The Tragedy of the Commons

Since it was introduced in the 60s, the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that humans will inevitably ruin any resource we all share, has had sweeping effects on government and public attitudes on who owns the environment. Problem is, it was fictitious. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Curious people ask great questions and here's one. What's something you wish there was an app for? Well, with base 44, you can build it yourself. Maybe it's a tool to organize a project or track a hobby or share knowledge, solve a problem that's always bugged you.

• 0:49Josh Clark?

  Just describe what you want in your own words, no coding required. Base 44 handles the database, login, backend and hosting. Try it for free. Go to base44.com to get started.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:12Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us again. Jerry who? And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  That's right. Another econ edition, typically not my favorite, but you know, this one I could wrap my head around for the most part.

• 1:31Josh Clark?

  I think that's one of the reasons why it's had such an enormous impact on the world.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36Josh Clark?

  Cause it is so easy to wrap your head around.

• 1:40Josh Clark?

  We should probably say we're talking about the tragedy of the commons. And for those of you who aren't familiar, it's this idea, this concept that if you have a shared resource, a commons, say, and people are able to use it at their own leisure, for their own purposes, eventually as they seek to maximize their profits, they're going to overuse this commons and inevitably it'll be ruined because people can't have anything nice, essentially.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  You know what's funny? You're gonna laugh at me here.

• 2:17Josh Clark?

  They're all gonna laugh at you.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  The central, the central area of my high school was called the commons.

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  And it just occurred to me 35 years or so after I graduated that that's what that meant.

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  Oh, I see. I thought you were gonna say like my teenage years were the tragedy of the commons.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  No, I just, I don't know. I never thought about the word because it was when you're in high school, it's just suddenly the commons. We'll meet in the commons. But it never occurred to me that that's what that meant, just like a common area shared by everybody.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  It didn't either. And to me, I know exactly what you're talking about. There was, if not high school, then maybe middle school. There was some school where that was called that too. And I wonder if it was like a surreptitious shot at kids, like they're all sheep. Because I don't think that's true. But one of the major uses for commons traditionally has been for grazing. That's a really good example. If you let a bunch of people graze on a shared resource, but they're taking what they can from that resource to make money for themselves, to support themselves, then just because humans are rational, selfish, horrible beings, that meadow or that high school cafeteria will be ruined.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. And the idea of the tragedy of the commons started out in 1968. And an article from Science, the journal Science, it was called The Tragedy of the Commons, and it was by a biologist named Garrett Hardin. And he was sort of piggybacking on a 19th century English mathematician and economist named William Forster. Not Foster.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  I would say piggybacking or hijacking.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Hijacking. William Forster Lloyd. And you mentioned grazing, and this is sort of the, the thought experiment Hardin went with, which is like you have a, you know, a grazing field. And let's say three farmers have use of it and they're letting their cows and sheep and, you know, graze out there. But at some point, one of them is gonna get an extra fat cow that they sell for pretty good money. And they're like, hey, well, if that worked out, maybe I can add like an additional cow. And maybe it'll make, you know, the value of all of these cows go down a little bit, including my own, because they're not getting as fat because I've added another cow here.

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  But if I can sell it for this much money and it's only costing me a fraction of that for, you know, the...

• 4:44Josh Clark?

  Extra cow?

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it would only cost a fraction of loss of resources for the other cows. Like, I'm still coming out ahead. And so bada bing bada boom, that's what I'm gonna do.

• 4:57Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. So if everybody was making $1 off of their cows when everything was being grazed on sustainably, then if you add one more cow, now everybody's making 85 cents off of their cows because you're starting to overtax the commons. But that person who added that cow, that's an extra 85 cents they wouldn't have had before, right?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if you're able to sell that cow for like five bucks, that 85 cents is pittance compared to what you're making on the other side.

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  Right, so there's always, under the logic of the tragedy of the commons, there's always a reason to add another cow, and add another cow, and add another cow. Because your returns are always going to be more than the cost that you can offset with the returns, right?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Well, that and you're also on the assumption that like, everyone else is gonna be adding cows, so I'm not gonna be the only sucker not adding cows.

• 5:54Josh Clark?

  Right, so you're either a sucker, or you're just somebody who wants to survive. Because if people start adding cows, and you're the one farmer who's like, "I'm not gonna do that, I find that morally repugnant. I really like sustainably grazing here, and I'll just take one for the team." In very short order, that farmer would find that they were no longer making money.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  No more team.

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  Because, exactly, because each additional cow was taking an additional fraction. So let's say that every time you added a cow, it reduced the price that all the other cows got by 15%. That's not a steady price, because if you reduce a dollar by 15%... Now you're getting 85 cents for a cow.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:41Josh Clark?

  But now, when you're adding another cow, that reduces that 85 cents by 15%. So all of a sudden, you're making 72 cents, and then 61 cents, and then 52 cents, right?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:51Josh Clark?

