Expecting More, Committing Less out were safeguarding their own coverage, should they one day require
care from others.
The same applied to food. The entire community helped to bring
water to the village, reinforcing the truth that having sufficient water
for all started with the behavior of each one. Their shared commitment
encouraged each person to produce as much food as possible with the
water provided. Accepting personal responsibility for shared interests
maximized everyone’s well-being. Governance, it seemed, came down
to all for one and one for all.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this indigenous community. But
their lives seemed to have little bearing on modern Western society,
so I filed the experience under the heading of nostalgic anecdotes
and moved on. My world was far more sophisticated. In the United
States, informal norms had been replaced by formal governments with
elected officials passing laws and bureaucrats implementing those laws
through regulations. This was how acceptable behavior was now being
prescribed and executed.
Then, a few years ago, I came across the work of Elinor Ostrom.
Unlike me, she had not succumbed to thinking that our modes of self-
government were a fait accompli.
Ostrom was born poor in southern California. Her jobless father
had left her mother. Her clothes came from second-hand stores. Rather
than accept despair as her lot in life, she channeled her ambitions
toward shared interests, knitting scarves for troops and rejecting ma-
terialistic goals like owning a fine home or an expensive car.
At a time when sexism was pervasive in graduate schools, she
pursued a doctorate degree, studying the conflict over water in the
Southwest. Overcoming gender stereotypes, she eventually landed a
faculty position. Ostrom was particularly keen on how communities
managed scarce resources like fresh water, arable land, pastures, forests,
and fisheries—basic essentials for food and security. She devoted years
of fieldwork in countries around the world.
Then, as now, most economists were guided by Adam Smith,
believing that self-interested pursuits automatically benefited society.
But some theorists had pushed back, including ecologist Garrett Har-