 Yeah, history is here to help. And we do need help. It's very clear, perhaps more now than before. Peter Hoffenberg and I, we want to have a kind of co-contribution kind of show on the subject of the tragedy of the commons. This is very important. It was a study done. It's very famous. Welcome to the show, Peter. Thank you very much. Good to see you again. So what is the tragedy of the commons? And what role does it play in our times? The study is from the late 1960s, but I think it's become almost a common term, often without quotes. And to put it in a nutshell, late 60s, as people of our age remember, there was a similar existentialist crisis. Race relations in America were exploding. I mean, obviously these days we have significant issues. But please remember Detroit, LA, Black Panthers, police brutality was horrendous in those days. I mean, basically a war against Black Panthers. And I'm using existentialist meaning that philosophical and soul searching, not just numbers. So yes, Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter for wider purposes, as well as the profound importance of Black Lives themselves. And I think people will remember in the late 60s, there was a space race, Cold War was very hot, it wasn't cold. And there was a possibility among many folks of nuclear destruction. And so one of the issues arose, and I think we can see some parallels, I'm not saying analogies, but we're living through, as you suggest in the opening, similar existentialist crises. The question arose in the economic literature, whether there is a technical solution to these problems. Folks might recall the war on poverty. War on poverty said there was a technical solution. A technical, and this way I think you can see a synonymous with expertise, having a background in statistics, in theories. And also the willingness of both the public and the government to try it, right? There's a great debate, of course, on the war on poverty. It should not be dismissed, obviously poverty persisted, but the question we ask about these kinds of issues is would things have been worse without it? So I think you're also asking about that old question about the perfect and the good. Even if it's not a perfect solution, is it good solution? I think we live in a complex society, and it was just limiting into the United States for a moment. And it gets more complex all the time, and to reach either the perfect or the good, takes some effort because of the changes all the time. And I think one of the risks that we have is the tragedy of the commons, because you can find people who, especially in our melting pot country, who have turned into silos of their own self-interest, and thus corruption, not caring about the other silos and the interests of other people. And that has not been resolved. I think we recognize the problem, but we are unable to do anything about it. And I just have a little bit further discussion, Peter, I wanna put up a chart that I made on the fly and see what you think of it. So I entitled the chart loosely, where are we and where are we going? Because there's an issue about where the United States is. And so there's been a lot of discussion lately about how we are moving right, I mean, in terms of the base, we're moving to a more right-wing government where right-wing people are doing what they can to change the society the way they want and to diminish the interests of others. And so there's two lines on the chart. One is the value that we put on the common good, which to me, I worship the common good. I think a lot of people do. And then the other is on the bottom of the chart, there's a line that says authoritarian government, which is the opposite, essentially. And my proposition here is that as we lose interest in the common good for whatever reason, somehow that is related. There was a relationship. Maybe it's loose, not necessarily a perfect relationship, but there's some kind of relationship where authoritarian government becomes more the standard. And these two change over time. I think they're changing now, not only in the US, but to talk about global. They're talking that's happening in other countries too. We're interested in authoritarian government is moving up and interest in the common good is moving down. I'm not a historian like you, but I wonder what your thoughts are on the relationship with any between the two lines on this chart. All right, thank you very much. And I can see all the research you did. Thank you very much. No, it's very appropriate. And we can use it for a nice discussion. Again, a discussion. I don't have specific answers like we often do about this is right or this is wrong. Quite often there are issues like that. So what I would say is it's a wonderful way to start to think about, let's think about the US, because obviously, even if the chart is relevant elsewhere, it has particularities in their own history. So I think the sense would be that what we need to do is ask some questions of that chart, using that chart. So not dismissing it, not elevating it, but let's use it to ask some key questions. And again, there are more questions. I'm happy to try to make some suggested answers, but let's at least open up the conversation. Okay, one issue is what is the possible answer among some people historically that authoritarianism, particularly in institutions, and social policy is actually in the public interest. And that's a frightening trend, not just reserve of course to the US, but we could