  But again, if you're adding cows, that's always extra, almost found money. If you're not adding cows, then the cows that you had originally are now getting less and less and less, until you're making zero money. So you are forced into adding cows. And that's why it's considered the tragedy, or why Garrett Harden called it, "The tragedy of the commons," because inevitably, under these circumstances, which are, have long been considered to be universal circumstances, basically, the commons will always get ruined and depleted, and everybody will be totally up the creek.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  That's right. And if, and Harden was basically like, "There's a couple of solutions here. You can either divide this area up, and now each person has their own little private part of the pasture that they're only in control of, and no one else can get on it and graze there. Or a government body is gonna have to step in and regulate this stuff and manage it." And, you know, if you listen to Harden, and we'll talk a little bit about the problems with this guy in a second.

• 7:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  But if you listen to Harden, he'll say, "When you divide this things, this thing up and make it just private, and everyone, you know, is incentivized to basically preserve their plots and do it sustainably." So their, their profits are maximized with, you know, making sure the land isn't ruined, so they can keep those profits maximized.

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because now it's their land, and they suddenly realize, "Oh, this is a finite resource. If I start to degrade this land, it's only coming out of my profits, because the other farmer's land is not degraded. So I'm the only one in competition with myself here, really, and I need to make sure that this land is preserved, because now it's the gold, the goose that laid the golden egg, and I need to keep it nice and healthy and happy." That, that's the direct result of privatization, as far as Garrett Harden was explaining, as far as the tragedy of the commons goes, right? Simple solution, just give people an incentive to take care of it by making it their own. And the other way, like you said, is government intervention. And this seems to be what Harden's big...

• 9:05Josh Clark?

  Like, this is his favorite, I think, solution was bring the government in and just say, "You can't overgra-- you can't graze more than these number of sheep. And if you do, we'll wipe out your entire family line." Something along those lines.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but here's the thing, like, it wasn't like he was some big champion of the government, because if you, if you read the whole article, Harden is like, "And another thing, the reason why the world is headed toward a bad place, or a bad place already, is because freedom to breed is intolerable. So, there's just too many people, we're making too many babies, and the welfare state that the government is encouraging is taking away the natural consequence of what happens if you have too many kids. Like, they're gonna not be able to sustain that, and the kids are gonna starve to death. So, we're overbreeding, and all of a sudden, everyone's going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." And he said, "And another thing." He said, "This overbreeding, it could actually be a strategy

• 10:06Speaker 02

  where a cohesive group could come along to increase their power." And they're like, "Wait a minute, are you talking about the Great Replacement?" And he said, "I don't know what that is." And they said, "Well, it'll be a thing at some point."

• 10:18Josh Clark?

  He's like, "I like the ring of it, though."

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  It's catchy. So, yeah, yeah, his whole thing was, "We," using scare quotes, "are overbreeding," meant poorer, non-white countries are overbreeding.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:32Josh Clark?

  That was basically his whole thing. And that, yes, because there was such thing as international aid in the way of food, in the way of money, that that, people could just keep having kids, and knowing that the Western wealthier governments were gonna take care of them. And he was like, "That's, that's not what we should be doing, and here's why the tragedy of the commons." And to say that, by the way, there was, I read another paper of his, too, called "Lifeboat Ethics."

• 11:08Josh Clark?

  The argument against helping the poor?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Josh Clark?

  That was the subtitle.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:13Josh Clark?

  So he really just put it out there. But he basically said, okay, let's imagine that all of the countries in the world are lifeboats. Some are ridiculously overloaded with people, others, the wealthier, more advanced ones. Let's say that they're in a lifeboat that seats 100 and they only have 90 people. But there's tons of people swimming around them trying to get in the lifeboat. Do you pick 10 people out of these, you know, thousands of people out there to let come into your lifeboat? If so, how do you pick those people? What do you tell the people you don't pick? And he ultimately concludes that just don't help anybody.

• 11:55Josh Clark?

  Then you don't have to worry about playing favorites or anything like that. Plus, you keep your 10-person safety buffer in case things change for you and your lifeboat and you're fine. He actually argues against guilt. You shouldn't feel any guilt. And as a matter of fact, we shouldn't put guilt on people for making decisions like these because they're just smart. And then secondly, he also says that if you are one of those people like that one farmer, who is like overgrazing, is morally repugnant and I'm not going to do it. If you were like that farmer in this lifeboat and you said, I just, I can't do this. I can't sit there and watch people drown while I'm sitting here. I'm going to give up my seat for somebody else.

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  Harden argued that just by virtue of a person accepting your seat, they are less moral than you. And that over time, as more people in the lifeboat give up their seat for moral reasons, morality will be replaced in this lifeboat with self-interest. And then what do you have then? So he makes all these like.

• 13:02Josh Clark?

  Like if you're a rational person and you take emotion out of it, you're like, you know, I guess that kind of makes sense in a little bit. But the moment you add in any, a drop of humanity to it, you're like, this is horrible that this guy wrote a series of papers arguing this.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he, you know, as far as the tragedy of the commons goes, he very explicitly says like, you know, you got to prioritize yourself here and you're, what you're doing and maximize your profits. And if you don't, if you have ethics or something, then you're, you're not a very smart person.

• 13:34Josh Clark?

