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The Tragedy of the Commons · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us again, Jerry who And this
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Speaker 2: is stuff you should Know. That's right.
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Speaker 3: Another Econ edition. Typically not my favorite, but you know,
0:26
Speaker 3: this one I could wrap my head around for the
0:28
Speaker 3: most part.
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Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons why it's had
0:32
Speaker 2: such an enormous impact on the world. Yes, because it
0:35
Speaker 2: is so easy to wrap your head around. We should
0:39
Speaker 2: probably say, we're talking about the tragedy of the Commons.
0:42
Speaker 2: And for those of you who aren't familiar, it's this idea,
0:45
Speaker 2: this concept that if you have a shared resource a commons, say,
0:52
Speaker 2: and people are able to use it at their own
0:57
Speaker 2: leisure for their own purposes. Event as they seek to
1:02
Speaker 2: maximize their profits, they're going to overuse this commons and
1:07
Speaker 2: inevitably it'll be ruined because people can't have anything nice. Essentially,
1:13
Speaker 2: you know.
1:13
Speaker 3: It's funny, you're gonna laugh at me here, they're all
1:16
Speaker 3: gonna laugh at you. Central the central area of my
1:20
Speaker 3: high school was called the Commons. Yeah, and it just
1:24
Speaker 3: occurred to me thirty five years or so after I
1:26
Speaker 3: graduated that that's what that meant.
1:29
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, I thought you were going to say,
1:31
Speaker 2: like my teenage years were the tragedy of the comments.
1:34
Speaker 3: No, I just I don't know. I never thought about
1:37
Speaker 3: the word because it was when you're in high school,
1:38
Speaker 3: it's just sending the comments will meet the commons. But
1:41
Speaker 3: it never occurred to me that that's what that meant,
1:43
Speaker 3: just like a common area sure by everybody.
1:45
Speaker 2: It didn't either to me. I know exactly what you're
1:48
Speaker 2: talking about. There was, if not high school, then maybe
1:50
Speaker 2: middle school. There was some school where that was called
1:54
Speaker 2: that too. Yeah, and I wonder if it was like
1:56
Speaker 2: a surreptitious shot at kids, like they're all sheep, because
2:01
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true. But one of the major
2:05
Speaker 2: uses for commons traditionally has been for grazing. That's a
2:09
Speaker 2: really good example. If you've let a bunch of people
2:11
Speaker 2: graze on a shared resource, but they're taking what they
2:16
Speaker 2: can from that resource to make money for themselves to
2:19
Speaker 2: support themselves, then just because humans are rational, selfish, horrible beings,
2:26
Speaker 2: that metal or that high school cafeteria will be ruined.
2:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. And the idea of the tragedy of
2:32
Speaker 3: the commons started out in nineteen sixty eight an article
2:37
Speaker 3: from Science, the journal Science. It was called the Tragedy
2:41
Speaker 3: of the Commons, and it was by a biologist named
2:43
Speaker 3: Garrett Hardin, and he was sort of piggybacking on a
2:46
Speaker 3: nineteenth century English mathematician and economist named William forsteror not Foster.
2:51
Speaker 2: I would say, piggybacking or hijacking.
2:56
Speaker 3: Hijacking William Forster Lloyd. And you mentioned grazing, and this
3:01
Speaker 3: is sort of the thought experiment Harden went with, which
3:04
Speaker 3: is like, you have a you know, a grazing field,
3:06
Speaker 3: and let's say three farmers have use of it, and
3:09
Speaker 3: they're letting their cows and cheap and you know grays
3:12
Speaker 3: out there. But at some point one of them is
3:16
Speaker 3: going to get an extra fat cow that they sell
3:18
Speaker 3: for pretty good money. And they're like, hey, well, if
3:22
Speaker 3: that worked out, maybe I can add like an additional cow,
3:25
Speaker 3: and maybe it'll make you know, the value of all
3:29
Speaker 3: of these cows go down a little bit, including my own,
3:31
Speaker 3: because they're not getting as fat because I've added another
3:34
Speaker 3: cow here, right, But if I can sell it for
3:36
Speaker 3: this much money and it's only costing me a fraction
3:39
Speaker 3: of that, for you know the.
3:43
Speaker 2: Won't you extra cow?
3:45
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it would only cost a fraction of
3:47
Speaker 3: loss of resources for the other cows. Like I'm still
3:51
Speaker 3: coming out ahead and so bad to being bada boom,
3:54
Speaker 3: that's what I'm going.
3:55
Speaker 2: To do, right Yeah. So if everybody was making one
3:59
Speaker 2: dollar off of their caw when everything was being raised unsustainably,
4:02
Speaker 2: then if you add one more cow, now everybody's making
4:06
Speaker 2: eighty five cents off of their cows because you're starting
4:10
Speaker 2: to overtax the commons. But that person who added that cow,
4:14
Speaker 2: that's an extra eighty five cents they wouldn't have had before,
4:17
Speaker 2: right yeah.
4:18
Speaker 3: And if you're able to sell that cow for like
4:19
Speaker 3: five bucks, that eighty five cents is a pittance compared
4:23
Speaker 3: to what you're making on the other side.
4:25
Speaker 2: Right, So there's always, under the logic of the tragedy
4:31
Speaker 2: of the comments, there's always a reason to add another cow,
4:35
Speaker 2: and add another cow, and add another cow, because your
4:38
Speaker 2: returns are always going to be more than the cost
4:42
Speaker 2: that you can offset with the returns. Right.
4:45
Speaker 3: Well, that and you're also on the assumption that like
4:49
Speaker 3: everyone else is going to be adding cow. So I'm
4:50
Speaker 3: not going to be the only sucker not adding cows.
4:53
Speaker 2: Right, So you're either a sucker or you're just somebody
4:56
Speaker 2: who wants to survive. Because if people start ad cows
5:01
Speaker 2: and you're the one farmer who's like, I'm not going
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Speaker 2: to do that. I find that morally repugnant. I really
5:08
Speaker 2: like sustainably grazing here, and I'll just take one for
5:12
Speaker 2: the team. In very short order, that farmer would find
5:16
Speaker 2: that they were no longer making money because exactly because
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Speaker 2: each additional cow was taking an additional fraction. So let's
5:25
Speaker 2: say that every time you added a cow, it reduced
5:28
Speaker 2: the price that all the other cows got by fifteen percent.
5:32
Speaker 2: That's not a steady price because if you reduce a
5:35
Speaker 2: dollar by fifteen percent, now you're getting eighty five cents
5:39
Speaker 2: for a cow. But now when you're adding another cow,
5:42
Speaker 2: that reduces that eighty five cents by fifteen percent. So
5:45
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you're making seventy two cents, and
5:47
Speaker 2: then sixty one cents and then fifty two cents. Right.
5:50
Speaker 2: But again, if you're adding cows, that's always extra almost
5:54
Speaker 2: found money. If you're not adding cows, then the cows
5:57
Speaker 2: that you had originally are now getting less and less
6:00
Speaker 2: and less, until you're making zero money, so you are
6:03
Speaker 2: forced into adding cows. And that's why it's considered the tragedy.
6:08
Speaker 2: You're why Garrett Harden called it the tragedy of the
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Speaker 2: comments because inevitably, under these circumstances, which are have long
6:16
Speaker 2: been considered to be universal circumstances, basically the commons will
6:21
Speaker 2: always get ruined and depleted and everybody will be totally
6:26
Speaker 2: up the creek.
