In Sunday’s New York Times, Katrin Benhold describes how the current UK Government has embraced “behavioral economics.” The Cameron Government has been influenced by Richard H. Thaler’s and Cass R. Sunstein’s book Nudge to adopt policies like telling people who are late with their taxes how many of their neighbors have already paid. A government can improve your behavior (citizen) by showing that it knows what you are doing, by sharing that knowledge with your fellow citizens, and by demonstrating your similarity or divergence from the norm.

Another example is Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on huge sodas. You can still buy as much soda as you want in New York, but limiting the individual portions to 16-ounces confronts you with an explicit choice if you decide you want to drink more than that. Proponents say the government can get better results with less force by using such techniques, and they call it “libertarian paternalism.”

Real libertarians are not happy. Sean Collins writes in the libertarian magazine Spiked:

This paternalistic approach changes the relationship between government and citizens. Instead of government representing us, working for us, government now works on us, trying to change our interests. It would be one thing if government sought to convince the public in open debate, but those who would nudge or ban do not want to have open debate or discussions. As the term ‘paternalism’ implies, citizens are essentially treated like children who do not speak; they are only spoken to.

Followers of Michel Foucault are not libertarians, but they should be equally concerned. They should recall Foucault’s discussion of the “panopticon,” Jeremy Bentham’s scheme for a prison designed so that each prisoner can be observed at all times but cannot tell whether he is being watched:

“So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks ….

The Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects. To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, and to seek the most effective ones. To teach different techniques simultaneously to the workers, to decide which is the best. ….

Although it arranges power, although it is intended to make it more economic and more effective, it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces – to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply.” (Foucault, Discipline & Punish)

In defense of the “nudge” idea, I would say that governments have always influenced how choices are presented. It makes sense to be deliberate about the design of choices. I am fine with making you decide to buy soda 16-oz at a time.

Yet there are good reasons to be skeptical about behavioral economics as a tool of governance. Your overall reaction will depend on what most deeply concerns you. You may think that our main problem is unhealthy or immoral personal behavior–people failing to pay their taxes, for example, or drinking 32 ounces of sugary soda at a time. You may, furthermore, believe that to change their behavior by banning or taxing it is often too costly in terms of individual freedom, burdens on the state, or sheer cash. Then it will be appealing to use behavioral economics to influence citizens’ choices, just as it was very tempting to build state prisons according to the principles of Bentham’s panopticon. One guard, very few beatings and executions, yet everyone behaves.

A different stance begins with the idea that modernity poses a threat to the human being as an end-in-herself. Modern rationality is means/ends rationality: we constantly develop and refine tools for getting other people to do what we want, whether those tools are laws and surveillance, bureaucratic files, surveys, advertisements of all kinds, payments and rewards, or taxes and penalties. Each of those devices whittles away at people’s capacity to decide for themselves how to live. From that perspective, manipulation is a fundamental problem, worse than obesity or tax-evasion, and behavioral economics is just the latest and most sophisticated version of it.

Benhold uses the verb “manipulate” in her basic description of the British behavioral economic policies:

Manipulating behavior is old hat in the private sector, where advertisers and companies have been nudging consumers for decades. Just think of strategically placed chocolate bars at the checkout counter. But in public policy, nudge proponents study human behavior to try to figure out why people sometimes make choices that they themselves would consider poor. Then they test small changes in how those choices are presented, to see whether people can be steered toward better decisions — like putting apples, not chocolate bars, at eye level in school cafeterias.

It is better to eat apples than chocolate bars. And it is appropriate for a school to shape students’ behavior. But the classical republican ideal is that no one may influence your thoughts and actions without giving you an explicit justification, and you must have the right to respond if you don’t agree. No one can say, “Do this because I say so.” Your response to being coerced may be as modest as voting against the people who are trying to regulate you, but the exchange of reasons (on their part) and actions (on yours) respects your dignity. Moreover, to the greatest extent possible, the citizens of a republican regime must decide how to constrain and improve themselves and create their own norms. Each is accountable to the others, and nobody manipulates us.