  Right. Exactly. So this was his whole thing that, you know, like all of it was overpopulation. The thing is it got diluted or taken very literally, very quickly. And it was applied to actual commons, as we'll see. And just, it was stripped of its overpopulation, xenophobia, racism, all of that stuff, and just got applied to real world commons management. And to say like it changed things is the understatement of the century, Chuck.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  That's right. Uh, should we take a break?

• 14:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  All right. We'll be right back, everybody.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Here's a question for all you curious people. What's one thing you wish there was an app for? With Base44, you can build it yourself. It might be something simple, like a tool for a task your team does every week. You want the steps, useful links, and everyone's progress in one place.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Well, with Base44, describe that in your own words. You don't need to know coding or programming. Then you just keep editing and refining it until it works exactly the way you want. Your build comes headache free with built-in login, data storage backend, and hosting. So what's the app you wish existed?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Try it free and upgrade when you're ready. Go to base44.com to get started.

• 15:16Josh Clark?

  Hey everybody. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on. Whether you're heading to work, or going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where you want to shop for yourself and everyone on your list.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  That's right. And you know what? Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays.

• 15:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com, where you can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was stuff you should know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 16:36Josh Clark?

  Okay, so the tragedy of the commons became like the dominant way of looking at the world among Western nations because it did two things. It said that you can solve this problem everyone is going to have. Anytime you have a shared resource, people are going to deplete it. That's what it said, no matter where you are in the world, no matter who you are. But we want to save these shared resources because this paper came out at about the same time that environmental consciousness came up. So it was like perfect timing for that. But it also said, "Just privatize, buddy." And at that time neoliberalism was on the rise. And they were like, "Yes, privatize. Take all of these government-run things and put them in the hands of corporations,

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  and we'll all be better off."

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, one of the ways that happened was, and we're going to talk about sort of different versions of this here and there in this episode, but environmental trading markets emerged.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  And that came from Canada, actually, an economist named J. H. Dales in 1968. But the 80s and 90s are when they really kind of started flying off the shelf. But that's like when the government comes in with a regulation, let's say, to cap whatever. In this case, like, let's say they're capping emissions on...

• 17:53Josh Clark?

  Baseball caps.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Baseball caps? I need to get rid of some baseball caps, so that's great.

• 17:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, you have too many? Do you have any good Hawks ones? I'm on the lookout for those.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  I have one Hawks cap that I wear.

• 18:06Josh Clark?

  I got you.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  I just gave away a second one because it was too big, but your head is too small for this thing.

• 18:12Josh Clark?

  It is a really tiny head. I'm like that one Safari Hunter in Beetlejuice.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Do you know what your hat size is?

• 18:20Josh Clark?

  Like, .6?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  .6, okay, that's good.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  So, let's say it's fisheries, because we're going to talk about fisheries a lot.

• 18:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's a big one.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  So, you know, the government will come in and say, hey, you're overfishing, so we're going to cap how many fish you can harvest, or make it a certain size, in a certain area, or something like that. And then, here's your permit, fishery A, and here's your permit, fishery B, and fishery C. And they grant these permits, but, and this is the key to the ETMs, environmental trading markets, the word "trade," you can trade, i.e. buy and sell, these permits, which, and this is something that I don't fully understand, or maybe I do understand, and that's the whole point. But if company A is, well, let's say it's environmental, like, hey, you're a factory,

• 19:09Speaker 02

  and we're incentivizing you to clean up your pollution, and here's your permit, or whatever. If company A does a really good job, and does the right thing, and comes in, like, way under the amount of emissions that they're supposed to hit, by simply selling that to company B, who's like, man, we're not too good at that, I mean, is it creating, like, doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose?

• 19:32Josh Clark?

  No, it doesn't. And we talked about this in the acid rain episode. Do you remember whatever happened to acid rain, that thing?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:40Josh Clark?

  We, it can work and it does work. We actually reduced sulfur dioxide emissions that were associated with acid rain so much that acid rain went away. And it was like the ozone layer of like the early eighties, I think in seventies. Like it was a big scary thing and we took care of it because of cap and trade schemes. So it can work.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  But how? That's what I don't get. If, if one company is lowering their output, but another one is increasing theirs because they just bought the other companies. Then how is that a net loss?

• 20:14Josh Clark?

  Because of the cap, because you put the cap at something close to a target that you want to reduce things to. So you don't make like some sky high cap that's more than what you're at now. You make it less and then maybe a couple of years later, you make it less than that. So those caps, those, those, those little shares or whatever, those allowances that they can trade, they, they get more and more valuable, the less and less they represent because the law is kind of bringing these emissions down further and further. So ultimately you're rewarding a company by reducing their emissions because they can make money selling that to another company. And that other company is actually technically being punished because they're having to shell out more money than they budgeted for because they're emitting more than they are supposed to.

• 20:58Josh Clark?

  So ultimately you're penalizing and rewarding through this cap and trade scheme, but you're also creating an artificial cap. All these companies could just pollute as much as they want, but this government is saying, no, you actually can't. Here's your level. Here it is divided among the 10 companies. Go to town.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  But is-

• 21:18Josh Clark?