6:27
Speaker 3: That's right. And if Harden was basically like, there's a
6:31
Speaker 3: couple of solutions here. You can either divide this area
6:34
Speaker 3: up and now each person has their own little private
6:37
Speaker 3: part of the past year that they're only in control
6:40
Speaker 3: of and no one else can get on it and
6:42
Speaker 3: graze there, or a government a body is going to
6:45
Speaker 3: have to step in and regulate this stuff and manage it.
6:48
Speaker 3: And you know, if you listen to Harden, and we'll
6:51
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about the problems with this guy
6:53
Speaker 3: in a second, Yeah, but if you listen to Harden,
6:56
Speaker 3: he'll say, when you divide the things, this thing up
6:59
Speaker 3: and make it just private it and everyone you know
7:02
Speaker 3: is incentivized to basically preserve their plots and do it
7:06
Speaker 3: sustainably so their profits are maximized. With, you know, making
7:13
Speaker 3: sure the land isn't ruined so they can keep those
7:15
Speaker 3: profits maximized.
7:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, because now it's their land and they suddenly realize, oh,
7:20
Speaker 2: this is a finite resource. If I start to degrade
7:24
Speaker 2: this land, it's only coming out of my profits because
7:27
Speaker 2: the other farmer's land is not degraded. So I'm the
7:30
Speaker 2: only one in competition with myself here, really, and I
7:34
Speaker 2: need to make sure that this land is preserved because
7:37
Speaker 2: now it's the gold of the goose that laid the
7:39
Speaker 2: golden egg, and I need to keep it nice and
7:41
Speaker 2: healthy and happy. That's the direct result of privatization, as
7:46
Speaker 2: far as Garrett Harden was explaining, as far as the
7:49
Speaker 2: tragedy of the Commons goes right, simple solution, just give
7:53
Speaker 2: people an incentive to take care of it by making
7:55
Speaker 2: it their own. And the other way, like you said,
7:58
Speaker 2: is government inter And this seems to be what hardens
8:02
Speaker 2: big Like this is his favorite. I think solution was
8:07
Speaker 2: bring the government in and just say you can't over
8:11
Speaker 2: you can't graze more than these number of sheep, and
8:14
Speaker 2: if you do, we'll wipe out your entire family line
8:18
Speaker 2: something along those those lines.
8:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. But here's the thing, like It wasn't like he
8:23
Speaker 3: was some big champion of the government, because if you
8:26
Speaker 3: read the whole article, Harden is like, and another thing,
8:31
Speaker 3: the reason why the world is headed toward a bad
8:34
Speaker 3: place or a bad place already is because freedom to
8:39
Speaker 3: breed is intolerable. So there's just too many people. We're
8:42
Speaker 3: making too many babies, and the welfare state that the
8:45
Speaker 3: government is encouraging is taking away the natural consequence of
8:49
Speaker 3: what happens if you have too many kids, like they're
8:51
Speaker 3: going to not be able to sustain that, and the
8:53
Speaker 3: kids are going to starve to death. So we're overbreeding.
8:56
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, everyone's going whoa, whoaa, whoa.
9:00
Speaker 3: And he said and another thing, he said, this overbreeding,
9:04
Speaker 3: it could actually be a strategy where a cohesive group
9:06
Speaker 3: could come along to increase their power. And they're like,
9:09
Speaker 3: wait a minute, are you talking about the great replacement?
9:11
Speaker 3: And he said, I don't know what that is, right,
9:14
Speaker 3: and they said, well, it'll be a thing at some point.
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Speaker 2: He's like, I like the ring of it though, Yeah,
9:18
Speaker 2: it's catchy, so yeah. Yeah. His whole thing was we
9:24
Speaker 2: using scare quotes are overbreeding, meant poor non white countries
9:30
Speaker 2: are overbreeding. Right, that was basically his whole thing, and
9:34
Speaker 2: that yes, because there was such thing as international aid
9:39
Speaker 2: in the way of food, in the way of money,
9:42
Speaker 2: that that people could just keep having kids and knowing
9:48
Speaker 2: that the western wealthier governments were going to take care
9:51
Speaker 2: of him. And he was like, that's that's not what
9:53
Speaker 2: we should be doing. And here's why the tragedy of
9:56
Speaker 2: the commons. And to say that, by the way, the
10:00
Speaker 2: I read another paper of his two called Lifeboat Ethics,
10:07
Speaker 2: the Argument against Helping the poor. Yeah, hell is the subtitle,
10:12
Speaker 2: so we really just put it out there. But he
10:14
Speaker 2: basically said, Okay, let's imagine that all of the countries
10:18
Speaker 2: in the world are lifeboats. Some are ridiculously overloaded with people,
10:23
Speaker 2: others the wealthier, more advanced ones. Let's say that they're
10:27
Speaker 2: in a lifeboat that seats one hundred and they only
10:30
Speaker 2: have ninety people, but there's tons of people swimming around
10:33
Speaker 2: them trying to get into the lifeboat. Do you pick
10:37
Speaker 2: ten people out of these, you know, thousands of people
10:40
Speaker 2: out there to let come into your lifeboat? If so,
10:45
Speaker 2: how do you pick those people? What do you tell
10:47
Speaker 2: the people you don't pick? And he ultimately concludes that
10:53
Speaker 2: just don't help anybody, then you don't have to worry
10:56
Speaker 2: about playing favorites or anything like that. Plus you keep
10:59
Speaker 2: your ten person safety buffer in case things change for
11:04
Speaker 2: you in your lifeboat, and you're fine. He actually argues
11:08
Speaker 2: against guilt. You shouldn't feel any guilt, and as a
11:12
Speaker 2: matter of fact, we shouldn't put guilt on people for
11:14
Speaker 2: making decisions like these because they're just smart. And then secondly,
11:18
Speaker 2: he also says that if you are one of those
11:21
Speaker 2: people like that one farmer who is like overgrazing is
11:24
Speaker 2: morally repugnant, and now I'm not going to do it.
11:27
Speaker 2: If you were like that farmer in this lifeboat and
11:29
Speaker 2: you said, I just I can't do this. I can't
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Speaker 2: sit there and watch people drown while I'm sitting here.
11:34
Speaker 2: I'm going to give up my seat for somebody else.
11:37
Speaker 2: Harden argued that just by virtue of a person accepting
11:42
Speaker 2: your seat, they are less moral than you, and that
11:46
Speaker 2: over time is more people in the lifeboat give up
11:50
Speaker 2: their seat for moral reasons. Morality will be replaced in
11:53
Speaker 2: this lifeboat with self interest, and then what do you
11:56
Speaker 2: have then, So he makes all these like like if
12:01
Speaker 2: you're a rational person and you take emotion out of it,
12:05
Speaker 2: You're like, you know, I guess that kind of makes
12:06
Speaker 2: sense in a little bit, but the moment you add
12:09
Speaker 2: in any a drop of humanity to it, you're like,
12:11
Speaker 2: this is horrible that this guy wrote a series of
12:14
Speaker 2: papers arguing this.
12:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he, you know, as far as the tragedy
12:19
Speaker 3: of the Commons goes, he very explicitly says like, you know,
12:23
Speaker 3: you got to prioritize yourself here, and you're you know
12:26
Speaker 3: what you're doing and maximize your profits, and if you don't,
12:28
Speaker 3: if you have ethics or something, then you're you're not
12:31
Speaker 3: a very smart person.