In We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (pp. 60-2), I discuss more democratic ways to change our behavior:

Human beings are distinctive because we can have ordinary desires plus desires concerning our desires. For example, I may want to put down a difficult scholarly book that I am reading so that I can watch a trivial television show, and at the same time want not to have that desire. … If I turn myself into someone who enjoys scholarly books more and trivial TV shows less, I am not only entitled to believe that I have done the right thing with my time, but that I have also improved myself. In that way, the self (personal identity) is connected to second-order volitions.

I introduce this concept here because we are capable of assessing and altering our own second-order volitions in ways that produce conscious development, not just random change. In the words of the Port Huron Statement that inaugurated the New Left in America, we “have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity.” The Statement proceeds to note that this process of self-cultivation is not individualistic, on the model of a Romantic artist developing his or her own genius. “This kind of independence does not mean egoistic individualism—the object is not to have one’s way so much as it is to have a way that is one’s own. . . . Human interdependence is contemporary fact.”

Indeed, most of the effective techniques for improving our second-order volitions are “relational” and collaborative. Religious congregations, Study Circles and other deliberative forums, internally democratic associations, and participatory social movements convene people to decide on what they should want and then to hold one another accountable for changing their identities by changing what they want. …

Meanwhile, as a whole country, we have both desires and second-order volitions. We want to drive our big SUVs to work, and we want to be the kind of country that does not want to do that. Whereas individual consumer choices elicit our ordinary desires, civic acts such as making arguments in public and voting make us think about our second-order volitions. A good law is not a reflection of what we want but of what we think we should want.

Again, I do not rule out the possibility that a democratically elected government might put apples on the lower shelves of school cafeterias, ban 32-oz sodas, or even inform tax scofflaws how many of their neighbors have paid on time. But each of these acts is a potential threat to the dignity of the persons being regulated, and so it requires explicit public discussion and careful review.

I realize, by the way, that I have combined allusions to libertarianism, civic republicanism, and Foucault in this post, even though they represent very different perspectives. But their differences emerge mostly in what they say about how we should govern. Presented with “libertarian paternalism,” I think they would converge on the same hostile response.

(See also “the new manipulative politics: behavioral economics, microtargeting, and the choice confronting Organizing for Action” and “qualms about a bond market for philanthropy” for similar concerns about another popular idea, social investing.)

The post qualms about Behavioral Economics appeared first on Peter Levine.

Soon after the volume entitled Civic Studies is published, a daylong discussion of the same topic will take place at the Southern Political Science Association meeting (January 10 in New Orleans).

As Karol Soltan and I write in the volume, the phrase “civic studies” is quite new. A group of scholars coined it in 2007 in a collaborative statement entitled “The New Civic Politics: Civic Theory and Practice for the Future.” Civic Studies does not mean civic education, although it should ultimately improve civic education. Instead, in the words of original framework, Civic Studies is an “emerging intellectual community, a field, and a discipline. Its work is to understand and strengthen civic politics, civic initiatives, civic capacity, civic society, and civic culture.”

The framework cites two definitive ideals for the emerging discipline of civic studies “public spiritedness” (or “commitment to the public good”) and “the idea of the citizen as a creative agent.” Civic studies is an intellectual community that takes these two ideals seriously. Although new, it draws from several important strands of ongoing research: the Nobel-Prize-winning scholarship of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom on managing common assets; deliberative democracy; public work; the study of public participation in development; the idea of social science as practical wisdom or phronesis; and community-based research in fields like sociology.

Here is the agenda for the mini-conference:

Civic Studies “Conference Within a Conference”: Fri Jan 10 2014, 9:45 to 11:15am

Author Meets Critics for Peter Levine’s “We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For”

Author: Peter Levine (Tufts University)
Critic: Olivia Newman (Harvard University)
Critic: Ryan McBride (Tulane University)
Critic: Thad Williamson (University of Richmond)
Critic: Rumman Chowdhury (University of California, San Diego)
Chair: Susan Orr (College at Brockport, SUNY)
* Albert Dzur participating remotely via skype

Fri Jan 10 2014, 1:15 to 2:45pm
Roundtable “What is Civic Studies?”