  Does that make sense?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, the, the thing I still don't get though is, is the company that's, you know, buying extra emissions, whatever, output from the company that's like really good at it, are they allowed to go over the cap?

• 21:33Josh Clark?

  They, no, they, but let's say they have a cap to put out 10 pounds of CO2, right?

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:40Josh Clark?

  And they're going, they know they're putting out 15 that year. Well, this other company that's putting out five pounds of CO2 that year, they can sell their other five pounds. So that no one goes over the cap, the total cap. But different companies can contribute different amounts based on how much of those allowance shares they can purchase or sell. Does, does that make sense?

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I guess so.

• 22:05Josh Clark?

  I promise it works. It worked for sulfur dioxide. It does work. The problem is, is it's also like, it requires a lot of buy-in from industry or really heavy-handed government regulation.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Well, either way, it became a, a big deal in the eighties. And by the end of the eighties, uh, the World Bank referred to, um, tragedy of the commons as, quote, "the dominant paradigm within which social scientists assess natural resource issues." So, uh, I mean, you, you can't, like, there's a bunch of different policies in a bunch of different areas. So you can't just look at the entire thing as a whole and say like, well, it's been a huge success. Like you can pick out something like acid rain. Say it was a success in this case.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  But there's humans involved, so you, you never can tell. Well, it's not like you never can tell. I guess they can forecast, but, uh, there's not just one big blanket like, nope, this is the exact solution.

• 23:00Josh Clark?

  Right, for sure. And it depends on the, on the industry, right? Like you said, acid rain, that was a great success story. Fisheries are another example. If you take a fishery, like you were saying, and you divide up the total catch between companies,

• 23:16Josh Clark?

  those companies can actually go around and buy, you know, huge portions of the other company's shares, right? And so all of a sudden, they're basically one company with all of the rights to catch all of the fish in that fishery because they managed to consolidate the shares over time. And that's a huge problem. That's not at all what you want. Like, yeah, that, that fishing company is still staying within the, the total number of fish that can be caught annually, but they ran all the other people out of business. That's, so that's not at all what you want with it. So there's, there's pluses and minuses. There's, it's situational. The thing is, is- The tragedy of the commons has largely been overblown.

• 23:59Josh Clark?

  And the idea that you can come out on top just by privatizing things like natural resources has been a lesson learned the hard way. That that's just, overall, that's not necessarily the best way to do it. And it can really, really harm some groups while enriching others tremendously.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, and like in the case of a fishery, like if you're a small fishing crew or something, good luck kind of working your way up and maybe establishing yourself as one of the larger companies, especially if the people that are buying these things up are people that don't live around there, these corporations that

• 24:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  that don't have necessarily a local interest. And again, while they might be like hitting, you know, staying under the threshold environmentally, it might be working out, but you're consolidating the wealth. Sometimes there's regulations on that where they say you have to be, you know, like on the fishing boat and like, you know, like Chick-fil-A. If you're going to buy a Chick-fil-A franchise, you got to manage that thing.

• 24:55Josh Clark?

  Exactly right. You want that Chick-fil-A Cadillac.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Exactly. But sometimes there aren't regulations like that. And what's been proven over and over, especially with ETMs, if there's a way for a system to be exploited for profit, then a company will come along and do it, no matter what.

• 25:13Josh Clark?

  That's basically the neoliberalism T-shirt, what you just said, you know?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Exactly. Here's the thing, if you look at the actual tragedy of the commons, Harden sort of just leaves, conveniently leaves a lot of stuff out. Like, he's assuming in this argument that like, that the people, that the farmers that are sharing this grazing spot, aren't talking to each other at all about what's going on and saying like, hey, we're ruining this land, by the way, maybe we should dial it back, like, everybody, get rid of two cows. And it also assumes that their only interest is to maximize profit and to not care for the land. And that's just not always the case.

• 25:53Josh Clark?

  No, I mean, that's really a tough sell to neoliberal policymaker. Like, they're just like, you're crazy. You're so naive for even thinking that. Of course, their goal is to maximize profits. But what's really cool is we'll see a little later on, real-world examples prove that that's not true. They disprove the tragedy of the commons by themselves. It wasn't like, oh, let's set up this crazy, really kind of rickety experiment and see if we can disprove the tragedy of the commons. No, people went out and looked at real-world, for example, indigenous treatment of common resources. And they're like, these people have been managing and not depleting these things for thousands of years now because they came up with their own sensible rules

• 26:38Josh Clark?

  that aren't neoliberal in nature.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. If you look at the original sort of, like, it's not just a theoretical thing. If you look at the paper by William Forrester, I think I said Forrester earlier, not Forrester, Lloyd, that this is the one hardened, what'd you say, hijacked? To begin with.

• 26:57Josh Clark?

