The tragedy of the common

ARTICLE: WHO Backs Free, Treated Mosquito Nets to Prevent Malaria, By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post, August 17, 2007; Page A15

Easterly makes a great point in "White Man's Burden": when netting is given away for free, people often misuse it for fishing, wedding veils, etc. When a small fee is charged for it, people use it for what it's designed for far more often. The lesson? When you treat something as cost-free, people see it as worthless and thus employable in any fashion they damn well please. Put a small cost on something, and people want their money's worth.

Comments

[James D. Newman]

The market is not for all things. I remember being in Los Angeles around the dawn of the AIDS age. Condoms were everywhere -- people had them in bowls on their dining room tables, they were in candy dishes at the entrance to clubs, in bathrooms. People carried them in purses and pockets and handed them out to strangers. (I'm thinking West Hollywood -- it may have been different in Bel Air or Compton)

I have no statistics to prove this -- but, even after the water balloon fights, I think that more people used them because they were everywhere. I think people are alive for all that litter.

Or libraries -- books wear out faster at libraries because people don't handle them properly. But is the social good of having them worth the loss of the abused volumes? I think so.

I think we can stand some litter and some fake wedding veils -- if the adoption is as low as 2 out of 5 the investment will still be worth it.

Like any idea, the idea of free market regulation can be stretched outside of it's proper sphere of application.

[Bill Millan]

What makes this even worse is, in spite of reports to the contrary, they are pushing these nets instead of spraying the eves with DDT, which wipes out mosquitos who spread Malaria. The Greens, who control these organizations like WHO, hate DDT.

[Louis Heberlein]

'Free' ideas, policies and strategies have a similar perceived low value. If they are applied by authority figures, the bystanders that did not develop the solution will spend a lot of time picking apart its weaknesses, and disclaiming its relevance if success is achieved.

So, too often, it is necessary to involve the bystanders, let them blunder through weaker alternative solutions, and coach them into their insight into the 'least worst' path of action. Then the bystanders turned participants can better see (for awhile) the relevance of that solution to the problem, and to accept its imperfections.

Even God, the great t mentor, accepted this limitation when he let dummy mankind have freedom of choice in seeking knowledge and wisdom.