extrapolate from that. And that I think is based upon the premise that the public good is a question of social order. And remember, these are questions. These are not what I believe these happen among other people, these are not my views, obviously my view about the public interest is not required social order. But if social order is required in public interest, and I think if you ask people, right, many would agree, they would conclude then that in fact, authoritarian institutions are necessary for public order. Okay, if as we know, we're dealing with right now a wave of ethnic intolerance and public good is not defined by an open, diverse society, but one which is what more ethno-monolithic, then again, the answer is authoritarian institutions are appropriate. Okay, so let's flip though and talk about the ideals of the US at least, right? So if the ideals of the US are an open society and an open society is a good society, then authoritarianism in your values, in your institutions, in the way you treat other people should be isolated and minimized, all right? If that makes sense, okay? Open societies are liberal in a traditional way, all right? I think- Let me add, we do have to define what we mean by these terms. And when I say interest in the common good, I suppose I'm talking about the talkfuls tummelt. And a common good is by definition, builds in a certain tumultuousness if you treat it as a democracy. By the same token, I think I just learned from you that the answer is neither one line or the other. You can't have all the common good without some authority, authoritarianism in the government, and you can't have authoritarian in the government without having some interest in the common good. And maybe the answer is where those two lines meet on the chart, maybe a good place to start from, it could be, I'm not answering, I'm just asking, it could be that at the center of the X, we have a certain amount of authority and a certain amount of concern for the common good. Maybe it's closer to there than either of the extremes. It could be, although I think again, if we're talking about at least the written and orally expressed ideals of our country, let's just talk about the US for now. Okay. There really is very little space for authoritarianism. And Tocqueville would agree, right? And what he worried about is an authoritarianism of the majority or a public opinion. And that also, John Stuart Mill also worried about that. I would say that's authoritarianism, can't really survive with, I mean, open society, we all have some gut response or intuitive answer. Much of it is what you just said, tumultuousness without AR-15s though, right? We're talking about non-coercive tumultuousness because what Tocqueville realized is sure there was democratic tumultuousness, but that also included lynching, and it was appalled by lynching. And that would be considered part of, you know, Jacksonian democratic, tempentuousness and violence. So I would say that you're right in defining the terms, I think open means basic human freedoms, basic, housing, expression, but it also means open society, some more difficult answers. Like an open society needs to have compromise. The common good needs to be based on compromise, but compromise, which cannot be, you know, I'll give a little and you give a lot. And a lot of American compromise has been that, I'll give a little, you give a lot, all right? So for example- Well, that's what's happened in the last few years. And that's how I suck you into believing that I compromised when in fact, I had no intention of compromise. Right, or the both relative and absolute loss for me really is minimal compared to the relative and absolute loss for you. So that's where, for example, you know, some people conceded to civil rights legislation, right? But don't necessarily concede to housing and access to medicine, health and wages. It provided a, you know, a reasonable important legal compromise, which was we're all supposed to be the same under the law, but the way in which that mechanism. So, and one other aspect I think for Americans, which I don't want to sound like a flight waiver, but I do think in many ways, this still is potentially a great experiment in many ways. Yeah, I agree, totally. And part of that great experiment though, is the story of immigration, which must now include a significant number of immigrants did not arrive here willing. So, you know, we don't have to sacrifice the narrative of an open society being a society of immigrants. We can keep that. We need to recognize that not everybody came to the shores either in the same way or with the same resources. So openness requires equity, not just equality requires compromise. I think it requires some suggestions by Natan Sharanski and various others who argue if you're gonna have an open society, you really can't demonize other citizens. You can't dehumanize them. An open society is not one in which a group is demonized or dehumanized. You can't say this group's rights are not legitimate. That just, that does not mean open society. That leads to an authoritarian society. Let me tell you my original perception of the notion of the common good. It wasn't necessarily an open society. It was that everyone had an eye on the common good. And whatever position you took, you had to build that in. You couldn't diminish the rights of others. You had for, and it came up by Tony before the show in a conversation with Mike DeWerd, who is our chief scientist