Participant: Karol Soltan (University of Maryland)
Participant: Peter Levine (Tufts University)
Participant: Tina Nabatchi (Maxwell School Syracuse University)
Participant: Thad Williamson (University of Richmond)
Chair: Peter Levine (Tufts University)

Fri Jan 10 2014, 3:00 to 4:30pm
Teaching Civic Studies

Participant: Katherine Kravetz (American University)
Participant: Timothy J. Shaffer (Wagner College)
Participant: Alison Staudinger (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay)
Participant: Donald Harward (Bates College)
Participant: Susan Orr (College at Brockport, SUNY)

Fri Jan 10 2014, 4:45 to 6:15pm
Author Meets Critics for Paul Aligica, Institutional Diversity and Political Economy: The Ostroms and Beyond

Author: Paul Aligica (George Mason University)
Critic: James Bohman (Saint Louis University)
Critic: James Johnson (University of Rochester)
Chair: Karol Soltan (University of Maryland)
Critic: Samuel Ely Bagg (Duke University)

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Today’s New York Times describes a nascent plan for a philanthropic bond market. The main proponent, Lindsay Beck, “says she has long believed that charitable money is often misallocated; some of the most effective organizations struggle to raise funds, while some of the least effective charities are allocated millions.” She proposes that people and firms that want to do good with their money (and gain tax advantages) should buy bonds in nonprofits that show strong evidence of effectiveness.

This proposal is just an example of the broader movement toward social entrepreneurship, social impact investing, and (more generally) the application of business principles to philanthropy. It makes sense insofar as nonprofits provide services with market value that their clients cannot afford. For example, a homeless person could and would buy a meal if he had the cash. If a nonprofit provides the meal for free, funders naturally want to know how many meals they can buy for their dollar.

But there’s another way to look at nonprofits: as associations created, managed, and sustained by citizens in their communities. De Tocqueville thought that democracy flourished in America only because we had such associations to complement the state and the market.

Investing in nonprofits to deliver services ignores these issues:

1. Power. Of course, the golden rule has always applied (“He who has the gold, rules”). But traditionally, if you wanted to be a philanthropist in your community, you had to meet with leaders of civic groups, and they’d have agendas of their own. You had the cash, but they would be able to bestow positive or negative publicity. Their members could vote in local elections that would affect your interests. They would have relationships with other organizations in town, from the newspaper to the church. You could not just get up and leave town without substantial costs. There was some power on both sides of the table, which meant that they could decide what they wanted and ask you for it. In a philanthropic bond market, all the power lies with the donor.

2. Learning: In a traditional nonprofit, the leaders and other members decide what they want to do. They deliberate and learn from practical experience. That means they can fail, or face internal conflicts, or apply bad values. It also means that they learn the Tocquevillian art and science of association, and they can transfer their learning to other organizations and to politics. On the other hand, in a philanthropic market, social entrepreneurs create products and sell them to investors. Very few people learn, and no one must learn how to reason and negotiate with people who lack money and power.

3. Social capital: My colleagues Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and Chaeyoon Lim and I have found that communities have better economic prospects if they have more nonprofit organizations per capita. We argue that it’s not because the nonprofits provide goods and services efficiently. In fact, fewer, bigger nonprofits might be more efficient. It is rather that participants in hands-on local associations develop networks, relationships, and loyalties that are valuable economically. If investments flow to highly efficient nonprofits, then social capital will be wiped out.

4. Value questions. It is not self-evident that we should reduce recidivism (which is the example cited in the Times article). Maybe we should fight to cut the arrest and incarceration rates instead. A program to cut recidivism offers a service that can be quantified and measured: $x reduces the prison-return rate by y%. It thereby legitimizes the criminal justice system. I am not necessarily in favor of more radical changes, but I think they should be discussed, and the decision should not be made by the people with cash. Again, I realize that wealthy donors have always had disproportionate power, but a bond market just takes away all the friction and resistance. Donors can buy a lower recidivism rate (while taking tax benefits) without any accountability for the moral tradeoffs and complexities.

5. Process. If you believe in democracy at all, you believe in certain processes for making decisions collectively. These processes vary, but in general, they involve a degree of deliberation and some equality in the power to determine the outcomes. Democratic processes are inefficient. They slow down service-delivery and they impose their own costs. (Someone has to pay for the meeting rooms, the snacks, the facilitation, and the recruitment.) To the extent that philanthropists can pay for pure outcomes, they will not invest in processes. And then we will have fewer meetings and other democratic processes in our communities.

