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15 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 325 (1992)
The Tragedy of the Commons, Part Two

handle is hein.journals/hjlpp15 and id is 339 raw text is: THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS, PART TWO JAMES E. KRIER* I. INTRODUCTION This symposium is about the idea of free market environ- mentalism in general and the book Free Market Environmental- ism, by Terry Anderson and Donald Leal,1 in particular. While I focus chiefly on Anderson and Leal's book, the discussion will necessarily involve the general idea of free market environ- mentalism as well. The conceit of my tide, which obviously derives from Garrett Hardin's celebrated essay on The Tragedy of the Commons,2 is this: Superficial differences aside, Hardin's essay and Anderson and Leal's book address the same fundamental problem of coordi- nating human behavior as it affects environmental quality. But both the essay and the book attack their shared concern with the same troubling kind of argument. Aiming to resolve the problem of coordination, the authors proceed instead to as- sume it away. As we shall see, this flaw is perhaps more appar- ent, and excusable, in Hardin's essay than it is in Anderson and Leal's book, but it can be found in the book nonetheless-as can a few other difficulties. II. SOME BACKGROUND The idea of relying more fully on market-based incentives to control environmental problems is by now almost old hat. The intellectual history dates back at least to the 1930s, when the British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou is thought to have sug- gested the imposition of taxes on pollution emissions.3 In * Earl Warren DeLano Professor of Law, University of Michigan. An earlier version of this essay was presented at a conference on Free Market Environmentalism, North- western School of Law of Lewis and Clark College, April 13, 1991. 1. TERRY L. ANDERSON & DONALD R. LEAL, FREE MARKET ENVIRONMENTALISM (1991). Readers especially interested in free market environmentalism might also wish to read an essay by Richard L. Stroup & Jane S. Shaw, The Free Market and the Environment, PUBLIC INTEREST, Fall 1989, at 30. Stroup and Shaw's account is much shorter than Anderson and Leal's, but similar in tone. 2. Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 SCIENCE 1243 (1968). 3. See James E. Krier, Marketlike Approaches: Their Past, Present, and Probable Future, in REFORMING SOCIAL REGULATION: ALTERNATIVE PUBLIC POLICY STRATEGIES 151, 152 (Le- Roy Graymer & Frederick Thompson eds., 1982). I say that Pigou is thought to have

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