  He did, he did.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  They were, he was talking about actual English commons, which was how it used to work in medieval England was, the Lord would own all this land, but there were people that lived on it. It wasn't like, hey, this is my private land. No one can be here at first.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  So the people that lived there, they, you know, they had to graze their animals and fish out of the streams and ponds and things like that. And they were allowed to with, you know, through certain age-old customs. Sometimes the local government would step in and kind of help manage this stuff and limit grazing and things like that. But it wasn't like this set codified system in place all over England. It was just, they had been working it out for centuries like this. It wasn't perfect, but it was sustainable. And they didn't like just destroy their land because they all had self-interest to keep it sustainable.

• 27:47Josh Clark?

  Right. And then they were enclosed. And enclosure was this huge, massive.

• 27:54Josh Clark?

  Overlooked world-changing event. And we need to do an episode on the fencing of the commons someday because it's just, it changed the entire mentality. Remember our episode on the Luddites and how they emerged from a world that was just, it just completely turned everything on its head?

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:13Josh Clark?

  That's what happened with enclosure when they fenced the commons. It changed everything and the concept of private property like really kind of developed out of that, at least in the West, right? So we'll do a whole separate episode on that, but suffice to say that it seems to be, once the commons were fenced and were no longer a shared resource, that's when the issues started to come up. If you ask Karl Marx, he would have said that this is where we came up with the landless proletariat, the working class, who had to work for wages because they no longer owned anything. It created the very, very wealthy class that didn't actually have to do anything because all they had to do was start renting this private property of theirs to the people who needed to work.

• 28:59Josh Clark?

  It created a whole system of problems. And in fact, some people are like, whether, however you feel about capitalism, you can kind of trace this back to the beginning of capitalism, the fencing of the commons. The irony of all this is that William Forster Lloyd was arguing against Adam Smith's capitalist idea that the invisible hand of the market will always guide things to a good outcome. He created ultimately the tragedy of the commons as a thought experiment to show like, no, actually, people don't, people aren't guided to this, this bottom good. Instead, they are going to act in their own self-interest and destroy this stuff.

• 29:43Josh Clark?

  So Harden actually took it and turned it around as an argument for capitalism, for private enterprise, for privatizing stuff, this argument that was originally used to disprove that.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And if you were enclosing your own commons or arguing in that favor at the time, you were saying, hey, everything has been chaos up into this point. It's very inefficient and there's got to be a more organized way to do this. And that was, you know, it wasn't a guise, I guess, but what they were really saying was, is we want this area.

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  Right. It's ours.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, eh, let's just oversell the chaos, maybe, because it was actually working out okay for many centuries.

• 30:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  But we're gonna just sell it as this chaotic mess that needs to be cleaned up and organized.

• 30:35Josh Clark?

  Right. That's how it's done, it seems like, isn't it, Charles? Like, people, people come along and create a problem that's not actually there for their own benefit ultimately.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, I have a friend who, ever since college, he was just one of those guys that while we were just like, eh, whatever.

• 30:54Josh Clark?

  About what?

• 30:55Speaker 02

  About everything, about the world, about politics, about, you know, that period of college where you just kind of check out and all you care about is where you're going that night. All that to say, he was a very smart guy back then, and he used to just say stuff that used to shake all of us to our core about what's coming, about this, that, or the other with the government. And he would always say, but here's how they're gonna sell it to you. And I was, that always stuck with me. And he's totally right. Like, they'll sell it to you as this, but then it becomes this.

• 31:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  That's really interesting. I love stuff like that about how just massive sweeping changes come from just a change in an idea, a change in in perspective. And that's a really great, that's what the tragedy of the commons was. It was an idea. It was a perspective. He, like Garrett Harden, didn't undertake a bunch of different experiments or field studies or anything like that in his paper, which was published in Science, by the way. It was an essay about his own thoughts on something that he presented so reasonably that people who were, again, neoliberals, who were in favor of privatizing everything, including common resources, could go to government policymakers and be like, here's how it works.

• 32:09Josh Clark?

  Doesn't that make sense? And the government said, yes, that makes sense. Let's start privatizing everything. And it was just because this guy took this idea and made it approachable. That's it.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:21Josh Clark?

  It's not. It became fact, even though it was never fact. I just find that fascinating, how something like that can just change the world.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think there were so many people licking their chops. They were like, oh, here's a great opportunity for us to jump on this bandwagon to take more for ourselves.

• 32:39Josh Clark?

  Right, but what if the bandwagon had never been there? Would anyone have figured out how to manipulate things so thoroughly, especially so quickly too, without this one paper this one biologist wrote?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, someone would have.

• 32:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but it would have happened piecemeal, I think. I don't know. It's questionable that it would have happened like it had.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 33:01Josh Clark?

  Let's take a break.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back. We're going to contemplate that and come back with the definitive answer, right after this.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Here's a question for all you curious people. What's one thing you wish there was an app for? With Base44, you can build it yourself. It might be something simple, like a tool for a task your team does every week. You want the steps, useful links, and everyone's progress in one place.

• 33:43Josh Clark?

  Well, with Base44, describe that in your own words. You don't need to know coding or programming. Then you just keep editing and refining it until it works exactly the way you want. Your build comes headache-free with built-in login, data storage backend, and hosting. So what's the app you wish existed?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Try it free and upgrade when you're ready. Go to base44.com to get started.

