, Social Justice. As relational beings, Justice is an inescapable virtue for every person. It is respect for the demands of relationship in which we live. While general justice (commutative, legal) regulates social relationships according to the criterion of observance of the law” and safeguards, thus, the individual value of the person, his/her dignity and rights from the exclusive criteria of utility and ownership, Social Justice is more particularly related to the social question: our living with others in societ;and it opens up justice for the new horizon of solidarity and love.[20]

Summary:

• How will inequality be ameliorated?
• Are stakeholders heard and heeded?
• Have the excluded, the most vulnerable, or those at the margins been recognized and respected?
• Are the expected outcomes ethically inspiring?

• Subsidiarity: if citizens, corporations, and groups within a community can contribute to the common good, then it behooves the community (its government/authority) to enable them to do so. Persons should be made protagonists of their growth and wellbeing. This principle is imperative because every person, family and intermediate group has something original to offer to the community”.^[21] This principle is also an expression of the principle of dignity, in the sense that it appreciates the worth of each person, enabling their participation in the common social agenda.^[22] Thus, subsidiarity calls for respect – an enabling respect and support, by larger and more remote entities, for the initiative, freedom and responsibility of the smaller, more local entities to the point of assuming the risk of their decisions.

This is very significant, for it is what distinguishes subsidiarity from delegation. In delegation, the larger entity cedes part of its responsibility, but remains close and ready to take it back, if necessary. In subsidiarity, the larger entity makes sure that the smaller one is informed of the larger entity’s goals, in which it shares and for which it is equipped and given training tools to enable it to assume responsibility. When the smaller entity is so enabled and equipped, the larger entity allows the smaller one to take decisions, the larger entity respects the competency of the smaller one and allows it to act without interference.

The smaller entity is made more responsible, which means, more respected, more appreciated and given more value!

Summary:

• Does governance empower community-level decisions?
• Are risks mapped to include social and local threats or implications?
• Does governance accountability engender widespread social harmony?
• Have those most impacted had their say?

• Integral Ecology: Another guiding concept that enables a leader to gain a synthetic vision of the environment of the exercise of leadership is integral ecology. It expresses the inter-connectedness and the inter-relatedness of all created reality. In this sense, Pope Benedict writes: “The Book of Nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development”.^[23] Ultimately, then, integral ecology serves to broaden the scope and vision of the application of the common good to all that is encompassed by care for our common home,^[24] and the ethical challenge of maintaining its various dimensions and parts connected and protected from economic interests and the “danger constituted by utopian and ideological visions”of the human person and nature.^[25] 

Summary:

• How is the whole human person effected? Are social relations strengthened or weakened?
• Are the criteria of integral development met in its human, social, and ecological dimensions?
• Are quantitative and qualitative metrics providing systemic inputs for evaluating results?
• What do we owe future generations—for their sustainability, dignity, and common good?

Leadership to Promote Transition from Political economy to Civil economy:

(Overcoming the Tragedy: Hubris and the Economic Gain Factor):

As intuited in Lloyd’s hypothetical case and in Garret’s tragedy of the commons, the problems and challenges which the endurance and survival of commons and similarly designated resources and spaces for populations faced and continue to face are deeply related with economic gain and the hubris that drives it. As we have seen, commoners may want to increase their benefits by exceeding their quotas of animals for grazing, even if that causes overgrazing, puts the commons at risk and causes negative externalities to other commoners. Similarly, more powerful land owners may appropriate commons through enclosures. This was sometimes referred to as the “Theft of the commons”;[26] but the tragedy of the commons is a problem in economics that occurs when individuals neglect the well-being of society, the common good, in pursuit of personal gain; and this is related with two currents that have developed in Economics: Economics for gain (Political Economics) and Economics for the person /humanity(Civil Economics).

• Political Economics and Civil Economics and the Tragedy of the Commons:[27]

Both political economics and civil economics were means for Europe’s exiting of “feudal society”. But they part company on account of the extent to which they place the human person at the centre of their policies and principles or pursue interests.

• Thus for Adam Smith[28]  and his followers (political economics), economics must be free of all human relations and sentiments which cannot be reduced to market instruments and ingredients. While Adam Smith recognizes that human beings have a natural tendency towards relationality (relationship-building), sociability, sympathy etc., he does not consider them relevant matter for the functioning of markets, unless they can be made instruments of the market. Indeed, for Smith, benevolent feelings and behaviours complicate the functioning mechanism of the market, which would work all the better the more instrumental the relationships within it are. There is no civil society without markets; and the market is a means of building authentically social relations, but it is not in itself a place of relationality.

That mercantile relations are impersonal and mutually indifferent is not a negative aspect for Smith. Rather, it is a positive and civilizing aspect, for it is only in this way that the market produces prosperity and development. Accordingly, friendship and market relations belong to two distinct and separate areas. The market is civilization, but it is not friendship, non-instrumental reciprocity, fraternity.

