The Anticommons

Columbia law professor Michael Heller, in his new book, “The Gridlock Economy,” [writes about] the “anticommons.” We hear a lot about the “tragedy of the commons”: if a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will try to exploit as much of it as possible. Villagers will send all their cows out to graze at the same time, and soon the field will be useless. When there’s no ownership, the pursuit of individual self-interest can make everyone worse off. But Heller shows that having too much ownership creates its own problems. If too many people own individual parts of a valuable asset, it’s easy to end up with gridlock, since any one person can simply veto the use of the asset. The commons leads to overuse and destruction; the anticommons leads to underuse and waste.

That's from the New Yorker. The article primarily deals with economics, and has very good examples relating to art and wind power. But I feel this also illustrates a key public policy dilemma: how many checks and balances are ideal?

In the United States, it is very difficult to pass truly meaningful legislation, because it has to pass the muster of at least four different bodies - the House, Senate, Presidency, and judicial branch. In all of those bodies, it is possible for one key person to stop the legislative process altogether. There are literally dozens of choke points a bill must pass through in order to become law. This results in the power of government to change laws being "underused and wasted," regardless of how obvious the change may be.

But removing those check points would create different problems: overuse. Rapid changes from administration to administration and from congress to congress would be likely and the chances of stupid legislation passing due to political pressure would be higher.