I suppose we can have a bond market for investments in pure service-delivering nonprofits and also an array of locally rooted, deliberative associations that control their own destinies. But I worry that the money, attention, and energy will shift to the former and the Tocquevillian basis of our democracy will continue to erode.

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(en route to Austin, TX) Yesterday, we heard an exemplary presentation on Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) by Berkeley professor Meredith Minkler, who is one of the leaders of the field. She told a perfect story of a research project that was a collaboration between university-based scholars and laypeople: in this case, workers in Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. The workers provided guidance that made the research interesting, original, and important. My colleague Sarah Shugars has a summary.

I was struck by a minor point that brings up a larger issue. The Berkeley researchers knew that non-fatal accidents are very common among restaurant workers. Their worker colleagues noted that restaurants’ first aid kits tend to contain only Band-Aids. The team therefore calculated the percentage of restaurants that do not maintain satisfactory first aid kits. In order to generate that statistic, they had to know how many Chinese restaurants there are. The City of San Francisco did not know. The restaurant workers contributed a precise count.

Now, a city could count its Chinese restaurants. It could send one of its paid employees to count, or it could hire a contractor for that purpose. But many of our political theories just assume that the state knows things. We take that for granted. On the contrary, knowing something as simple as how many Chinese restaurants exist raises layers of problems:

• The state must care about the topic in order to collect the data. (To be fair to San Francisco, its health department participated in this project. My point is a general one about the need for the state to care.)
• The state must pay for the data, which is not free. Collecting the data may be more expensive for the state than for other parties. For instance, Chinese restaurant workers can read signs in Chinese; most city government employees cannot.
• The state must define the concept, which almost always raises value questions. (What is a genuinely “Chinese” restaurant? Why separate Chinese restaurants into their own category?)
• The state must employ agents who act with integrity. For instance, a state employee who counts Chinese restaurants could take bribes to leave out some restaurants so that they would avoid scrutiny. That would ruin the data.
• The state must collect the information competently. As I noted recently, “The same US government that can apparently tap almost any telephone in the world cannot harvest information that people voluntarily provide on the government’s own website regarding their eligibility for insurance.”
• The state must pay attention to the data it collects. After all, “the state” is actually a whole bunch of human beings who do not automatically know what their colleagues know, let alone act on that knowledge.

Clearly, states should collect information as the basis of sound policy. We shouldn’t ask restaurant workers to do all the research about restaurants. But collecting good data is itself a political achievement. We can’t just presume it will happen. Nor is the best way to obtain it always for the state to buy it. For one thing, citizens can benefit from being the researchers. In this case, the same restaurant workers who collected the basic data also won significant reforms in city law. The process of data-collection took effort (for which they were paid on the grant), but it also gave them political power.

(See also “Why Engineers Should Study Elinor Ostrom“)

The post the panopticon is impossible, or why citizens must collect information appeared first on Peter Levine.

Scholars working on civic engagement, civic education, and related topics have no shortage of publication venues, including free, online–but peer-reviewed–journals:

The International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement has published its first issue. Articles include “Rethinking Peer Review: Expanding the Boundaries for Community-Engaged Scholarship” by Sherril B. Gelmon, Cathy M. Jordan, Sarena D. Seifer, and “A Research Agenda for K-12 School-based Service-Learning: Academic Achievement and School Success” by Andrew Furco.

The Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is now up to volume 9, issue 2.  The new issue includes articles on stakeholders and citizens in deliberation; participation in the New York Public Schools; and the effects of non-neutral moderators. The current editorial team has done a great job, but they are handing it over to a great new team of Laura Black, Tim Shaffer, and Nancy Thomas.

The Journal of Civic Literacy has launched its website and invites research on “the causes and consequences of low levels of literacy, the role of public education, the comparative efficacy of available curricula and programs (what is working? why and how?), the connections between the current media environment and deficient civic understandings, and the role of civic literacy in defining ethical and trustworthy public service.”

The eJournal of Public Affairs is published by Missouri State University and affiliated with the American Democracy Project. “Public Affairs” means different things to different people, but this journal is actually devoted to civic engagement, civic education, and closely related topics.

Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement comes out of North Carolina Campus Compact but has national reach and is also a peer-reviewed, open-access journal.

The Journal of General Education (“A Curricular Commons of the Humanities and Sciences”) is edited by Jeremy Cohen, who has a deep commitment to civic education, free speech, and public media. So, although its topic is “general education” at the undergraduate level, it is an important site for discussions of civic education and engagement.

