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the tragedy of the commons
Saturday, July 27 2002
When I own something, it comes to be associated with me and I take pride in its upkeep and, say, taking it to school for show and tell. When I share ownership of something with one other person, such pride is decreased. When I share something with three million other people, that pride can theoretically approach zero. This is the inherent problem with the sharing of resources such as parks, rivers, subways, and the air we breathe. Resources must be shared, particularly in urban areas, but one consequence is that these resources are abused as they're used.
Among its many uses, Prospect Park is a perfect laboratory for advanced studies of the tragedy of the commons. Already the Vale of Cashmere, just cleaned by countless hours of volunteer labor, is flecked with castaway personal and consumer detritus: plastic bags, condoms, cigarette butts, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and, particularly horrifying, arrays of besmirched toilet paper. A minority of people using the Vale are evidently unwilling to invest the tiny effort necessary to carry their trash out with them or even kick a little dirt on top of their makeshift forest shitatoria.
At around 11:00pm I was out in the center of the Long Meadow with Sally the dog. Due to the ongoing water crisis, the grass of the Meadow is yellow and dry like a Nebraskan prairie. Tonight this yellow grass was illuminated by the diffuse light of the clouds, the fullish Moon, and the city. Sally saw something out there on a low grassy knoll that interested her. It was a black form with long ears that was sitting absolutely motionless, even as she approached it. This was such unusually bold behavior for a small eared creature that Sally was frightened, running back and forth and even woofing one of her muted woofs of concern. With my somewhat superior human vision (coupled with 34 years of experience) I could tell right away that the creature was in fact a black plastic bodega bag with two erect handle loops. I finally walked up to it and found a whole 12 pack of empty beer bottles strewn upon the ground. To demonstrate to Sally what it was, I gave the bag a kick so it would make a crinkly pamper sound. She approached cautiously and, once convinced that it was a benignly inanimate object, crouched over it and pissed.
In completely unrelated news, I did a search in Google for "sleeper cell" and found an interesting application of Blogspot:
The Al Qaeda Sleeper Cell Activation Page. I'm certain such a site, though obviously a spoof, would never be permitted by a more established corporate free website provider such as Geocities or Tripod, which prefer the kind of treacle created by the likes of Rosebud and the Softer Side of the Web. Oh dear, I see Tripod is suddenly up to two pop-ups per page view. Pop-ups are the tapeworms of the web, sucking away vitality in direct proportion to the weakness of the underlying business model.
Noah and Edna playing roadkill on the bed.
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