12:33
Speaker 2: Right exactly. So this is his whole thing that you know,
12:37
Speaker 2: like all of it was over of population. The thing
12:40
Speaker 2: is it got diluted or take him very literally, very quickly,
12:46
Speaker 2: and it was applied to actual commons as we'll see,
12:50
Speaker 2: and just it was stripped of its overpopulation, xenophobia, racism,
12:56
Speaker 2: all of that stuff and just got applied to real
12:59
Speaker 2: world old commons management. And to say like it changed
13:03
Speaker 2: things is the understatement of the century.
13:05
Speaker 3: Chok, that's right. Should we take a break.
13:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's all right, We'll be right back, everybody.
13:43
Speaker 2: Okay, So, uh, the tragedy of commons became like the
13:48
Speaker 2: dominant way of looking at the world among Western nations
13:51
Speaker 2: because it did two things. It said that you can
13:56
Speaker 2: solve this problem everyone is going to have. Any time
14:00
Speaker 2: you have a shared resource, people are going to deplete it.
14:03
Speaker 2: That's what it said, no matter where you are in
14:04
Speaker 2: the world, no matter who you are, but we want
14:08
Speaker 2: to save these shared resources. Because this paper came out
14:11
Speaker 2: at about the same time the environmental consciousness came up,
14:14
Speaker 2: so it was like perfect timing for that. But it
14:17
Speaker 2: also said, just privatize, buddy. And at that time, neoliberalism
14:21
Speaker 2: was on the rise, and they're like, yes, privatize, take
14:24
Speaker 2: all these government run things and put them in the
14:27
Speaker 2: hands of corporations and we'll all be better off.
14:29
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, one of the ways that happened
14:32
Speaker 3: was and we're going to talk about sort of different
14:34
Speaker 3: versions of this here and there in this episode, but
14:37
Speaker 3: environmental trading markets emerged and that came from Canada actually
14:43
Speaker 3: an economist named J. H. Dales in nineteen sixty eight.
14:46
Speaker 3: But the eighties and nineties or when they really kind
14:49
Speaker 3: of started flying off the shelf. But that's like when
14:52
Speaker 3: the government comes in with a regulation. Let's say to
14:56
Speaker 3: cap whatever in this case, like let's say they're capping
14:59
Speaker 3: emissions on.
15:00
Speaker 2: On baseball caps.
15:02
Speaker 3: Baseball cap, I need to get rid of some baseball caps.
15:05
Speaker 3: So that's great.
15:06
Speaker 2: You have too many? Do you have any good Hawks ones?
15:08
Speaker 2: I'm on the I'm on the lookout for those.
15:10
Speaker 3: I have one Hawks cap that I wear.
15:14
Speaker 2: I gotcha.
15:15
Speaker 3: I just gave away a second one because it was
15:16
Speaker 3: too big. But your your head is too small for
15:18
Speaker 3: this thing.
15:20
Speaker 2: It's a really tiny head. I'm like that that one
15:23
Speaker 2: Safari hunter and beetle juice.
15:24
Speaker 3: Do you know what your hat size is?
15:26
Speaker 2: Uh? Like point six point six?
15:29
Speaker 3: Okay, that's good. So let's say it's fisheries, because we're
15:34
Speaker 3: going to talk about the fisheries a lot. So yeah,
15:35
Speaker 3: you know, the government will come in and say, hey,
15:38
Speaker 3: you're overfishing, so we're going to cap how many fish
15:41
Speaker 3: you can harvest or make it a certain size and
15:43
Speaker 3: a certain area or something like that. And then here's
15:46
Speaker 3: your permit Fishery A, and here's your permit fishery B
15:49
Speaker 3: and fishery C. And they grant these permits. But and
15:53
Speaker 3: this is the key to the etm's environmental trading markets.
15:56
Speaker 3: The word trade you can trade as i e. Buy
16:00
Speaker 3: and sell these permits, which and this is something that
16:04
Speaker 3: I don't fully understand, or maybe I do understand, And
16:08
Speaker 3: that's the whole point. But if company A is let's
16:12
Speaker 3: say it's an environmental like, hey, you're a factory and
16:17
Speaker 3: we're incentivizing you to clean up your pollution and here's
16:21
Speaker 3: your permit or whatever. If Company A does a really
16:23
Speaker 3: good job and does the right thing and comes in
16:26
Speaker 3: like way under the amount of emissions that they're supposed
16:29
Speaker 3: to hit, by simply selling that to Company B, who's like, man,
16:33
Speaker 3: we're not too good at that. I mean, is it creating?
16:36
Speaker 3: Like doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose?
16:39
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't. And we talked about this in the
16:41
Speaker 2: acid rain episode. Do you remember whatever happened to acid rain?
16:45
Speaker 2: That thing?
16:46
Speaker 1: Oh?
16:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can work, and it does work. We actually
16:51
Speaker 2: reduced sulfur dioxide emissions that we were associated with acid
16:55
Speaker 2: rain so much. The acid rain went away and it
16:59
Speaker 2: was like the ozone layer of like the early eighties,
17:03
Speaker 2: I think in seventies, like it was a big scary
17:06
Speaker 2: thing and we took care of it because of cap
17:08
Speaker 2: and trade schemes. So it can work.
17:10
Speaker 3: But how That's what I don't get. If one company
17:14
Speaker 3: is lowering their output but another one is increasing theirs
17:17
Speaker 3: because they just bought the other companies, then how is
17:20
Speaker 3: that a net loss.
17:22
Speaker 2: Because of the cap? Because you put the cap at
17:24
Speaker 2: something close to a target that you want to reduce
17:27
Speaker 2: things to, so you don't make like some sky high
17:30
Speaker 2: cap that's more than what you're at now. You make
17:33
Speaker 2: it less and then maybe a couple of years later,
17:35
Speaker 2: you make it less than that. So those caps, those
17:39
Speaker 2: those little shares or whatever, those allowances that they can trade,
17:43
Speaker 2: they get more and more valuable the less and less
17:46
Speaker 2: they represent because the law is kind of bringing these
17:48
Speaker 2: emissions down further and further. So ultimately you're rewarding a
17:52
Speaker 2: company by reducing their emissions because they can make money
17:56
Speaker 2: selling that to another company, and that other company is
17:59
Speaker 2: actually technically be punished because they're having to shell out
18:02
Speaker 2: more money than they budgeted for because they're omitting more
18:04
Speaker 2: than they are supposed to. So ultimately you're penalizing and
18:09
Speaker 2: rewarding through this cap and trade scheme, but you're also
18:13
Speaker 2: creating an artificial cap. All these companies could just pollute
18:17
Speaker 2: as much as they want, but this government is saying no,
18:20
Speaker 2: you actually can't. Here's your level. Here it is divided
18:23
Speaker 2: among the ten companies go to town. But does that
18:26
Speaker 2: make sense?
18:26
Speaker 3: Well? Yeah. The thing I still don't get though, is
18:30
Speaker 3: the company that's, you know, buying extra emissions whatever output
18:37
Speaker 3: from the company that's like really good at it, are
18:39
Speaker 3: they allowed to go over the cap?
18:41
Speaker 2: They know they But let's say they have a cap
18:44
Speaker 2: to put out ten pounds of CO two, right, yeah,
18:47
Speaker 2: and they're going to they know they're putting out fifteen
18:50
Speaker 2: that year. Well, this other company that's putting out five
18:53
Speaker 2: pounds of CO two that year, they can sell their
18:56
Speaker 2: other five pounds, So no one goes over the cap
19:00
Speaker 2: total cap, but different companies can contribute different amounts based
19:05
Speaker 2: on how much of those allowance shares they can purchase
19:08
Speaker 2: or sell. Does that make sense?
19:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so.
19:13
Speaker 2: I promise it works. It worked for sulfur dioxide. It
19:16
Speaker 2: does work. The problem is is it's also like it
19:18
Speaker 2: requires a lot of buy in from industry or really
19:22
Speaker 2: heavy handed government regulation.
19:24
Speaker 3: Well, either way. It became a big deal in the eighties,
19:26
Speaker 3: and by the end of the eighties, the World Bank
19:29
Speaker 3: referred to tragedy of the commons as quote the dominant
19:33
Speaker 3: paradigm within which social scientists assess natural resource issues. So
19:41
Speaker 3: I mean you can't like there's a bunch of different
19:43
Speaker 3: policies in a bunch of different areas, so you can't
19:46
Speaker 3: just look at the entire thing as a whole and
19:48
Speaker 3: say like, well it's been a huge success, Like you
19:51
Speaker 3: can pick out something like acid rain or say it
19:53
Speaker 3: was success in this case, but there's humans involved, so
19:59
Speaker 3: you never can tell. Well, it's not like you never
20:01
Speaker 3: can't tell like I say, can forecast, but there's not
20:04
Speaker 3: just one big blanket like nope, this is the exact solution.
20:07
Speaker 2: Right for sure, And it depends on the on the industry,
20:10
Speaker 2: right like you said, acid rain, that was a great
20:13
Speaker 2: success story. Fisheries are another example. If you take a
20:17
Speaker 2: fishery like you were saying, and you divide up the
20:19
Speaker 2: total catch between companies, those companies can actually go around
20:26
Speaker 2: and buy you know, huge portions of the other company shares, right,
20:30
Speaker 2: and so all of a sudden, they're basically one company
20:34
Speaker 2: with all of the rights to catch all of the
20:36
Speaker 2: fish in that fishery because they managed to consolidate the
20:39
Speaker 2: shares over time. And that's a huge problem that's not
20:44
Speaker 2: at all what you want. Like, yeah, that that fishing
20:46
Speaker 2: company is still staying within the total number of fish
20:50
Speaker 2: that can be caught annually, but they ran all the
20:52
Speaker 2: other people out of business. That's so that's not at
20:55
Speaker 2: all what you want with it. So there's there's pluses
20:57
Speaker 2: and minuses. There's a situation. The thing is is the
21:03
Speaker 2: tragedy of the commons has largely been overblown and the
21:06
Speaker 2: idea that you can come out on top just by
21:09
Speaker 2: privatizing things like natural resources has been a lesson learned
21:13
Speaker 2: the hard way. That's just overall, that's not necessarily the
21:17
Speaker 2: best way to do it, and it can really really
21:19
Speaker 2: harm some groups while enriching others tremendously.
21:24
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, and like in the case of a fishery,
21:26
Speaker 3: like if you're a small fishing crew or something, good
21:29
Speaker 3: luck kind of working your way up and maybe establishing
21:32
Speaker 3: yourself as one of the larger companies, especially if the
21:36
Speaker 3: people that are buying these things up are people that
21:38
Speaker 3: don't live around. There are these corporations that right that
21:41
Speaker 3: don't have necessarily a local interest. And again, while they
21:45
Speaker 3: might be like hitting you know, staying under the threshold environmentally,
21:49
Speaker 3: it might be working out, but you're consolidating the wealth.
21:53
Speaker 3: Sometimes there's regulations on that where they say you have
21:56
Speaker 3: to be you know, like on the fishing boat, and like,
21:59
Speaker 3: you know, like Chick fil A. If you're going to
22:00
Speaker 3: buy Chick fil A franchise, you gotta manage that.
22:02
Speaker 2: Thing exactly right. You want that Chick fil A Cadillac.
22:05
Speaker 3: Exactly But sometimes there aren't regulations like that. And what's
22:10
Speaker 3: been proven over and over, especially with etms, if there's
22:14
Speaker 3: a way for a system to be exploited for profit,
22:18
Speaker 3: then a company will come along and do it no
22:20
Speaker 3: matter what.
22:21
Speaker 2: That's basically the neoliberalism tea shirt what you just said
22:25
Speaker 2: to you know exactly.
22:27
Speaker 3: Here's the thing, if you look at the actual try
22:29
Speaker 3: tragedy of the commons, Harden sort of just leaves conveniently
22:34
Speaker 3: leaves a lot of stuff out. Like he's assuming in
22:36
Speaker 3: this argument that like the people that the farmers that
22:40
Speaker 3: are sharing this grazing spot aren't talking to each other
22:43
Speaker 3: at all about what's going on and saying like, hey,
22:47
Speaker 3: we're ruining this land. By the way, maybe we should
22:48
Speaker 3: dial it back, like everybody get rid of two cows.
22:51
Speaker 3: And it also assumes that their only interest is to
22:56
Speaker 3: maximize profit and do not care for the land, and
22:58
Speaker 3: that's just not always the case.
23:01
Speaker 2: No. I mean that's really a tough sell to a
23:04
Speaker 2: neoliberal policy maker, Like they're just like, you're crazy, you're
23:08
Speaker 2: so naive for even thinking that. Of course their goal
23:11
Speaker 2: is to maximize profits. But what's really cool is we'll
23:14
Speaker 2: see a little later on real world examples prove that
23:19
Speaker 2: that's not true. They disprove the tragedy of the commons
23:22
Speaker 2: by themselves. It wasn't like, oh, let's set up this crazy,
23:26
Speaker 2: really kind of rickety experiment and see if we can
23:29
Speaker 2: disprove the tragedy of the commons. Now, people went out
23:32
Speaker 2: and looked at real world, for example, indigenous treatment of
23:36
Speaker 2: common resources, and they're like, these people have been managing
23:39
Speaker 2: and not depleting these things for thousands of years now
23:42
Speaker 2: because they came up with their own sensible rules that
23:46
Speaker 2: aren't neoliberal in nature.
23:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, if you look at the original sort
23:51
Speaker 3: of like it's not just a theoretical thing. If you
23:54
Speaker 3: look at the paper by William Forrester. I think he
23:58
Speaker 3: said Forster earlier, not Forrester Lloyd, that this is the
24:01
Speaker 3: one hardened would you say, hijacked to begin with, he did.
24:07
Speaker 3: He was talking about actual English commons, which was how
24:09
Speaker 3: it used to work in medieval England. Was the lord
24:13
Speaker 3: would own all this land, but there were people that
24:16
Speaker 3: lived on it. It wasn't like, hey, this is my
24:18
Speaker 3: private land, no one can be here at first. So
24:21
Speaker 3: the people that lived there, they you know, they had
24:22
Speaker 3: to graze their animals and fish out of the streams
24:24
Speaker 3: and ponds and things like that, and they were allowed
24:28
Speaker 3: to with you know, through certain age old customs. Sometimes
24:32
Speaker 3: the local government would step in and kind of help
24:34
Speaker 3: manage this stuff and limit grazing and things like that.
24:38
Speaker 3: But it wasn't like this set codified system in place
24:42
Speaker 3: all over England. It was just they had been working
24:45
Speaker 3: it out for centuries like this. It wasn't perfect, but
24:48
Speaker 3: it was sustainable and they didn't like just destroy their
24:51
Speaker 3: land because they all had self interest to keep it sustainable.
