There are always going to be those sports* who will notice a way to make himself better off. That one person breeding an extra cow will only slightly damage the commons. But then everyone else notices that he is getting more than his fair share. A few other people decide to take advantage of that. Now the damage is going to be significant so EVERYONE breeds the extra cow. (this story was originally about sheep, wasn't it? Oh, well.)
The real question is, "What do you do about it?" One simple solution is to limit everyone to 2 cows. But what happens if someone is lucky enough that their cow had twins that year? That farmer had to do extra work for the cow bearing twins during the gestation period. Do we just kill off the second calve? He gets nothing for the extra work he put in. Or we could just give it away to someone who's cow was barren. That's not good: what did they do to deserve that? What if two people had barren cows? Should we let the extra cows live? Well, then that farmer is going two have two calves every year. What about the case where every cow has twins that year?
I'm way off on a tangent, so I'll skip to the end:
The answer is obvious: Throw a huge community barbecue. The guys who had an extra cow doesn't have to bring anything. Everyone else is in charge of beer, potato salad, chips, napkins, paper plates, firewood, etc. (If you're too late too sign up for what to bring, just bring beer.)
Yeah, sorry, I started off with a point but got interrupted. I think we should have a party anyway. Which UFies had an extra cow this year?
*I'm using the animal-husbandry meaning of the term: No matter how carefully you breed them, you can have a pure-bred litter of Irish setters and one of them turns out to be an aggressive f4-tard of a puppy that always bites everyone it meets, pees in the waterbowl, etc. |