• 34:11Josh Clark?

  Hey, everybody. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on. Whether you're heading to work, or going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where you want to shop for yourself and everyone on your list.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  That's right. And you know what? Quince focuses on high-quality staples. Made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays.

• 34:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com where you can get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was stuff you should know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Uh, we don't have a definitive answer. I was just kidding.

• 35:36Josh Clark?

  You got me.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  We should talk about Eleanor Ostrom, though. This is a woman who wrote a book in 1990 called Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. And she's probably like at the top of the list for really bringing this to the, the upper echelons of the political world, worldwide, I guess. She took a bunch of examples all over the world of controlled CPRs, like grazing areas. It's always a good one. In Switzerland, in this case, forests in Japan, meadows in Japan, and of course fisheries and things like that, in this case, in the Philippines.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  So kind of really kind of picking different spots all over the world and examining these and how they've worked out. And basically argued that like, hey, these things are, had been working out for, for centuries and it worked out pretty good because everybody lived there who was involved. And when you have local people that have long-term interests in the wellbeing of their land and their area and keeping that up, then the economic side of things is not going to go away, but it's going to take a backseat to ensuring that this land that they live in stays as close to as it is as possible.

• 37:01Josh Clark?

  Yes, and so she was the one who went out and actually did those field studies that Garrett Harden didn't like she had the receipts to back up what she was saying, which was the tragedy of the commons isn't actually true. It's certainly not in every case. And what's what's the ironic thing is this Chuck, the tragedy of the commons played out, I feel like for the most part, when things were privatized and outside industry were allowed to come in and have a share of the commons. That's when it was, that's when the problems really began.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:43Josh Clark?

  I, I, so I want to say one other thing too, because I know I'm kind of known for having a very hard-nosed, certain opinion about things and it slants, you know, in this particular direction typically.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  I don't know, in the last like year or so, I've kind of lost my taste for, for rigidity like that or black and white thinking. So I don't want anybody to think that I'm just like neoliberalism equals bad. Alternatives to neoliberalism, all good.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:15Josh Clark?

  Like I just don't see the world like that anymore. So I don't want anybody to think that I'm just like I'm bashing neoliberalism as if there's no redeemable quality to it whatsoever. I just don't believe that. But in the case of the tragedy of the commons, I feel like more often than not neoliberal policies, again privatizing shared resources or taking oversight away from the government and just putting it in the hands of the market has been disastrous for the world over the last like 40, 50 years. It's been really good for wealthy people and helping other people get wealthier, but that ignores the expense on the backs of other people that it's created too. I just wanted to put that out there.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:00Josh Clark?

  That, that I don't want anybody to think I'm just bashing neoliberalism because it does help in a lot of ways.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  No, and I know you well, and I can tell everybody that you are a very varied person who looks at things from all angles and is very considerate of, you don't just shut anything down outright. You like to consider things.

• 39:20Josh Clark?

  No.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Okay, so back to Ostrom though. She argues that, hey, this, we've shown time and time again, I show in these real world examples in my books, in Japan and in Switzerland and in the Philippines with the fisheries, that this can work, but there's some parameters that have been shown to ensure that it works. And you gotta follow these, or it's not gonna work. And she narrowed it down to eight principles of like a successful, you know, regulation of a commons, which is clearly defined boundaries. So who can use this area? What is this area? Rules that fit local needs, and this is something we've been kinda hammering on.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  It's got to be the local parties that come up with these rules. The addition of outside people stepping in is seems to be when all of the problems start, because their interests are not the same as local interests.

• 40:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, history kinda tells us that when outside groups come in and start pushing the people who've been using this thing for a thousand years, pushing them around, it just doesn't go very well typically, because the outside groups don't necessarily understand this. And as we'll see, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be the involvement of any outside groups. What Ostrom was saying that she found from these studies is that you have to begin, the base, the people who are really laying the groundwork and setting the rules for this, they have to be the people who are actually using this resource.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. The third one is group decision making, so it's not just a couple of people or a small board deciding these things. Get as many people in there as possible, local people. Monitoring, you have to have people monitoring, and you know, she used her forest land example in Japan was one where she was like, hey, they had locals monitoring the stuff and levying fines. So you've gotta know that someone is out there doing this, so people, you know, know they're gonna be held accountable. And then the next one ties into that. And then when you do that, you gotta start out small with these sanctions. It's gotta be like a warning first, and then a small fine. You can't just come in there with the billy club and say, you're out.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  It's got, you've gotta encourage people to stick around and like, alright, here's a warning, but you can't keep letting this happen, that kinda thing.

• 41:42Josh Clark?

  I was really curious what the ultimate punishment is for repeat offenders. And the only example I could find was among a group in Bali. And ostracism is what the person ultimately faces.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Get out.

• 41:56Josh Clark?

  Which, yeah, and that's bad enough in like a, like a Western society, you know?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:02Josh Clark?

  But also you can make do, you know?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:05Josh Clark?