24:55
Speaker 2: Right, And then they were enclosed. And enclosure was this
24:59
Speaker 2: huge mass as have overlooked world changing event, and we
25:06
Speaker 2: need to do an episode on the fencing of the
25:08
Speaker 2: Commons someday because it's just it changed the entire mentality.
25:12
Speaker 2: Remember our episode on the Luddites and how they emerged
25:16
Speaker 2: from a world that was just it just completely turned
25:18
Speaker 2: everything on its head. That's what happened with enclosure. When
25:22
Speaker 2: they fenced the commons, it changed everything, and the concept
25:25
Speaker 2: of private property like really kind of developed out of that,
25:28
Speaker 2: at least in the West, right. So we'll do a
25:31
Speaker 2: whole separate episode on that, but suffice to say that
25:34
Speaker 2: it seems to be once the commons were fenced and
25:37
Speaker 2: we're no longer a shared resource, that's when the issue
25:41
Speaker 2: started to come up. If you ask Karl Marx, he
25:46
Speaker 2: would have said that this is where we came up
25:48
Speaker 2: with the landless proletariat, the working class who had to
25:51
Speaker 2: work for wages because they no longer owned anything. It
25:55
Speaker 2: created the very, very wealthy class that didn't actually have
25:59
Speaker 2: to do anything because because all they had to do
26:01
Speaker 2: was start renting this private property of theirs to the
26:04
Speaker 2: people who needed to work. It created a whole system
26:09
Speaker 2: of problems. And in fact, some people are like, whether,
26:13
Speaker 2: however you feel about capitalism, you can kind of trace
26:16
Speaker 2: us back to the beginning of capitalism, the fencing of
26:19
Speaker 2: the commons. The irony of all this is that William
26:22
Speaker 2: Forrester or Lloyd was arguing against Adam Smith's capitalist idea
26:29
Speaker 2: that the invisible hand of the market will always guide
26:32
Speaker 2: things to a good outcome. He created, ultimately the Tragedy
26:37
Speaker 2: of the Commons as a thought experiment to show like, no, actually,
26:41
Speaker 2: people don't. People aren't guided to this bottom good. Instead,
26:47
Speaker 2: they are going to act in their own self interest
26:49
Speaker 2: and destroy this stuff. So Harden actually took it and
26:53
Speaker 2: turned it around as an argument for capitalism, for private
26:58
Speaker 2: enterprise advertising stuff. This argument that was originally used to
27:03
Speaker 2: disprove that.
27:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you were enclosing your own comments or
27:07
Speaker 3: arguing in that favor at the time, you were saying, hey,
27:12
Speaker 3: everything has been chaos up into this point. It's very
27:15
Speaker 3: inefficient and there's got to be a more organized way
27:19
Speaker 3: to do this. And that was you know, it wasn't
27:23
Speaker 3: a guys, I guess, but what they were really saying
27:25
Speaker 3: was is we want this area, right, it's ours. Yeah,
27:31
Speaker 3: I mean, let's just oversell the chaos, maybe because it
27:33
Speaker 3: was actually working out okay for many centuries, but we're
27:37
Speaker 3: going to just sell it as this this chaotic mess
27:40
Speaker 3: that needs to be cleaned up and organized.
27:42
Speaker 2: Right, That's how it's done. It seems like, isn't it.
27:45
Speaker 2: Charles Like people people come along and create a problem
27:49
Speaker 2: that's not actually there for their own benefit. Ultimately.
27:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a friend who ever since college, he
27:57
Speaker 3: was just one of those guys that while we were
27:59
Speaker 3: just like what over, he was about what about everything
28:03
Speaker 3: about the world, about politics, about you know that that
28:06
Speaker 3: period of college would you just kind of check out
28:07
Speaker 3: and all you care about is like where you're going
28:09
Speaker 3: that night? All that to say, he was a very
28:11
Speaker 3: smart guy back then, and he used to just say
28:12
Speaker 3: stuff that used to shake all of us to our
28:15
Speaker 3: core about what's coming about this, that or the other
28:18
Speaker 3: with a government. And he would always say, but here's
28:20
Speaker 3: how they're going to sell it to you, And I, oh, yeah.
28:22
Speaker 3: That always stuck with me, and he's totally right, like
28:25
Speaker 3: they'll sell it to you as this, but then it
28:27
Speaker 3: becomes this.
28:28
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's really interesting. I love stuff like that
28:32
Speaker 2: about how just massive sweeping changes come from just a
28:37
Speaker 2: change in an idea, change in yeah, in perspective, And
28:41
Speaker 2: that's a really great That's what the tragedy of the
28:44
Speaker 2: Commons was. It was an idea, it was a perspective.
28:47
Speaker 2: He'd like Garrett Harden, didn't undertake a bunch of different
28:51
Speaker 2: experiments or field studies or anything like that. In his paper,
28:55
Speaker 2: which was published in Science by the way, it was
28:58
Speaker 2: an essay at his own thoughts on something that he
29:02
Speaker 2: presented so reasonably that people who were again neoliberals, who
29:07
Speaker 2: were in favor of privatizing everything, including common resources, could
29:12
Speaker 2: go to government policymakers and be like, here's how it works.
29:16
Speaker 2: Doesn't that make sense? And the government said, yes, that
29:20
Speaker 2: makes sense, let's start privatizing everything. And it was just
29:23
Speaker 2: because this guy took this idea and made it approachable,
29:27
Speaker 2: that's it. Yeah, it's not. It became fact even though
29:31
Speaker 2: it was never faced. I just find that fascinating how
29:35
Speaker 2: something like that can just change the world.
29:37
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think there were so many people
29:39
Speaker 3: licking their chops. They were like, oh, here's a great
29:42
Speaker 3: opportunity for us to jump on this bandwagon to take
29:45
Speaker 3: more for ourselves.
29:47
Speaker 2: Right, But what if the bandwagon had never been there?
29:49
Speaker 2: Would anyone have figured out how to manipulate things so thoroughly,
29:53
Speaker 2: especially so quickly too? Without this one paper, this one biologist.
29:58
Speaker 3: Wrote, Yeah, someone would have.
30:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it would have happened piecemeal. I think, I
30:03
Speaker 2: don't know, it's questionable that it would have happened like
30:06
Speaker 2: it had.
30:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe let's.
30:09
Speaker 2: Take a break.
30:10
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back. We're going to contemplate
30:12
Speaker 3: that and come back with the definitive answer. Right for this,
30:48
Speaker 3: we don't have a definitive answer.
30:49
Speaker 2: I was just kidding, You got me.
30:52
Speaker 3: We should talk about Eleanor Ostrom though. This is a
30:57
Speaker 3: woman who wrote a book in nineteen ninety called Governing
31:00
Speaker 3: the Commons colon the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action,
31:05
Speaker 3: and she's probably like at the top of the list
31:08
Speaker 3: for really bringing this to the upper echelons of the
31:13
Speaker 3: political world worldwide. I guess she took a bunch of
31:18
Speaker 3: examples all over the world of controlled cprs, like grazing
31:25
Speaker 3: areas it's always a good one in Switzerland in this case,
31:29
Speaker 3: forests in Japan, meadows in Japan, and of course fisheries
31:33
Speaker 3: and things like that in this case in the Philippines.