[Added later:]

The Good Society is a distinguished journal of political theory, now turning to what we call Civic Studies. It is not open-source because of the contract with the publisher, but articles are freely available for two months after publication. In any event, it is a fine journal.

And Public, from Imagining America, is a peer-reviewed, multimedia e-journal focused on humanities, arts, and design in public life.

The post new journals related to civic renewal appeared first on Peter Levine.

Consider that:

• The same US government that can apparently tap almost any telephone in the world cannot harvest information that people voluntarily provide on the government’s own website regarding their eligibility for insurance.
• A private firm, CGI Federal, botches healthcare.gov. A private firm, Dell, employs the analyst, Edward Snowden, who leaks the NSA’s secrets.
• Snowden reveals (inter alia) that the NSA has been spying on Angela Merkel, whose main impact has been holding down government spending and debt throughout Europe, in keeping with neoliberal economic doctrine.
• Companies like Google and Facebook possess unprecedented knowledge of the private behavior and beliefs of citizens. They profess “outrage” at the government’s collection of private information. They call it “outright theft.” Apart from their annoyance at losing their data to the state, they fear that consumers will now be reluctant to share information on US-based networks–information that is currently worth about $1,200/person to firms like Google and Facebook.
• The Tea Party is a loose movement that professes support for free markets and resistance to government. Its power has presumably kept corporate taxes and regulations lower than they would be otherwise. Yet the US Chamber of Commerce and individual companies like AT&T and Caterpillar are so angry about the recent federal shutdown that they are spending significant money to defeat Tea Party-backed candidates in Republican primaries.
• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg creates FWD.us to promote immigration reform. Through a subsidiary called Americans for a Conservative Direction, FWD.us funds conservative candidates who support reducing certain barriers to immigration. Through a different subsidiary called the Council for American Job Growth, it “reach[es] out to progressive and independent voters.”

One way to put these scattered points together is to talk about “the neoliberal state.” Big businesses basically get the policies they want, whether in the US, Germany, Russia, or in (nominally communist) China. Far from constraining them, the state is their assistant. The news consists of little skirmishes between particular businesses and forces not completely under their control: Tea Partiers, the national security apparatus, the US Attorney in Manhattan, and the Democratic Party. Business wins virtually all the skirmishes, and the underlying reality is even more favorable to its interests than the scattered conflicts suggest.

I mention the idea of the neoliberal state because I see that it contains a lot of truth. But I dissent in part on theoretical, moral, and strategic grounds:

Theoretically: we have to remember the problem of collective action. Each business gains from laissez-faire policies–but only a bit, and the competition gains as well. It is not in each firm’s self-interest to be too politically active. Eruptions like the Chamber versus the Tea Party, the Koch Brothers versus Obama, or Google versus the NSA show that it is genuinely difficult for a whole array of competing businesses to coordinate their efforts to achieve the ends they want. Clearly, ordinary people face even more daunting collective-action problems, but that is what political organizing is for.

Morally: the critique of the neoliberal state ignores the benefits of global markets. The Human Development Index is a pretty good measure of actual well-being, incorporating not just per capita wealth, but also outcomes like health, education, safety, and women’s empowerment. This graph shows the trends in HDI since China and India opened their economies to direct foreign investment and became sensitive to global markets. The upward trends represent substantial net improvements in the lives of billions of human beings.

Strategically: the theory of the neoliberal state gives the impression that ordinary people have no power. That impression is itself disempowering. Elections in the US are influenced by cash, but no one literally has more than one vote. If we choose not to do what big businesses tell us to do, we win. A defeatist theory makes that less likely.

I am not saying that the governments of the US, the EU’s members, China, India, and Russia are independent of big business or that corporate pressure is benign. I am claiming that the situation is somewhat complicated and unpredictable, and there is room for strategic action. Each of the bullet points with which I began this post is a pressure point.

(See also “two doses of realism about democracy,” “what is corruption?,” and “putting facts, values, and strategies together: the case of the Human Development Index.”)

The post do companies control governments? appeared first on Peter Levine.

