Digital Library of the Commons

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The Federal Treasury as a Common Pool Resource and the Development of a Predatory Bureaucracy
(1979) Fort, Rodney D.; Baden, John
"Pessimism over the prospect of reducing the size and scope of government is pervasive. As Ralph Winter recently noted in Regulation, part of the basis for this pessimism is that elections become less and less relevant to outcomes as government grows. In this immobilizing ambiance government grows a pace with anti-government sentiment. The general purpose of this paper is to provide an important reason for this paradox of big government in such a hostile milieu. We contend that elections fail to control government size and growth due to specific failures in the representative system. One major failure has been the concentrated focus of political activities within bureaucracies. This shifted focus away from the representative arena is a result of placing increased responsibility for administering the 'transfer society' in the hands of the bureaucracy. At both the level of individual interaction with agencies and the level of inter-agency interaction the pervasive result of government growth, as distinguished from absolute government size, are manifest. It is time to suggest plausible modifications."
The Management of Social Stability: A Political Ethnography of the Hutterites of North America
(1969) Baden, John
"This is a study of the attempts of members of a small society, the Hutterians, to perpetuate their social and cultural systems in a setting they perceive as fundamentally alien and hostile. Collectively, the members of this group seek to be independent of the control of outsiders although perfect autonomy and self-sufficiency are, of course, precluded. The group stands inextricably involved in the political and economic affairs of the larger society."
Communes: The Logic of the Commons and Institutional Design
(1976) Bullock, Kari; Baden, John
"Among the sources of tension in American society is a substantial ambivalence toward competition. American children, like those in most other modernized societies are given a dual behavioral standard. For most social interactions, competition is an accepted and even a favored mode of behavior. In the family, however, unselfish and altruistic behavior is upheld as the ideal. Thus, the child is expected to learn to adjust his behavior to differing situations. Careful discrimination, then, became very important in determining appropriate action in any given situation. "There is no society that is perfectly successful in its acculturation of its children. Further, no individual is capable of perfect discrimination. He cannot apply one standard with perfection outside the family context, and concurrently apply another within. These weaknesses invariably create problems and tensions."
Energy Development and Public Service Delivery in the Western States
(1977) Baden, John; Kremp, Sabine; Lovejoy, Stephen; Stroup, Richard; Thurman, Walter
"In the past several decades, the energy demands of the United States have increased dramatically. However, many of the raw materials necessary to meet this increased demand have come from foreign sources. Since the onset of the energy crisis in 1973, the U.S. has embarked upon an energy self-sufficiency program, ostensibly to protect the U.S. from vulnerability stemming from dependence upon foreign energy sources. One of the major components of this program is the increased exploitation of coal resource in the western U.S., especially in the Rocky Mountain-Northern Great Plains region. Many communities in this region are anticipating the development of large-scale coal mining (underground and strip), construction of plants to transform the coal into electricity or synthetic natural gas, and other related projects."
Primer on the Political Economy of Air Quality Management; for Engineers and Others with Low Tolerance for Mushy Data
(1973) Baden, John
"These essays were written for Professor Bob Gearheart's 'Air Quality Management' course in the Environmental Engineering Program at U.S.I. They were written from January 22 to February 18 of 1973. In no sense does this material constitute either research or even a review of the literature. This was essentially a sit-down-and-write-it-out effort. Further, I have made no systematic effort to learn about air pollution and its control. Hence, the following material is presented in a rather casual and perhaps cavalier manner. Ms. Virginia Ream's editing of my first drafts has cleaned up my residual illiteracy. "I have attempted to take the perspective of a political economist and examine a set of problems. If this effort is useful for engineers and others I would be willing to put the material into a more conventional form. I will, of course, be grateful to those who point out errors and/or make suggestions."