31:36
Speaker 3: So kind of really kind of picking different spots all
31:38
Speaker 3: over the world and examining these and how they've worked out,
31:42
Speaker 3: and basically argued that like, hey, these things are had
31:47
Speaker 3: been working out for centuries and it worked out pretty
31:51
Speaker 3: good because everybody lived there who was involved. And when
31:55
Speaker 3: you have local people that have long term interest in
31:59
Speaker 3: the well being of their land and their area and
32:02
Speaker 3: keeping that up. Then the economic side of things, it
32:07
Speaker 3: is not going to go away, but it's going to
32:09
Speaker 3: take a back seat to ensuring that this land that
32:11
Speaker 3: they live in stays as close to as it is
32:15
Speaker 3: as possible.
32:17
Speaker 2: Yes, And so she was the one who went out
32:21
Speaker 2: and actually did those field studies that Garrett Harden didn't like.
32:24
Speaker 2: She had the receipts to back up what she was saying,
32:27
Speaker 2: which was the tragedy of the Commons isn't actually true.
32:32
Speaker 2: It's certainly not in every case. And what's the ironic
32:35
Speaker 2: thing is this Chuck the tragedy of the Commons played out.
32:42
Speaker 2: I feel like for the most part, when things were
32:47
Speaker 2: privatized and outside industry were allowed to come in and
32:51
Speaker 2: have a share of the Commons, that's when it was
32:55
Speaker 2: that's when the problems really began.
32:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
33:00
Speaker 2: So I want to say one other thing too, because
33:02
Speaker 2: I know I'm kind of known for having a very
33:05
Speaker 2: hard nos certain opinion about things and its lants, you know,
33:10
Speaker 2: in this particular direction. Typically, I don't know, in the
33:13
Speaker 2: last like years, so I've kind of lost my taste
33:18
Speaker 2: for brigidity like that, or black and white thinking. So
33:22
Speaker 2: I don't want anybody to think that I'm just like
33:25
Speaker 2: neoliberalism equals bad alternatives to neoliberalism all good. Like, I
33:31
Speaker 2: just don't see the world like that anymore. So I
33:34
Speaker 2: don't want anybody to think that I'm just like I'm
33:38
Speaker 2: bashing neoliberalism as if there's no redeemable quality to it whatsoever.
33:42
Speaker 2: I just don't believe that. But in the case of
33:45
Speaker 2: the tragedy of the commons, I feel like more often
33:48
Speaker 2: than not, neoliberal policies again, privatizing shared resources or taking
33:54
Speaker 2: oversight away from the government and just putting it in
33:56
Speaker 2: the hands of the market has been disastrous for the
33:58
Speaker 2: world over the last it's like forty fifty years. It's
34:02
Speaker 2: been really good for wealthy people and helping other people
34:07
Speaker 2: get wealthier, but that ignores the expense on the backs
34:11
Speaker 2: of other people that it's created too. I just wanted
34:14
Speaker 2: to put that out there, yeah, that I don't want
34:17
Speaker 2: anybody think I'm just bashing neoliberalism because it does help
34:21
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways.
34:22
Speaker 3: No, And I know you well, and I can tell
34:24
Speaker 3: everybody that you are a very varied person who looks
34:28
Speaker 3: at things from all angles and is very considerate of
34:33
Speaker 3: you don't just shut anything down outright. You like to
34:35
Speaker 3: consider things now. Okay, So back to Austrom though, she
34:42
Speaker 3: argues that, hey, this we've shown time and time again.
34:46
Speaker 3: I show in these real world examples in my books
34:49
Speaker 3: in Japan and in Switzerland and the Philippines with the
34:53
Speaker 3: fisheries that this can work. But there's some parameters that
34:57
Speaker 3: have been shown to ensure that it works, and you
35:00
Speaker 3: got to follow these or it's not going to work.
35:03
Speaker 3: And she had narrowed it down to eight principles of
35:06
Speaker 3: like a successful you know, regulation of a commons, which
35:10
Speaker 3: is clearly defined boundaries. So who can use this area,
35:15
Speaker 3: what is this area? Rules that fit local needs. And
35:18
Speaker 3: this is something we've been kind of hammering on. It's
35:20
Speaker 3: got to be the local parties that come up with
35:23
Speaker 3: these rules. The addition of outside people stepping in it
35:29
Speaker 3: seems to be when all of the problems start because
35:31
Speaker 3: their interests are not the same as local interests.
35:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, history kind of tells us that when outside groups
35:36
Speaker 2: come in and start pushing the people who've been using
35:39
Speaker 2: this thing for a thousand years, pushing them around. Yeah,
35:43
Speaker 2: it just doesn't go very wellpeatly because the outside groups
35:47
Speaker 2: don't necessarily understand this. And as we'll see, that doesn't
35:50
Speaker 2: mean that there shouldn't be the involvement of any outside groups.
35:53
Speaker 2: What Ostrom was saying that she found from these studies
35:56
Speaker 2: is that you have to begin the base the the
36:00
Speaker 2: people who are really laying the groundwork and setting the
36:03
Speaker 2: rules for this. They have to be the people who
36:05
Speaker 2: are actually using this resource.
36:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. The third one is group decision making,
36:10
Speaker 3: so it's not just a couple of people or a
36:13
Speaker 3: small board deciding these things, like get as many people
36:16
Speaker 3: in there as possible, local people monitoring. You have to
36:21
Speaker 3: have people monitoring, and you know, she used her forest
36:23
Speaker 3: land example in Japan was one where she was like, hey,
36:26
Speaker 3: they had locals monitoring the stuff and levying fines. So
36:30
Speaker 3: you've got to know that someone is out there doing this,
36:32
Speaker 3: so people, you know, know they're going to be held accountable.
36:35
Speaker 3: And then the next one ties into that. And then
36:38
Speaker 3: when you do that, you've got to start out small
36:41
Speaker 3: with these sanctions. It's got to be like a warning
36:43
Speaker 3: first and then a small fine. You can't just come
36:46
Speaker 3: in there with the billy club and say you're out.
36:50
Speaker 3: It's you've got to encourage people to stick around and like,
36:54
Speaker 3: all right, here's a warning, but you can't keep letting
36:56
Speaker 3: this happen. That kind of thing I was.
36:58
Speaker 2: Really curious with the ultimate punishment is for repeat offenders,
37:03
Speaker 2: And the only example I could find was among a
37:05
Speaker 2: group in Bali. And ostracism is what the person ultimately faces, which, yeah,
37:13
Speaker 2: and that's bad enough in like like a Western society,
37:17
Speaker 2: you know, but also you can make do you know,
37:21
Speaker 2: there's the internet. If you go into a store, the
37:23
Speaker 2: person basically has to take your money for food. In
37:26
Speaker 2: a more traditional culture, ostracisms like you're in big trouble
37:31
Speaker 2: because groups rely on one another for help. And the
37:34
Speaker 2: example they gave was if one of your relatives dies,
37:37
Speaker 2: there's certain rights you have to perform, and if you're ostracized,
37:40
Speaker 2: you have to figure that out all by yourself because
37:43
Speaker 2: the community is not going to show up and help
37:44
Speaker 2: you for these death rights that your ancestors demand of you,
37:49
Speaker 2: because that's just tradition.
37:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure. The last three of the eighth
37:56
Speaker 3: easy dispute resolution, so just something on the on the
38:00
Speaker 3: cheap that's pretty informal and not some big, drawn out
38:03
Speaker 3: expensive you know, tribunal or something like that.
38:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, no wigs, no powdered wigs.
38:08
Speaker 3: No potter wigs at all. You have to have support
38:10
Speaker 3: from authorities. And it may be a local thing, but
38:15
Speaker 3: you've got to have the blessing of a larger government
38:18
Speaker 3: body to at the very least not get in there
38:21
Speaker 3: and mucket up themselves and just sort of let you
38:23
Speaker 3: do your thing, but maybe also support and then finally
38:27
Speaker 3: building up to a larger system. So again, keep it local,
38:31
Speaker 3: but if it's a system that connects to a larger system,
38:35
Speaker 3: like a creek that connects to a larger watershed, you're
38:38
Speaker 3: going to have to start linking up with other local
38:40
Speaker 3: groups and make it a larger thing.
38:43
Speaker 2: Right. But the point that she made too is that
38:46
Speaker 2: that works, that's actually scalable, which is good because, like
38:50
Speaker 2: you said, you know, a creek is one thing, but
38:53
Speaker 2: it depends on a watershed. And so if you can
38:56
Speaker 2: get together with other people who are managing their own creeks,
38:59
Speaker 2: you can manage the watershed based on the individual common
39:05
Speaker 2: I guess rules that that groups have come up with,
39:07
Speaker 2: and that you can scale that into more modern systems too. Right, So,
39:11
Speaker 2: like say a city has somehow created a cap on
39:15
Speaker 2: how much emissions that the factories in the cities can create.
39:21
Speaker 2: You can combine that with other cities, and now you're
39:24
Speaker 2: starting to manage a larger part of the atmosphere. And
39:26
Speaker 2: then that the state can come in and work with
39:28
Speaker 2: all of those cities, and then the state can work
39:30
Speaker 2: with other states, and all of a sudden, now you
39:32
Speaker 2: have regional air quality being controlled from the rules that
39:36
Speaker 2: are based on the actual stakeholders in each individual community.
39:41
Speaker 3: That's right, And did she win something for this work?
39:44
Speaker 2: She won the Nobel which Livia foot in parentheses fake
39:49
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize and economic science is because that's not one
39:53
Speaker 2: that the no that was actually organized originally.
39:57
Speaker 3: She meant by that, but what one of the things
40:00
Speaker 3: that that came out of the book. There's a University
40:02
Speaker 3: of Chicago legal scholar name named lee Ann Fennel who
40:06
Speaker 3: points to that book and says, you know, this is
40:10
Speaker 3: sort of a corrects these legal theories that say property
40:14
Speaker 3: is all or nothing, like you either own it or
40:16
Speaker 3: and have total control over it, or you don't. And
40:19
Speaker 3: it's actually possible. You can have a common you can
40:23
Speaker 3: have an area that people share and the example that
40:29
Speaker 3: and still have some autonomy. And the example that Livia
40:31
Speaker 3: gave was like a house and if you got a
40:33
Speaker 3: family in the house, you know, let's say you know
40:36
Speaker 3: two people that have coupled up and have children. You know,
40:40
Speaker 3: it's a collective. But like you know, generally speaking, unless
40:44
Speaker 3: you live in a in a terrible house with an
40:46
Speaker 3: authoritarian dictator as the head of the household.
40:49
Speaker 2: Or a stepdad, that makes you feel stupid.
40:51
Speaker 3: Yeah stepdad and makes you feel dumb. You've got you know,
40:54
Speaker 3: your kid has your room, and you know what you
40:55
Speaker 3: can This is your room. You know, you have a
40:58
Speaker 3: right to your room and you can basically decorate it
41:01
Speaker 3: how you want, within within reason, and do what you
41:03
Speaker 3: want in here. But it's still part of the.
41:06
Speaker 2: House, right and technically your parents own that room. Yeah,
41:11
Speaker 2: but because of custom, custom and tradition, they probably respect
41:16
Speaker 2: that room as your private space.
41:18
Speaker 3: Yeah. And that's something as a parent I found is
41:21
Speaker 3: super important because at a certain age, and this has
41:25
Speaker 3: been the last couple of years with Ruby, like you know,
41:28
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go into my room and shut the.
41:30
Speaker 2: Door, yeah, and you're like, no, you're not, well.
41:33
Speaker 3: I'll open the door because I just like and it's
41:36
Speaker 3: not in a spy way. I just like peeking in
41:37
Speaker 3: and seeing the fun stuff she's doing. And Emily's like,
41:40
Speaker 3: you know, leave the door shut. You get she's got
41:41
Speaker 3: to have that autonomy.
41:42
Speaker 2: And I'm like, good for Emily, that's really sweet. When
41:45
Speaker 2: you open the door, do you suddenly open and go
41:47
Speaker 2: what are you doing?
41:49
Speaker 3: I'll give it you. I'll give a little knock now,
41:51
Speaker 3: you know. And you know she's usually in their drawing
41:54
Speaker 3: pictures of cats and listening.
41:55
Speaker 2: To music, reading Team Beat.
41:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:59
Speaker 2: Man, do you remember? So was your room your own
42:02
Speaker 2: private sanctuary? Yeah?
42:03
Speaker 3: I mean Scott and I shared a room until I
42:05
Speaker 3: was I feel like I was probably ten or eleven.
42:12
Speaker 2: That's the that's the room age right there.
42:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's when we split. But we were upstairs
42:17
Speaker 3: at our house. It was just two bedrooms and separated
42:21
Speaker 3: by a joined bathroom. And my sweet brother, he I
42:26
Speaker 3: was so sad about moving out of his room. At first,
42:29
Speaker 3: he agreed to keep his bathroom door open so I
42:32
Speaker 3: could lay in bed and see through the bathroom to
42:34
Speaker 3: him and his work.
42:35
Speaker 2: God, he is such a he'd be the rancher that
42:39
Speaker 2: would be like, I'm not overgrazing all.
42:42
Speaker 3: I know. He's one of the best. But yeah, so
42:45
Speaker 3: I had my own room and it was like my
42:48
Speaker 3: sports posters and I went through a Marylyn and Roe
42:50
Speaker 3: phez for some reason, where I had a bunch of
42:52
Speaker 3: hard posters up.
42:53
Speaker 2: I went through a James phase that was similar.
42:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, But yeah, it was my room. I took
42:58
Speaker 3: a lot of pride in decorating it and doing my thing.
43:00
Speaker 3: And my parents my father literally did not come upstairs.
43:05
Speaker 3: That's a whole other story, and my mom did for
43:08
Speaker 3: a while, but basically, I mean that was our zone
43:11
Speaker 3: for the most part.
43:12
Speaker 2: That's awesome, you know. I remember they're not being anything
43:16
Speaker 2: more satisfying than undertaking a total remodeling of your room,
43:22
Speaker 2: moving stuff around, furniture all of a sudden, the beds
43:24
Speaker 2: over here, and like doing that, it was it was
43:27
Speaker 2: so it just changed everything. I'd love that so much.
43:30
Speaker 2: I have so many great memories of my room.
43:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too, And I used to do that two
43:34
Speaker 3: apartments I lived in, uh and I had ironically recently
43:39
Speaker 3: had a thought about how much I used to enjoy
43:41
Speaker 3: that and how like our house there, you can't really
43:44
Speaker 3: do that, Like it's set up in a in a
43:46
Speaker 3: way that I can't be like, hey, let's rearrange our
43:48
Speaker 3: living room. It's like, well, you can't because.
