The Tragedy of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Commons

by Desiree Snyman on the 13th of September 2020 at Alstonville Anglicans

Read Matthew 18.21-35

Once upon a time there were two fields. One field was privately owned. The owner-farmer was wise. He knew that after grazing cattle for a while on one part of the field, the cattle had to be moved to another part of the field to allow the land to recover. He never had more cattle than the land could cope with. The land prospered.

The second field was a common resource – the commons. The commons was shared by a number of cattle herders who were entitled to graze the land with an allotted number of cattle. These cattle herders were cunning, but not wise. They soon realised they could maximise profits if they increased their herd. While the increased herd benefitted individual herders with more earnings, the land suffered from overgrazing to the detriment of all: the herders, the cattle, and the land.

The story I have told is a metaphor by William Lloyd’s 1833 pamphlet and later Garit Hardin’s 1964 published article “The Tragedy of the commons.” The point of the metaphor observes that the privately owned property prospers because the owner has a vested interest in its longevity. The tragedy of the commons is that what is held in common is destroyed to the detriment of all because of individually focused decisions.

How do you solve the tragedy of the commons? Imagine you are one of the cattle herders on the commons and you have observed the deterioration of the commons due to overgrazing. How would you convince your fellow herders to forego some profit short term to sustain the whole enterprise long term? The tragedy of the commons, as Aristotle summarises simply in Politics is that “what is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care.”

In September, the worldwide church celebrates the Season of Creation. The focus of our reflection, inspired by Gardin’s article, is the Tragedy of the Commons. The tragedy of the commons is a lens through which we experience the climate emergency. The commons is the ocean, the atmosphere, water, soil…the whole environment in fact. The tragedy is that actions and decisions which may benefit a few with higher profits, is to the detriment of our survival.

How do we respond to the tragedy of the commons? To go back to the metaphor, how do we encourage the cattle herders not to overgraze? The answers to the metaphor are the same answers we give to the climate emergency. How do we encourage people to give up personal comfort, and personal benefit to sustain the whole? More importantly what do we do when they don’t cooperate? Fundamentally the issue posed by the tragedy of the commons is a question about community and what to do when it goes wrong, and this is where Scripture steps in.

Matthew 18 is about community and what to do when community breaks down. For example, how to respond to conflict, how to value the most vulnerable in community, how to communicate and the role of forgiveness in repairing community. The question today posed in verses 21-35 is when things go wrong, do you forgive and if so, how many times. Jesus answers that we forgive continually. Forgiveness is easy to understand, often hard to practice.

Jesus then muddies the issue of forgiveness with a confusing parable. Well, confusing to me at any rate. The books, commentaries, and sermons I have read about this parable make me feel like I’m the only sober person in a room full of inebriated friends, or the only inebriated one in a room full of sober Methodists. If this parable is meant to illustrate the value and function of forgiveness and that we are meant to forgive because we are forgiven, it fails.

The first slave owes 10 000 talents. Either the amount is hyperbolic, or its highlighting a narrative context. Galilee and Pereia owed Herod Antipas 200 talents per year in tribute. Overall, Herod earned 900 talents per annum. This amount of 10 000 talents is either 50 years’ worth of tribute from Galilee and Pereia or 10 years of Herod’s annual income. In other words, this first slave is a high-level bureaucrat responsible for vast sums of money.

The second slave owes the equivalent of half a Roman legionnaire’s salary or an annual wage of a labourer. In Australian terms my best guess would be the denarii is about 65 000 dollars. The debt owed by the second slave to the first slave while large, is nevertheless payable.

Bearing in mind that Jesus has just said we are to forgive 70 times 7, the king forgives a debt of 10 000 talents in one breath but withdraws the forgiveness in the next breath. The king passes sentence and the slave is tortured for eternity as opposed to the earlier punishment of merely being sold as a slave. The king has forgiven only once, according to Jesus, he still owes 489 clemencies. I hope you can sympathise with my confusion. So, what is going on here?

If the first bureaucrat could be sold into slavery at the whim of a king, or worse, tortured, the parable implies something about the system they are in. No one is safe, no matter how high up you are, how much power you have, and no matter how much money you have. Money, power, and position do not protect you from the system of debt and profit.

Even the king is undermined. Even if the king exchanges a policy of brutal tax exploitation for the cancelation of debt, the world doesn’t change because his subordinates, his bureaucrats are still caught in the system of debt and profit. The king’s hands are tied, and he is forced to bow down to the power of the system.

What this parable says to me is that there is a difference between change and transformation: you cannot change one element in a violent domination system and expect society to transform; that is like rearranging furniture on a sinking Titanic. In order for Christ’s vision of an alternative society to take shape, and the ethics of mutuality, solidarity and generosity to be practical, the whole domination system must change.

Peter’s question (how many times you forgive) indicates how much he buys into the system Jesus intends to overthrow. Who counts mercy? Like grace, mercy, generosity, and friendship are abundant; they are too priceless to count. Jesus’ alternative is cooperation, generosity, leaders as servants, and offering help without counting the cost. The alternative Jesus offers requires radical, integral, and holistic transformation of attitudes, spirituality, beliefs, economics, faith, and business models. Jesus is proposing a revolution so great that it doesn’t only change the people, it changes the entire system itself. 

Here in lies the relevance of the parable of the unmerciful king for our climate emergency (or impending catastrophe depending on how you interpret the science). The parable calls for a total transformation and predicts the failure of one or two changes in making a difference to our world. It is not enough to change one aspect of our technology for another technology and expect creation to heal. For example, it is not enough to change diesel cars for electric or coal for solar panels and expect that to be a solution to our climate emergency/catastrophe. The climate emergency demands a whole system approach, an holistic and integral transformation of faith, spirituality, finance, business, education, health … everything.

Jesus’ background in Judaism holds the concept of shalom as central to a healed world. Shalom is a vision of interconnectedness, that we are one with each other, with the creator, and with the environment. Other cultures have similar understanding. For the Maori, shalom is whakapapa; for Africans, shalom is ubuntu; for Tibetan Buddhists, tendrel. Shalom, ubuntu, tendril, whakapapa have a similar energy – that we are all connected to God, to each other and to every atom in creation through an innate web of relationships.