On Selling the National Forests: A Preliminary Analysis
(1972) Stroup, Richard; Baden, John
"During the past few years the Sierra Club and its allies have come to an agreement with those in the forest products industry. It seems clear, in fact, that nearly all parties agree that the National Forests are not being 'properly' managed. In brief, this means that none of the various competing interests feel that the National Forests are managed for them. From this we can infer that the Forest Service has not been 'captured' by any single group. Thus, given that the Forest Service has responsibility for substantial and highly valued resources and that it has great managerial discretion, we may be confident that the various interested parties will continue efforts to impose their policy preferences upon the decisions of the Forest Service."
Population, Ethnicity, and Public Goods: The Logic of Interest Group Strategy
(1976) Baden, John
From Introduction: "Population control Is essentially a problem of choice. Societies face the necessity of choosing their level of population; we note that not to choose Is In Itself a choice. "There has been controversy, particularly between Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner, centered around the methods to be employed in any attempt at population control. There are those who baulk at any suggestions that lead to Institutionalized coercion methods as a threatening form of political repression. Barry Commoner, in his book The Closing Circle (Knopf, 1971), has advanced the argument that if a substantial majority of the members of a society were to voluntarily accept a program for birth control, then coercion would be rendered unnecessary. However, there seems to be a flaw In this position. The error became apparent when Garret Hardin demonstrated that leaders of subgroups within a society have a vested interest to admonish their followers to outbreed other subgroups. Admonitions of this nature possess the potentiality for undermining voluntary cooperation in birth control, if loyalties to the subgroup can be so directed. This brings us to the application of theories of population dynamics to issues of human population policy."
Transgenerational Equity and Natural Resources
(1978) Baden, John; Stroup, Richard
From Introduction: "Increasing attention is being paid to matters of equity. At the level of discussion 'decisions' can produce psychic benefits while iqnorinq the reality checks of costs. At this level it is harmless. At the level of action, however, we should be more careful. "Attention to equity is found in those intellectual areas where we expect it, i.e., in the fringe whose outer limits of sanity are demarcated by the CoEvaluation Quarterly. Of greater potential interest, however, a substantial number of mainstream academies also consider the issue. Included in the latter category are K. Boulding, F. Hirsh (Social Limits to Growth), R. Nisbet (Twilight of Authority) and D. Bell (Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism)."
Revelation, Rationality and Institutional Design
(1976) Bullock, Kari; Baden, John
"Among the sources of tension in American society is a substantial ambivalence toward competition. American children, like those in most other modernized societies are given a dual behavioral standard. For most social interactions, competition is an accepted and even a favored mode of behavior. In the family, however, unselfish and altruistic behavior is upheld as the ideal. Thus, the child is expected to learn to adjust his behavior to differing situations. Careful discrimination, then, becomes very important in determining appropriate action in any given situation. "There is no society that is perfectly successful in its acculturation of its children. Further, no individual is capable of perfect discrimination. He cannot apply one standard with perfection outside the family context, and concurrently apply another within. These weaknesses invariably create problems and tensions. "One effort to resolve the problem involves the establishment of a communally organized society. Such a society is noted for its relative absence of individual property rights. Material wealth is dispersed equally among the members of the group and property is held in common. Since all share equally in group assets, the opportunity for discrimination among individuals on the basis of wealth is reduced, if not entirely absent."
Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity
(W. H. Freeman, 1977) Hardin, Garrett; Baden, John
From p. 112: "The carrying capacity of a particular area is defined as the maximum number of a species that can be supported indefinitely by a particular habitat, allowing for seasonal and random changes, without degradation of the environment and without diminishing carrying capacity in the future. There is some redundancy in this definition, but redundancy is better than inadequacy. Using deer as an example, the true carrying capacity of a region must allow for the fact that food is harder to get in winter than in summer and scarcer in drought years than in 'normal years.' If too many head of deer are allowed in the pasture they may overgraze it to such an extent that the ground is laid bare, producing soil erosion followed by less plant growth in subsequent years. Always, by eating the grasses that appeal to them, herbivores selectively favor the weed grasses that are not appealing, thus tending to diminish the carrying capacity for themselves and for their progeny in subsequent years."

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