  There's the internet. If you go into a store, the person basically has to take your money for food. In a more traditional culture ostracisms like you're, you're in big trouble because groups rely on one another for help. And the example they gave was if one of your relatives dies, there's certain rights you have to perform. And if you're ostracized, you have to figure that out all by yourself because the community is not going to show up and help you.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:29Josh Clark?

  For these death rites that, that your ancestors demand of you because that's just tradition.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. The last three of the eight, easy dispute resolution. So just something on the, on the cheap that's pretty informal and not some big drawn out expensive, you know, tribunal or something like that.

• 42:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no wigs, no powdered wigs.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  No powdered wigs at all. You have to have support from authorities.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And it may be a local thing, but you've got to have the blessing of a larger government body to, at the very least, not get in there and muck it up themselves and just sort of let you do your thing. But maybe also support. And then finally, building up to a larger system. So again, keep it local, but if it's a system that connects to a larger system, like a creek that connects to a larger watershed, you're going to have to start linking up with other local groups and make it a larger thing.

• 43:27Josh Clark?

  Right, but the, the, the point that she made too is that that works, that's actually scalable, which is good. Because like you said, you know, a creek is one thing, but it's, it depends on a watershed. And so if you can get together with other people who are managing their own creeks, you can manage the watershed based on the, the individual common.

• 43:49Josh Clark?

  I guess, rules that groups have come up with. And that you can scale that into more modern systems, too, right? So like, say, a city has somehow created a cap on how much emissions that the factories in the cities can create. You can combine that with other cities. And now you're starting to manage a larger part of the atmosphere. And then that the state can come in and work with all of those cities. And then the state can work with other states. And all of a sudden, now you have regional air quality being controlled from the rules that are based on the actual stakeholders in each individual community.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  That's right. And didn't she win something for this work?

• 44:29Josh Clark?

  She won the Nobel, which Livia put in parentheses, fake Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, because that's not one that was actually organized.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I wonder what.

• 44:40Josh Clark?

  Originally.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  She meant by that. But one of the things that came out of the book, there's a University of Chicago legal scholar named Lee Ann Fennell, who points to that book and says, you know, this is sort of a, corrects these legal theories that say property is all or nothing. Like, you either own it and have total control over it, or you don't. And it's actually possible, you can have a common. You can have an area that people share. And the example that, and still have some autonomy. And the example that Livia gave was like a house. And if you got a family in the house, you know, let's say, you know, two people that have coupled up and have children, you know, it's a collective.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  But like, you know, generally speaking, unless you live in a terrible house with an authoritarian dictator as the head of the household.

• 45:33Josh Clark?

  Or a stepdad that makes you feel stupid.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, stepdad that makes you feel dumb. You've got, you know, your kid has your room. And you know what? You can, this is your room. You know, you have a right to your room and you can basically decorate it how you want within reason and do what you want in here. But it's still part of the house.

• 45:52Josh Clark?

  Right, and technically, your parents own that room.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:55Josh Clark?

  But because of custom, custom and tradition, they probably respect that room as your private space.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's something as a parent I found is super important. Because at a certain age, and this has been the last couple of years with Ruby, like, you know, I'm gonna go into my room and shut the door.

• 46:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and you're like, no, you're not.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Well, I'll open the door, because I just, I just like, and it's not in a spy way, I just like peeking in and seeing the fun stuff she's doing. And Emily's like, you know, leave the door shut. She's gotta have that autonomy, and I'm like, I know.

• 46:27Josh Clark?

  Good for Emily.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:29Josh Clark?

  That's really sweet. When you open the door, do you suddenly open and go, what are you doing?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  I'll give a little.

• 46:34Josh Clark?

  Caught you.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  I give a little knock now, you know. Uh, and, you know, she's usually in there drawing pictures of cats and listening to music.

• 46:40Josh Clark?

  Reading Teen Beat?

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:43Josh Clark?

  Man, do you remember, so was your room your own private sanctuary?

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Scott and I shared a room until I was, uh, I feel like I was probably 10 or 11.

• 46:56Josh Clark?

  That's the, that's the room age right there.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's when we split, but we were upstairs at our house. It was just two bedrooms and separated by a joined bathroom.

• 47:06Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  And, my sweet brother, he, I was so sad about moving out of his room. At first, he agreed to keep, uh, his bathroom door open so I could lay in bed and see through the bathroom to him in his room.

• 47:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, my god. He is such a, he'd be the rancher that would be like, I'm not over grazing, I'll just die.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  He's one of the best, but, yeah, so I had my own room and it was like, my sports posters, and I went through a Marilyn Monroe phase for some reason where I had a bunch of her posters up.

• 47:38Josh Clark?

  I, I went through a James Dean phase that was similar.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, but yeah, it was my room. I took a lot of pride in decorating it and doing my thing, and my parents, my father literally did not come upstairs. Uh, that's a whole other story. Uh, and my mom did for a while, but basically, I mean, that was our zone for the most part.

• 47:56Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  You know.

• 47:58Josh Clark?

  I remember. There not being anything more satisfying than undertaking a total remodeling of your room.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Oh, moving stuff around.

• 48:07Josh Clark?

  Furniture, all of a sudden the bed's over here and like.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  I used to love doing that.

