Cooperation begins with common knowledge. Ostrom highlights several examples of successful common pool resource systems and shows how one of the key factors in getting people to work together is that they must have a way of sharing information.

In one example, looking at groundwater basins in California, the creation of a public forum became the basis for cooperative action. Having a space where users could share problems and brainstorm solutions together led to them seeing that working together was the best way forward.

I think what is important to highlight here is that in both private and government run systems, information is often kept from the public. This leads to a breakdown in trust where information is seen as a competitive edge or a means of control. I recall reading about Frederick Winslow Taylor and his pursuit of efficiency in factory work in which workers were kept ignorant to how the larger process worked. His theory was that workers didn't need to understand how their part fit into the larger whole for them to do their job. Knowledge was for a select privileged few.

But that breeds a very low trust environment. Cooperation requires trust, and trust requires treating information as a public good.

How do you get people to follow the rules around maintaining a common pool resource? This is at the core of Ostrom's design principles for analyzing long enduring CPRs. There are always short term incentives for people to break the rules so what keeps them committed?

One thing that Ostrom points to in successful examples is that monitoring and sanctions for breaking rules are not done by external authorities; but rather, these are done by users of the resource themselves—often by appointing designated people to enforce. There are also rewards or benefits for those who catch rule breakers.

What holds all of this together is the shared reality they are in. It would not work if it was externally forced on them. Users of the resource willingly submit themselves to this because they all share in the benefits and all suffer if the system fails. This is why the enforcer/monitor being one of them is so important. They aren't separate from the system, their fate is entwined with it. It's why they often show leniency in certain situations for first time infractions, seeing themselves in the culprit while also coming down harshly on repeat offenders whose actions threaten the whole.

People need to feel a sense of ownership to the system. They have to trust that it's serving everyone's best interest and that everyone else is committed to it. They need to feel that they have a say in shaping it if and when something needs to change. It cannot be put upon them, it must feel like they are choosing it.

"Because of the repeated situations involved in most organized processes, individuals can use contingent strategies in which cooperation will have a greater chance of evolving and surviving. Individuals frequently are willing to forgo immediate returns in order to gain larger joint benefits when they observe many others following the same strategy." (Ostrom)

Despite the myth of self-sufficiency, humans are social creatures. We follow social norms because we a) have faith in a reward, and b) want to avoid social shame. The other day I was reflecting on how to get people to sacrifice their immediate gratification in exchange for a bigger, future reward. Social norms and behaviours—especially public ones—play a role here.

Every kid understands the social power of waiting in a line. And every kid knows the social shame that comes from cutting (or, 'butting' as we used to call it). Even when there is a risk of the reward at the end of the line running out, a free-for-all would be chaos and set a precedent that would erode trust for future lines. Without shared trust in the line system, those who were the strongest or pushiest would always get there first.

Now, its very worth noting that the strongest and the pushiest do usually get there first in life. They bully or buy their way to the front and manipulate things so they get more than their fair share, leaving next to nothing for those at the end. I guess my point is that we've let trust in the system erode and we might need to figure out how to re-normalize the social shaming of "no cutsies" at a macro level.

"The key fact of life for coappropriators is that they are tied together in a lattice of interdependence so long as they continue to share a single common pool resource." (Ostrom)

Its hard not to see the trajectory of modern Euro-Atlantic society as an attempt to loosen our dependence. Dependence on each other and even, perhaps, the natural world itself. Self-sufficiency is a myth upon which our culture has been built. Though we believe this to our own peril.

Our lives our inextricably bound to the systems and participants of those systems that we are situated in. Trying to act independently from that truth wreaks havoc on the systems—something that we are seeing more and more as the natural world struggles under the unchecked demand we have put on it for the past century+.

Ostrom rightly suggests that when people act independently of these shared resources, especially when they are scarce, the total benefit is less than if they worked together. If not reigned in they risk depleting the resource entirely. Cooperation is essential.

"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.