here in Think Tech, talking about the vaccines. And it's a violation of the common good for some people for real reasons that are not clear or defensible to refuse to take the vaccines because their action affects others, many others. And so that's a violation of the common good. And that's not necessarily the same as what you're describing in open society. But before you respond to that, I also wanna add a point, two points. One is you mentioned guns, assault rifles. And I think that's a wild card. The Second Amendment was not in the original constitution. And I think the Second Amendment was, if you research it, you'll find the Second Amendment was something having to do with insurrections by slaves back in the 18th century. They wanted to prevent that. So they wanted to make a distinction between those who had guns and those who didn't. And there's a serious problem with guns because the people with the guns have the power. And that would be the case today. You'd find there's a extraordinary conflation between the extremists and the white supremacists and the people who don't believe in the common good and guns. And if it came to a contention or an insurrection or a coup d'etat, the people with the guns would have a huge advantage. And that's not you and me. So the problem is that if you enhance the power of a given position on the good of the commons, guns change, they change the formula and they change the recipe, they change the environment. And finally, the last point and take from your comments a minute ago was this. There is a serious, if not fatal flaw in the way the founders set it up. And they knew at the time, but they had to compromise. And that was about slavery. Slavery was immoral, unethical. It was many countries were not doing it at all or gave it up shortly into the 19th century. And yet the United States included it in its founding documents and maintained it for 80 years thereafter, a very troublesome 80 years. And there was atrocities galore. You don't have to read a lot to know how really terrible bad it was to be a slave. And somehow it perpetuated itself in our founding documents, in our lofty concepts about all men are created equal, not that. All men are created equal when we were doing atrocities on a substantial number of our population, however they got here. And that is still with us, isn't it Peter? Okay, that's a lot. That's about four or five more shows. So which of those important points do you want to talk about? You raised about six really important points. Take your pick. Okay, well, let's go back to the title, the tragedy of the commons. And yes, I agree with you that open society is not a synonym for the commons. But there is just an important strain in Western and American thought that those are synonymous. That common interests could be best represented by an open society. Now, as I suggested at the start, that's not the only view. And I think what we're experiencing is one side thinking the common interest has an ethnic religious foundation. Please remember the significance of Christianity, not all Christian, but among some folks who are also white supremacists, their interpretation of religion. And they perceive that in keeping with the common good. And their tragedy of the common good is critical race theory and abortion rights, et cetera. So we really have two very different understandings of the commons. The question raised in the 1960s was could we find an economic, technical, or public policy way which was non-coercive, non-authoritarian for different interpretations of the common good to politically coexist? Right, between 1861 and 1865, they did not politically coexist. And let's remember that most the world is partitioned because the common good of Muslims and the common good of Hindus could not coexist. So Jinnah created Pakistan and narrow accepted India. So again, this is kind of a great experiment, right? I mean, Ireland was partitioned, Cyprus was partitioned, Middle East was partitioned in part because of what we're dealing with now. The inability of ethnic and religious nationalisms or interpretations of common good to either coexist peacefully with other people within borders whose interpretations are different, either coexist peacefully, right? Or to remove. And I think that the option for us would preferably be find ways to coexist, defining a common good which does not require authoritarianism. Part of the problem here is, right? Apropos what your guest just said, somehow a vaccine is an authoritarian gesture. We can't dismiss that. We have to try to understand why do people see public health, right? As the authoritarian gesture, how can public health be contrary to the common good? It can only be contrary to the common good for people whose understanding of the common good and what they respect for the common good is antithetical to it. So you really have a clash, an ideological cultural clash over what is the common good? Let me offer this thought because I think it's part of the conversation. I don't think in years past, we had the same problem of being divisive over the scientific benefit of vaccines, for example. And I've heard scientists say that, this is really a matter of people not believing in science. And where did that come from? It came from the oil companies who didn't want you to think about climate change. It came from anti-science companies that wanted you to reject the science. The science cigarettes, same thing. Reject the science. And so you can