43:51
Speaker 2: Let's move the built ins outside.
43:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, So those days are over for me unfortunately. Yeah.
43:56
Speaker 2: Same here. That's just how it goes as you get older.
43:59
Speaker 2: It's one more thing that brings you joy or brought
44:01
Speaker 2: you joy that's now dead, old leaf.
44:06
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's finish up on tragedy of the commons,
44:09
Speaker 3: because we can use an example of Maine lobster fisheries
44:14
Speaker 3: as a pretty good example of how people can start
44:19
Speaker 3: to do the wrong thing but correct course on their own. Yeah,
44:23
Speaker 3: And that was the case in the nineteenth century when
44:26
Speaker 3: the state of Maine started setting legal minimum sizes for
44:29
Speaker 3: catching lobsters, and they couldn't enforce it that well at first,
44:33
Speaker 3: and people broke the rules and we're like, you know,
44:35
Speaker 3: trying to make extra money or keep more lobsters than
44:38
Speaker 3: they should for a while. But eventually they were like, hey,
44:41
Speaker 3: wait a minute, we're not doing ourselves any favors here,
44:44
Speaker 3: and if we're going to all continue this to sustain
44:47
Speaker 3: our living doing this, we got to work together. So
44:50
Speaker 3: they form harbor gangs to start self policing.
44:55
Speaker 2: Basically, so main lobsterman harbor gangs. Is there anything scared
45:00
Speaker 2: than the sound of that? Just seeing them kind of
45:02
Speaker 2: slowly come up on your boat and they're all like
45:04
Speaker 2: they have chains in their hands.
45:06
Speaker 3: Don't go over that. That's where the Hobba gangs are
45:09
Speaker 3: very nice.
45:10
Speaker 2: Boy, you just took me to cabit Coat.
45:13
Speaker 3: So they started self policing, and everyone bought into this
45:16
Speaker 3: idea that let's not ruin all of our livelihood here.
45:21
Speaker 3: And one thing that gets pointed out is you can
45:24
Speaker 3: do this in a case like that because lobsters are
45:26
Speaker 3: close to shore. It's a small, small community. It's local
45:31
Speaker 3: people in the case of cod. And at some point
45:33
Speaker 3: we should do one on the Cod Wars because that's
45:36
Speaker 3: where this factors in cod travel long distances and so
45:40
Speaker 3: it's hard to regulate something like that that's widespread and
45:43
Speaker 3: there's different countries involved.
45:46
Speaker 2: So yeah, I guess tragedy of the Comments has been
45:48
Speaker 2: largely debunked, even though it completely altered the world for
45:53
Speaker 2: decades and decades and still does.
45:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean either blamed or credited with the birth
45:58
Speaker 3: of capitalism.
45:59
Speaker 2: This no small thing, it's pretty big. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
46:03
Speaker 2: So we're gonna do one on fencing of the commons
46:05
Speaker 2: one day, and then we're also going to do one
46:07
Speaker 2: on neoliberalism.
46:08
Speaker 3: Someday and the cod Wars.
46:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the cod Wars. There you go. Well, since
46:14
Speaker 2: Chuck corrected me and added cod Wars, of course, that
46:17
Speaker 2: means it's time everybody for listening to mail.
46:21
Speaker 3: Uh. First of all, quick correction to a correction. When
46:25
Speaker 3: we got written in about the hodgepodge, I kept saying
46:29
Speaker 3: modgepodge right, it is modpodge, and the corrector got it right.
46:34
Speaker 3: I just kept saying it wrong, wow, And I played
46:38
Speaker 3: it off to myself as his joke, but it was not.
46:41
Speaker 2: Modgepodge is better. I think the inventor of mod podge
46:44
Speaker 2: is just like, oh, why didn't I call it mogepodge?
46:47
Speaker 3: Mister vote?
46:48
Speaker 2: That rhymes even I wonder if it was from the
46:51
Speaker 2: time when mod squad was out, because it does have
46:53
Speaker 2: kind of like a hippie dippy flower look to it,
46:56
Speaker 2: doesn't it.
46:57
Speaker 3: Well. Decoupage is a very old thing, and I suppose
47:00
Speaker 3: that meant a modern des coupage, is my guess.
47:05
Speaker 2: Okay, don't you think I don't know? I didn't ever
47:09
Speaker 2: think about it more than I have in the last
47:11
Speaker 2: couple of weeks. I know, right, we should never brought
47:15
Speaker 2: it up.
47:16
Speaker 3: Oh man, how do you go?
47:18
Speaker 2: Oh?
47:19
Speaker 3: I remember now we mentioned Martha Stewart and I said,
47:21
Speaker 3: there's the Hodgepodge everywhere. M all right. So this is
47:25
Speaker 3: from a friend in the Netherlands who said, good luck
47:28
Speaker 3: pronouncing the name. But I think I've nailed it, so
47:31
Speaker 3: we're going to see.
47:32
Speaker 2: Okay, stay tuned for the end.
47:34
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, just finished finished the episode on automats, and
47:36
Speaker 3: I felt I needed to write in I'm from the
47:38
Speaker 3: Netherlands and believe it or not, automats are still a
47:41
Speaker 3: big thing there. And I remember now after I got
47:44
Speaker 3: a couple of emails about these of being in Amsterdam,
47:47
Speaker 3: Amsterdam and seeing these feebos.
47:49
Speaker 2: F e b o places I've not heard of that.
47:53
Speaker 3: Well, it's an automat basically, except instead of a huge restaurant,
47:57
Speaker 3: it's just like a you know, a smallish room. We
48:00
Speaker 3: refer to it as eating out of the wall. These
48:02
Speaker 3: places mostly just sort of deep pried food, but in
48:05
Speaker 3: general is quite fresh. Not sure why they're still so
48:08
Speaker 3: popular though. Maybe it's because the Dutch aren't really known
48:11
Speaker 3: for they're fine dining, as we just want our meals
48:14
Speaker 3: to be efficient and cheap. Nevertheless, if you ever around
48:16
Speaker 3: and invite you to take one of our famous croquettes
48:19
Speaker 3: or bitter balls out of the wall, which are especially
48:22
Speaker 3: good after a night of heavy drinking, I love the
48:25
Speaker 3: show best regards, and that is from Hez.
48:30
Speaker 2: Nice. Will you spell that for us non Dutch speakers?
48:35
Speaker 3: At least that's how I was told to say it.
48:36
Speaker 3: It is pronounced or as I'm sorry spelled, Gijs said, Hes.
48:43
Speaker 2: That is fantastic. That looks like I just like brushed
48:47
Speaker 2: up against the keyboard.
48:49
Speaker 3: It really does.
48:50
Speaker 2: Can you pronounce it one more time?
48:52
Speaker 3: What I've gotten and what I'm sticking with is Hez.
48:55
Speaker 2: That is great. I hope you nailed it, Chuck, you
48:58
Speaker 2: deserve too of them. I will say thanks a lot, Hes.
49:03
Speaker 3: The name you're trying to pronounce is Hez.
49:08
Speaker 2: We appreciate the email. Thanks for filling us in. I
49:11
Speaker 2: had no idea about bitter balls and eating from the
49:14
Speaker 2: wall through out of the wall in Amsterdam, So thank you.
49:18
Speaker 2: And if you want to be like the name is Hes,
49:23
Speaker 2: then you can send us an email to send it
49:26
Speaker 2: off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
49:32
Speaker 3: Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
49:35
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
49:39
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.