A colleague recently suggested an analogy between music and civic engagement, emphasizing that both have been transformed by technological/economic changes, and there is no going back to the old days. We used to get music from recording companies and participate in public life thanks to daily newspapers, unions, grassroots political parties, and durable civic associations. The traditional institutions for both music and citizenship have been replaced by loose networks and individual choice.

We could extend the analogy by noting that civic engagement, like music, can bring satisfaction to the participants. Neither activity is a mere chore to be done to achieve an outcome. In both cases, people may be enthusiastic to participate (or not–their interest varies). Both activities are heavily collaborative. And in both cases, we should welcome a wide range of excellence. The one-in-a-million talent is admirable in politics, as in music, but we also need average people to sing and to express their political views. In both cases, people appreciate excellence better if they also contribute at their own level.

The differences are also worth noting. For one thing, civic engagement has a strong ethical aspect. Mussolini was active and skillful, but he made the world worse. We must able to evaluate civic engagement ethically with attention to means and ends. I would, for example, build into the definition of good engagement a strong desire to understand alternative views. The most ethically demanding aspects of citizenship do not come naturally. Neither does good musicianship, but I think that the ethical demands of citizenship are more onerous than the preconditions of making music.

Also, certain forms of civic engagement are rivalrous or competitive. More engagement by Tea Partiers means less success for liberals, and vice-versa.

Everyone has a right to be heard in the political domain. Although no one is obligated to listen to me sing (an unpleasant experience), my fellow citizens must give me equal time in a public meeting, just because I am a member of their community.

Finally, it is healthy in both civic life and music for people to form smaller communities of interest with diverse styles. However, as long as important decisions are made by governments, the people of each political jurisdiction must sometimes form a single political community to discuss and act on their common fate. In contrast, we never have to bring all the choirs, bands, and orchestras together to make one stream of music.

The differences between music and citizenship mostly point to the need for intervention in the civic domain. I think music will thrive in a world of digital files, free choice, and loose voluntary networks. Civic engagement needs help.

The post music and civic engagement (an analysis of private and public goods with intrinsic value) appeared first on Peter Levine.

Vista típica de la Huerta de Valencia.

(Near Tarrytown, NY) The huertas of Valencia, Spain, represent a magnificent example of human cooperation, but I am told they are now doomed. The reasons are endemic to modernity and require serious consideration.

Water is a scarce resource, essential for life. If you can take water for your own crops, basic economic theory says you will take lots of it even if others downstream don’t get enough. The rain and the river can’t be privatized in simple ways. The state can police water-use, but it’s hard and rare to build states that are smart, responsive, virtuous, and just enough to accomplish tasks like efficient and fair water-management.

But, contrary to a simplistic economic model, farmers in Valencia, Spain, have been distributing very scarce water consistently since before 1238. The rules and tools they developed are summarized here. Their tribunals and other processes were already in place during the Muslim period and may have predated the Islamic conquest. They continued more or less smoothly despite the Christian Reconquista, the unification of Spain, its economic decline, Civil War, and fascism.

But, as I am told by Francisco Arenas-Dolz (a distinguished Spanish academic whose own family used to farm in the huerta system), it is now disappearing. Former farmers are moving to high-rises in the city, and suburban sprawl is swallowing up agricultural land.

One cannot blame people for “exiting.” I would not want to be a farm-worker in an arid climate (or anywhere). I suspect that, despite the radical shifts in Valencia’s political and religious regimes over a millennium, one thing remained constant: peasants couldn’t leave the land. Now they can leave, and they are leaving, and I don’t lament that.

But we can lament two outcomes. First, the huertas have aesthetic, cultural, and environmental value that individual participants (as well as outsiders) prize. The individuals’ exit benefits them but destroys something that they love. They would all be better off if somehow the huertas could be preserved. The agricultural landscape could perhaps have evolved into something new and better, an economy that offered higher-skilled and more profitable jobs to a few people still in touch with their traditions. Instead, it is just vanishing.

Second, the heurtas taught ethics, skills, habits, and techniques for solving collective-action problems. Even if we give up on small-scale agriculture in Valencia, we still face inescapable problems at a bigger scale. Climate change is only the most dire example. If everyone exits the huertas and that model vanishes, how will we learn to address bigger Tragedies of the Commons?

(See also “Why Engineers Should Study Elinor Ostrom,” my obituary of Ostrom, and “Albert O. Hirschman on Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.”)

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