create divisiveness out of thin air if you go on a propaganda campaign. And let me add, because people are ultimately gullible. And let me add that social media enhances that. It seems to me you can agree or disagree that we have more issues about which more people are polarized to a greater degree of polarization now in this country than ever before. We are cut a million different ways. And when we have social media to thank for that, it's not the media itself. It's what happens on the media. But all this talk about how Vladimir Putin can divide a given community into two or more communities virtually overnight using social media, dividing people according to their more base instincts and all that. And finally, I wanna offer Yugoslavia for this conversation. Yugoslavia had Tito after the war. And he put a lid on divisiveness. He said, you will play together under my rule. And it may be somewhat authoritarian, but you aren't gonna fight with each other. And if you do, I will take steps against you. And that worked, at least in terms of the violence. Fast forward, Tito dies, fast forward, Bosnia. Everybody fighting with everybody about everything because there was nobody there to put a lid on it. And so it almost suggests that authoritarian government and he was authoritarian is somehow good to keep a lid on things and avoid the divisiveness. And finally, last point, and I'll stop. It seems to me, Peter, you can pick whatever point you wanna dwell on. It seems to me that we can use this for other shows. Divisiveness is not good for the country. The more divisive we are, the less we can do. I think we were at the experiment, the great democratic experiment is suffering right now because of divisiveness, where we can't understand or wish or accept the opinion of anyone else that we're in our little thought bubble, which can be artificially created. And that divisiveness is toxic and it's destructive. Okay, end of show, agree with all that. End of show, perfect. No, absolutely. I don't, for the sake of discussion, let's tease out some of, again, you had 10 or 12 really important points which keep us talking for the next century. But I think you hit on something which many people also have a gut embracing of, which is divisiveness is somehow antithetical to effective public policy. And therefore, the answer is some kind of authoritarianism. Well, I think at this moment in our life, we have to be really careful with that. Both parties right now, and I believe in non-partisan discussion. So everything is political, I'm non-partisan. I think there are forces in both parties who've seen the 50-50 split. See, they're 50 as reason to impose their view on the other 50. And that is something that Tocqueville certainly would have worried about. That authoritarianism can come in many guises, right? Tito is one example, although in the case of Tito, his authoritarianism, while keeping a lid on things, did not distribute resources equally. Ernest Gelner has a very important study and argues that nationalism and authoritarianism work with social bribery. All right, so one of the reasons serves Croatians, Bosnians, Muslims, et cetera, fell at each other's throats is the resources were not distributed equally. My teacher- He could have done a better job. He could have done a better job. So what you really, in many ways, what people are yearning for is authoritarian democracy. Or authoritarian egalitarianism. And if they really want authoritarian egalitarianism, there's a guy who wrote about it. But a guy you can't mention, the one Marx brother who was not in films. I mean, that is essentially the goal of communism, which is equality, but equality which requires originally a kind of authoritarianism. All right, with a little seat. So let's recognize that while people besmirch and demonize Marx, on both sides, to a certain degree, they're saying, this is how I want things to be. This is how they should be. I've got 49.9% of the country behind me. The other guy has no more than 49.9%. And I will impose that. That imposition is itself an authoritarianism that we, I think, have to be wary of. You gotta do the old Mark Twain thing. You gotta make sure that the person you've asked to paint the fence wants to paint the fence. And enjoys painting the fence, even if you're sipping mint julep down the street. And that's why I think we've lost. That's where politics is really broken down. The ability, whether it's compromise or the ability to reach out and say, this could be in your interest, that's gone. And that worries me a lot. Now, I mean, he said that, obviously, the history of American compromise, right? And the history of American politics, as usual, is not one without a significant number of warrants. So the goal would be, obviously, for politics to work with as many people as possible participating and as many people as possible voting in a non-coercive way. So the short answer to what you suggest, right, is to open up voting. Voting is a way of buying into the system. Regular contested open elections are a way of saying that whatever is resolved today might be changed in two or six years. What we're reckoning with, I mean, right, in addition to slavery and other very unpalatable aspects of our life, if not tragic, is there is a democratic wave here. And there are people who are opposing that democratic wave. But in a way, the answer to the tragedy of comments is to be more democratic, to open the system up, to have it be more representative, to have