"Individuals attribute less value to benefits that they expect to receive in the distant future, and more value to those expected in the immediate future. In other words, individuals discount future benefits..." (Ostrom)

Perhaps the biggest struggle with trying to get people to cooperate is getting them to act against their own (immediate) self-interest even for the sake of future rewards. I've offered this sort of thing to my kids—would you rather eat this one tiny candy now or have a full dessert later—and, unsurprisingly, they often choose the immediate reward.

Marketers know this. If you can get people's reward-gratification signals to fire in making a spontaneous purchase, it usually works. It's very hard to sell people on future gratification. Doing this usually requires playing to anxiety rather than reward (insurance, wills, device protection). But getting people to take less benefit now or share that benefit with others in exchange for a better future is no easy sell.

The main exception to this, according to Ostrom, is when people are more deeply connected to a location. They are likely to care about future benefits when they are hoping to see their kids share in those benefits as well. Conversely, the more transient people are, the less concerned they are about the shared resources within a given location.

I think the takeaway here for anyone working in the realm of the public good is that if you want people to care it needs to begin with forming connection to a community or place. People need to see their future as intrinsically bound to the sustained future of the place. Something, perhaps to consider in a later post.

Ostrom's principles for managing a commons rest on the idea that people will seek to solve the problems that they face as effectively as they can:

“As long as analysts presume that individuals cannot change such situations themselves, they do not ask what internal or external variables can enhance or impede the efforts of communities of individuals to deal creatively and constructively with perverse problems such as the tragedy of the commons.”

You cannot solve a problem until you know what it is and what is getting in the way of solving it. Once you know these things, you can bake them into the solution itself.

With a bit of a grounding via Nordman, I'm digging directly into Nostrom's Governing the Commons now. It's fairly dense so I appreciate giving myself a bit of a primer. A brief aside: this was how I was taught to study the works of great, past thinkers in my Masters. Begin with a biography to help contextualize their thinking within their life.

Ostrom breaks down the false dichotomy between state and private enterprise as being the only solutions to shared resource management, suggesting (as Nordman has shown) that plenty of communities across history have self-governed. She looks at three models that have tended to form theory—and then policy—that have enabled this dichotomy. I'm not going to go into them here, but what I want to note is that these models are concerned with what she calls the free-rider problem: when individuals become incentivized to take the benefits without contributing. The concern being that if everyone free-rides, then the collective benefit is lost.

These models suggest that the only way to deal with this problem is through an outside institutional force—whether state or private enterprise—that distributes the resource and disincentivizes free-riders. What Ostrom rightfully points out, however, is that these forces are incentivized to benefit themselves and everyone else becomes subject to the state or private enterprise's enforcement methods.

What's important here is that we have see this over and over again. When the state or the private sector takes control of a limited and essential resource, it is exploited for their benefit while those who rely on the resource suffer.

Solving disputes is essential to shared resources and how to do that made up the core of Elinor Ostrom's principles for managing a commons. Nordman presents a case study on the Water Tribunal in Valencia, Spain that handles conflicts related to their water irrigation system. The system is made up of 8 canals, each one making up its own district. It is a system that has been self-managed for over a thousand years.

Every Thursday, the council—made up of 1 elected representative per district—meets outside the cathedral in Valencia to handle any disputes brought forward. Key to this is that anyone who owns land in one of the districts can come before the Tribunal seeking justice. In Valencia, this has long included women. As per Ostrom's principles, conflict-management needs to be accessible.

Nordman shares a painting of this by Bernardo Ferrandiz in 1863 that portrays a woman standing before the Tribunal. It's a beautiful portrayal of a system that has effectively managed an essential, shared resource in that area for centuries. He once again notes how social shame continues plays a role here, no farmer wants to be brought before the Tribunal—so interpersonal conflict management is key.

Elinor Ostrom's Eight Design Principles for Managing a Commons (per Nordman):

• The physical and social boundaries are clearly defined;

• Locally tailored rules define resource access and consumption;

• Individuals who are most affected by the rules can participate in rule making;

• Resource monitors are accountable to resource users;

• Graduated penalties can be imposed on rule breakers;

• Conflict management institutions are accessible;

• Authorities recognize the right to self-organize;

• Complex systems are organized into layers of nested governance.

Ostrom developed these through the study and analyzing of about 5000 examples of common-pool resource management around the world. The ones that were successful, had some version of these.