• By contrast with and as an alternative to Adam Smith’s school of economics (political economics) today is the civil economics of the Italian school of economics in Naples, under Genovesi. Civil economics is essentially “a person-centred economics”. It extols mutual assistance, based on love (philia, agape), over Adam smith’s mutual benefit, based on contract. Civil economics taught that the market, the business, the economy are in themselves also places of friendship, reciprocity and gratuity. It held that the economy is civil, the market is life in common, and they share the same basic law: mutual assistance. The civil economy reminds us that a good society is certainly the fruit of the market and freedom; but there are needs, which can be traced back to the principle of fraternity: to mutuality. The civil economy rather proposes a multi-dimensional humanism, in which the market is seen as a civil player, like the others; and with its openness to the principles of reciprocity and gratuitousness, it contributes to the construction of society (civitas) and its mutual flourishing/common good.  

• Leadership in the market-place economics must promote a person-centred economics and not a person-commodity economics. The leadership for stewardship and protection of commons applies analogously to the leadership and governance of state, and it must help promote virtue and conscience, as the ultimate policing of civil righteous conduct.

Thank You for your very kind attention!!

This lecture was delivered by his Eminence Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson at the UPS Leadership Lecture Series, Accra, 09/11/2022.

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[1] Michel Bauwens, The History and Evolution of the Commons, P2P foundation, 2017. (Https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017.03-10/history-and-evolution-of –the –commons/)

[2] Since the publication of Garret’s article, others have argued that the caption of his article should have read: “The tragedy of the Unregulated Commons”. (Hesse, Stephen (2006-07-26). “Will commons sense dawn again in time?”, The Japan Times Online. Search.japantimes.co.jp. Retrieved 22 October 2013. 

[3] Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, in: Science, 162 (3859)1243-1248. Cf. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in his book, Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1970), and the Club of Rome’s report, the Limits to Growth (1972) sought to remind humanity, generally, of the finite nature of the world and its resources, calling for de-growth. 

[4] Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tragedy_of_the_commons

[5] Garret does not pay much attention to this ancient content of the expression (tragedy), but it expresses the hubris that explains the decisions that ruin the commons.  

[6] Tragedy, as Aristotle defines it, results when a fatal flaw in character causes an otherwise good and moral person to make an error of judgement.  Often, it is hubris or self-pride that undermines the common good, eliciting pity and fear (cf. Dr. Annis Prat, “The Tragedy of the Commons: Now on a Planetary Level – What to do”, Impackter 2022.  ( https://impakter.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-now-planetary-level-what-to-do/)

 

^[7] The term human dignity comprises the dignity of each human being, of each human community and dignity in human rights.

^[8] The Greek adelphos/adelphē (brother/sister) means “from the same womb”. Originating from the same womb, they are equal in dignity (Cf. Fratelli Tutti, 22, 98).

^[9] Cf. The purpose of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as formulated by Ban Ki Moon at the UN General Assembly in 2015 (footnote 22).

^[10]Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 357.

^[11] Cf. Caritas in veritate, 18.

^[12] Laudato sì, 156.

^[13] Cf. Compendium, 61.

^[14] According to one common contemporary usage, rooted in Aristotelian philosophy, common good refers to “a good proper to, and attainable only by the community, yet individually shared by its members”. Members of society are also involved in a relationship that Aristotle describes as a form of friendship. This friendship consists in citizens wanting one another’s wellbeing, their being aware of the fact that their fellow citizens want their wellbeing, and their taking part in a shared life that answers to this mutual concern. (Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V. 2 (1130b 25); VIII, 14 (1163b 5-15). For the same purpose, Saint Pope John XXIII identified in society “men invested with public authority” who “take account of all those social conditions which favour the full development of the human personality” (Mater et Magistra, 48, 65; Pacem in Terris, 58).

^[15]  Mater et Magistra,.65; Pacem in Terris, 58. 

^[16]  Fratelli Tutti, 94, 99; especially, 106, 142. Indeed, “Social love’ makes it possible to advance towards a civilization of love, to which all of us can feel called. Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world. No mere sentiment, it is the best means of discovering effective paths of development for everyone” (183).

^[17]  Laudato Si’, 58.

^[18] Sollecitudo Rei Socialis, 38.

^[19] Cf. Work as Key to the Social Question: The Great Social and Economic Transformations and the Subjective Dimension of Work, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2002), 356.

[20] Cf. Compendium, 201-203.

^[21] Cf. Compendium, 187.

^[22] Cf. Compendium, 186-189; Vocation of the Business Leader, 51-52.

^[23] Caritas in Veritate, 51.

^[24] Laudato Si’, 120, 138; cf. also Vocation of the Business Leader, 55.

^[25] Caritas in Veritate, 14, 22, 52.

[26] Eula Bliss, “The theft of the Commons”, The New Yorker, June 8, 2022.

[27] Cf. “Tragedy of the Commons: What It Means”, in Economics (investopedia.com)

[28] Cf. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, London 1759. The Wealth of the Nations, London, 1776;