oversight, really be oversight, to have separation of powers, really be separation of powers. I'm not so sure the answers are not there. We've somehow lost our ability to see the value in those answers in part because the kind of absurd sense of betrayal and defensiveness on the part of some of our co-citizens. And I think that falls on the ugly word, the ugly R word of race and racism. Just, I can't get over it. The fact that a lot of the answers to these questions are to you can be racially conscious, but don't practice racism. I mean, a lot of these difficulties are resolved. Like the common good could very well be, right? All people participate knowing who their identity is, but don't hold their identity against somebody else. That's possible, not even psychologically. That's extension of those answers. That's the statement of decency. Right, we've lost that for a whole variety of reasons. That's several shows, right? But I would also say that we need an open decency. So the idea of the traditional white tipping the black waiter traditionally, right? Never letting his or her child marry the black waiter's kid. That was decency for the time. We need a real sincere decency, which treats humans as humans and does not dehumanize or subhumanize. I mean, the idea, for example, that somebody who has done their time for a crime and is now out to be and free should not be immediately registered to vote is saying, you know, you did something, you're dehumanized, you don't really get to participate. Or the idea that somebody who's at church, particularly a black church, can't vote beforehand seems to me to be ironically a violation of church and state anyhow, right? You're interfering with the person. I mean, these are ways of dehumanizing. Let's call it what it is, treating people lesser than other people. And you're not going to be able to get everybody in a nation of 330 million to agree on these definitions or on the value of the commons or on the tragedy of not having the commons. And I think we have a serious problem in terms of bringing people around to that, of making them define what decency and the common good and the commons is and then taking steps to go there. I mean, we are 330 million people. Why should I listen to you or Joe Biden or Merrick Garland about that? You know, do we need another? This is my last question. And if you don't want to answer it, we'll put it off to another show. Do we need to take a look at the founding again? Do we need to get in a room all 330 million of us and come to some common understanding about what the country is about? How do we get where we should be going? We're just looking at the clock because that's several shows, but again, a nonpartisan way. The answer, let me give you some quick answers because it's 12.30, then we'll continue. This is not a new problem and not reserved for the United States. This is the problem of where we started. The idea that there's something called the public. It's a public interest. There's something called the common interest and we need to constantly negotiate that. Okay, that's an old idea, 150, 200 years old. The famous Frenchman Renan called it a daily plebiscite. In other words, each day we do it. Okay, so how do we do it? His goal was to try to do it in a non-coercive way. So how do we do it? We do it by where we shop. We do it by where we live. We do it by where the kids go to school. We do it by listening to people who are different than us. Okay, those are all possibilities, but I think in our country, those take the structural changes. They take what's now called a third week construction. In other words, there's two great gap in home ownership or where people can buy homes. So look, we live in a segregated society. There's always talk about Israel being apartheid. If you look at the mapping of American schools and American homes, we're an apartheid society, the little A, built into it. We need to address that by ensuring, and I'm gonna finish because I know people have places to be, by ensuring what Sen calls the ability of people to exercise their capabilities or their capacities. So it's different between equity and equality. We need to do that by thinking a really radical paradigm shift to recognize that in doing that for groups that have historically been deprived of those opportunities would be better for all of us. We've got to get out of the zero sum game, right? Which is, if I give up something, I lose something. All right, I don't have the answer, but historically I know that when the public interest has been most open and most democratic historically, it's when people have been able to understand that by seemingly sacrificing something, they're actually ensuring and benefiting from it. So there's a book that came out a couple of weeks ago which very importantly argued the things that we call affirmative action or the very controversial, for example, farm loans to African American farmers who have been ignored for 150 years. While we in a narrow-minded, myopic way, think that we're losing, we're all benefiting. And that's more the, all ships will rise. Yeah, well, and furthermore, if you have a society that's built that way on the ideal, then you're likely to have a better economy, a better position in the world. You're likely to be stronger and in a greater position of leadership for the world order. And on that note, Peter, I'll see you next time. Peter often better, history is here to help. Always a pleasure, take care. Take care.