This essay examines the tension between ownership and stewardship as competing responses to the Tragedy of the Commons. Drawing on Garrett Hardin's foundational concept, the paper traces how shared resources collapse under population growth and unchecked greed, and how private ownership failed to resolve these pressures in medieval England. It then turns to Chief Seattle's 1854 speech to articulate a Native American philosophy of stewardship — the idea that humans are caretakers, not proprietors, of the land. The essay argues that only a stewardship ethic, rather than a regime of private ownership, can prevent the inevitable degradation of shared resources.
As capitalists first and Americans second, we believe strongly in the concept of ownership. We own and use the Earth and the material goods that Earth's raw materials help us produce, and we feel a proprietary command over them. When Communism developed as an alternative to unadulterated ownership, we responded with the fear and anger of one whose child had been taken.
Ownership of the land, its materials, and its spoils is more integral to American society and thought than almost any other characteristic or facet of our culture. However, this concept is subject to the limitations and inevitable logic of the Tragedy of the Commons, and we will eventually be undone by this incontrovertible truth.
The "commons" is any kind of resource that is divided up and shared by a group of people. Such things as the air we breathe and the water we drink derive from the commons. In many areas of the world, new physical land for farming, grazing land for farmers' livestock, fish from the sea, and wood for fuel and housing are treated as commons — owned by all.
The logic of the commons functions in the following manner: each household on Earth has the right to draw resources from and deposit wastes into the commons. To accumulate wealth, resources, and material goods, every household feels that it can acquire one unit of resources or dump one unit of waste while distributing one unit of cost across all households that share the commons. In this manner, the gain to any single household appears extremely large and the cost negligible. "Some households accumulate wealth more rapidly than others and this, in turn, gives them the means to access an even larger share of the commons." (Hardin, 1997)
The logical error in the commons lies in our failure to realize and internalize that all households are attempting to accomplish the same thing. "Thus, on average, one unit of gain for a household actually produces a net one unit of cost for each household. However, selfish households accumulate wealth from the commons by acquiring more than their fair share of the resources and paying less than their fair share of the total costs. Ultimately, as population grows and greed runs rampant, the commons collapses" — ending in what Garrett Hardin famously called "the tragedy of the commons." (Garrett Hardin, Science 162:1243, 1968)
The logic of the commons as described above collapses when resources decline and/or population grows too large. Consider the following historical example. Fourteenth-century England was organized as a loosely connected collection of villages, each with its own common pasture where villagers grazed horses, cattle, and sheep. Each household attempted to gain wealth by placing as many animals on the commons as it could afford. As villages grew and more and more creatures were put onto the common land, overgrazing destroyed the pasture entirely. No livestock could be supported on the commons after that point. As a direct consequence of population growth, greed, and the logic of the commons, village after village collapsed in medieval England.
A seemingly foolproof response to prevent the collapse of the commons was the introduction of private ownership. Common lands were divided into small tracts, each owned exclusively by one household. If one household greedily and thoughtlessly destroyed its plot and ruined future grazing possibilities on it, its demise was its own fault.
However, as population grew, each new generation of households received a smaller and smaller portion of the original holdings. There was still ample opportunity for some households to increase their wealth by acquiring land from others, by any means available. Private ownership therefore did absolutely nothing to control greed; it merely shifted greed to a new arena, according to Hardin. "The number of landless households grew rapidly, each one descending deeper and deeper into abject poverty." (Hardin, 1997)
One solution to the tragedy of the commons is expressed most eloquently in Chief Seattle's famous 1854 speech. Much as Antony's speech in Julius Caesar calls Brutus an honorable man while systematically exposing his wrongs, Chief Seattle's speech calls the American president an honorable man — a father, even — while demonstrating the fallacy of his ways and of the private-ownership mindset that governed white American society.
Chief Seattle expounds upon a Native American belief in stewardship of the land. In this worldview, humans do not own any land upon Earth; rather, they are simply caretakers across eternity. Because Native Americans believe in life after death, the land is actually cared for in the name of relatives and ancestors who have already passed.
Chief Seattle expresses this most deliberately when he writes: "In all the earth, there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone." (Chief Seattle, 1854)
Humanity depends upon the land, and the tragedy of the commons is not averted by assigning private ownership, according to Chief Seattle. It simply makes no sense to him to "own" anything that cannot possibly be owned.
The Earth does not belong only to those who are living; it belongs to those who have lived before us, to us, and to those who will come after us. That is why, in Chief Seattle's vision, the white man will never be alone. He mentions it ostensibly as comfort to the white man, but in reality it is a veiled warning: even the white man's period of dominance on this Earth will eventually come to a close. When that happens, according to the white man's own belief system, they will simply vanish from the Earth, whereas the Native peoples of the past will continue to coexist with the land.
The tragedy of the commons is only averted by stewardship of the land, not ownership. We can only take care of the Earth; we cannot dream to possess it, as it is simply not a commodity that can be possessed.
You’re 98% through this paper. Sign up to read the full paper.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.