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August 1, 2005

The Lorax - An Ecomonic Fable Revisited

Most anyone under the age of 40 who has read a book has read "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss. It is widely understood to be a book about how uncontrolled greed can cause environmental and economic ruin. Is that all there is to it? The Commons Blog puts an interesting spin on the story.

"The truffula trees grow in an unowned commons. (The Lorax may speak for the trees, but he does not own them.) The Once-ler has no incentive to conserve the truffula trees for, as he notes to himself, if he doesn't cut them down someone else will. He's responding to the incentives created by a lack of property rights in the trees, and the inevitable tragedy results. Had the Once-ler owned the trees, his incentives would have been quite different -- and he would likely have acted accordingly -- even if he remained dismissive of the Lorax's environmental concerns.

"The story ends with the Once-ler giving a young boy the last truffula seed. He tells him to plant it and treat it with care, and then maybe the Lorax will come back from there. The traditional interpretation is simply that we must all care more for the environment. If we only control corporate greed we can prevent environmental ruin. But perhaps it means something else. Perhaps the lesson is that this boy should plant his truffula trees, and act as their steward. Perhaps giving the boy the last seed is an act of transferring the truffula from the open-access commons to private stewardship. Indeed, the final image -- the ring of stones labeled with the word "unless" -- could well suggest that enclosure, and the creation of property rights to protect natural resources, is necessary for the Lorax to ever return."

How much different could the story have been if the truffula trees had been owned by an individual, or a corporation? Cutting down the trees would still have been allowed, but someone would have been planting new trees. This would not only have prevented the loss of the trees, but also would have protected the industry, and the jobs involved. Only in fiction can such a major operation be a one-man job.

More on trees as a renewable resource here.

Posted by Lockjaw at August 1, 2005 6:32 AM

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