“You weren’t calling people ‘the commons’?” my friend asked, chuckling. I decided then to share my notes. 😂

I was trying to understand the translation between individual choices and institutions, so I opened up Elinor Ostrom’s book, Governing the Commons, for a little read about principles of institutional design.

I made it to the Tragedy of the Commons and stopped to consider it. She described:

“Since Garrett Hardin’s challenging article in Science (1968), the expression “the tragedy of the commons” has come to symbolize the degradation of the environment to be expected whenever many individuals use a scarce resource in common. To illustrate the logical structure of his model, Hardin asks the reader to envision a pasture “open to all.” He then examines the structure of this situation from the perspective of a rational herder. Each herder receives a direct benefit from his own animals and suffers delayed costs from the deterioration of the commons when his and others’ cattle overgraze. Each herder is motivated to add more and more animals because he receives the direct benefit of his own animals and bears only a share of the costs resulting from overgrazing. Hardin concludes:

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.

(Hardin 1968, p. 1,244)

Later in the chapter, she highlights communication as a core condition for cooperation — but what if communication itself isn’t available?

In reality, my friend who has worked with a global variety of fisheries often tells me that the involved parties can’t get along due to years of built up resentment. The bold fishermen don’t mind ignoring the authority of the government, but still can’t cooperate due to their own poor relationships.

This was my attempt to understand in my own terms, not to prove anything or suggest which rules or forms of governance are necessary.

– I’m choosing to ignore the fact that they are disrespecting the land for the sake of exploring the scenario. In the story, no single actor intends to limit the other, yet freedom without constraint produces mutual lack of freedom. That’s what makes cooperation necessary.

The cattle herders are not dominating each other if the herders are horizontally limiting one another. Assuming exit is constrained here, there is harm and mutual loss of agency, but no dependency relationship or identity-collapse. That’s a failure of coordination– an agency-eroding dynamic without domination.

So, assuming that communication is impossible or heavily strained: At the beginning, harm is reversible. The grass regrows. After crossing the threshold, path dependence begins. Grass quality drops, herd sizes increase to compensate, competition intensifies. The system begins to remember its past. This is the point of hysteresis – reducing herd size will not immediately restore the pasture and individual restraint no longer yields individual benefit.

Once hysteresis sets in, pasture damage persists even if behavior changes. The constraint is now the system’s own history. No one benefits asymmetrically and no identity is attacked.

Therefore, I’m beginning to see that agency eroding dynamics without domination emerge at the system level even as individuals make reasonable choices, as their behaviors aggregate together. Agency eroding dynamics become hysteretic when past overuse constrains present choice, making cooperation insufficient to restore agency without external interruption. This would be why liberals see value in laws. Constraints are introduced to interrupt the feedback loop driving these emergent dynamics. Whether they do so in agency-preserving or agency-collapsing ways depends on their design.

A constraint is anything that limits possible actions. Constraints can be:

⋆˙⟡ environmental (walls, distance, design),
⋆˙⟡ material (scarcity, access),
⋆˙⟡ social (norms, expectations),
⋆˙⟡ coercive (force, punishment).

Non dominating constraints limit action, preserve identity, apply symmetrically or by role, and disagreement and revision are possible. It often protects exit. This likely applies both individually and on the scale of an institution.

On the individual level, I already differentiate between constraint and two types of domination, splitting them between agency-preserving domination and agency-collapsing domination. The difference between constraint (I’ve called constraint coercion before, but I’m undecided on it) and domination is that domination requires dependency and changed identity.

Agency preserving domination is temporarily asymmetric, acts on interiors to restore capacity, reduces dependency over time, and includes holding, scaffolding, and containment. This is applicable during parenthood, accountability processes, therapy, and maybe some transitional institutions.

In contrast, agency collapsing domination targets identity, relies on and produces dependency, is enforced by shame, and limits the pathway to restored agency. These would be rules that are based in things like racism, ableism, sexism, caste systems, or carceral humiliation.

Some people are understandably exhausted and prioritize solutions that promise stability under real constraints. My one moral stance, though, is that I refuse to give up on people. That’s why I’m concerned with identifying which actions actually reduce harm versus which lead to false stability that may be treated as more “moderate.”

Additional Note:

The sustainable fishery friend I mentioned above was actually very defensive about Ostrom when I asked him his opinion. I found it interesting because his technique is actually not anything Ostrom indicated, because Ostrom assumes a baseline capacity is intact.

To get the fishermen to cooperate, he begins by physically constraining them into different rooms and asymmetrically mediating across different days. It helps the fishermen vent and reduce their sensitivity, recovering some capacity. He then combines their concerns together into columns to compare and find common ground. Each side is presented, then relevant scientists present their opinions as well. Lastly, he allows them all to calmly consider their options and doesn’t interfere with the end result — in other words, he acts as an agency-preserving container to allow their agency to expand.

My friend is doing something beyond Ostrom without recognizing it, but is defensive due to the respect he has for institutions and her having won the Nobel prize. He’s undermining himself in the face of authority.