• 48:11Josh Clark?

  It was, it was so, it just changed everything. I'd love that so much. I have so many great memories of my room.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. And I used to do that to apartments I lived in. And I had ironically recently had a thought about how much I used to enjoy that and how like our house, there, you can't really do that. Like it's set up in a, in a way that I can't be like, hey, let's rearrange our living room. It's like, well, you can't cause.

• 48:35Josh Clark?

  Let's move the built-ins outside.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So those, those days are over for me, unfortunately.

• 48:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, same here. That's just how it goes as you get older. It's one more thing that brings you joy or brought you joy that's now dead and shriveled up like an old leaf.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  All right. Well, let's finish up on tragedy of the commons because um, we can use an example of Maine lobster fisheries as a pretty good example of how people can start to do the wrong thing, but, but correct course on their own.

• 49:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  And that was the case in the 19th century when the state of Maine started setting legal minimum sizes for catching lobsters. And they couldn't enforce it that well at first and people broke the rules and were like, you know, trying to make extra money or keep more lobsters than they should for a while. But eventually they were like, hey, wait a minute. We're not doing ourselves any favors here. And if we're going to all continue this to sustain our living, doing this, we gotta work together. So they, they form harbor gangs to start self policing, basically.

• 49:40Josh Clark?

  So Maine lobstermen harbor gangs. Is there anything scarier than the sound of that? Just seeing them kind of slowly come up on your boat and they're all like, they have chains in their hands.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Don't go over there. That's where the harbor gangs are.

• 49:53Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Boy, you just took me to Cabot Cove.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  So they started self policing and everyone bought into this idea that let's not ruin all of our livelihood here. And one thing that gets pointed out is you can do this in a case like that because lobsters are close to shore.

• 50:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  It's a small, small community. It's local people. In the case of cod, and at some point we should do one on the cod wars. Because that's where this factor's in. Cod travel long distances, and so it's hard to regulate something like that. That's widespread and there's different countries involved.

• 50:30Josh Clark?

  So yeah, I guess tragedy of the commons has been largely debunked, even though it completely altered the world for decades and decades and still does.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, either blamed or credited with the birth of capitalism. That's no small thing.

• 50:45Josh Clark?

  It's pretty big, yeah.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so we're gonna do one on fencing of the commons one day, and then we're also gonna do one on neoliberalism someday.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  And the cod wars.

• 50:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the cod wars. There you go. Well, since Chuck corrected me and added cod wars, of course, that means it's time, everybody, for listener mail.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  First of all, a quick correction to a correction. When we got written in about the hodgepodge, I kept saying modpodge.

• 51:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  It is modpodge, and the corrector got it right. I just kept saying it wrong.

• 51:20Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  And I played it off to myself as a joke, but it was not.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  Modpodge is better. I think the inventor of modpodge is just like, oh, why didn't I call it modpodge?

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Missed a boat. It rhymes, even.

• 51:33Josh Clark?

  I wonder if it was from the time when mod squad was out, because it does have kind of like a hippie dippy flower look to it, doesn't it?

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Well, decoupage is a very old thing, and I suppose that meant a modern decoupage, is my guess.

• 51:49Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Don't you think?

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I didn't ever think about it more than I have in the last couple of weeks.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 51:58Josh Clark?

  I wish you'd never brought it up.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Oh, man. How's it going? Oh, I remember now. We mentioned Martha Stewart, and I said, there's the hodgepodge everywhere.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  All right, so this is from a friend in the Netherlands who said, "Good luck pronouncing the name." But I think I've nailed it, so we're gonna see.

• 52:16Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Stay tuned for the end. Hey, guys, just finished the episode on automat's, and I felt I needed to write in. I'm from the Netherlands, and believe it or not, automat's are still a big thing there. And I remember now, after I got a couple of emails about these, of being in Amsterdam and seeing these febo's, F-E-B-O.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Places?

• 52:35Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm. I've not heard of that.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Well, it's an automat, basically, except instead of a huge restaurant, it's just like a, you know, a smallish room. We refer to it as eating out of the wall. These places mostly just serve deep fried food, but in general is quite fresh. Not sure why they're still so popular, though. Maybe it's because the Dutch aren't really known for their fine dining, as we just want our meals to be efficient and cheap. Nevertheless, if you're ever around, I invite you to take one of our famous croquettes or bitterballs out of the wall, which are especially good after a night of heavy drinking.

• 53:08Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Love the show. Best regards. And that is from Gijjs.

• 53:14Josh Clark?

  Nice. Will you spell that for us, non-Dutch speakers?

• 53:18Speaker 02

  At least that's how I was told to say it. It is pronounced, or I'm sorry, spelled G-I-J-S.

• 53:25Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  And it said Gijjs.

• 53:27Josh Clark?

  That is fantastic. That looks like I just brushed up against the keyboard.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  It really does.

• 53:34Josh Clark?

  Can you pronounce it one more time?

• 53:35Speaker 02

  What I've got and what I'm sticking with is Gijjs.

• 53:39Josh Clark?

  That is great. I hope you nailed it, Chuck.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  I hope so, too.

• 53:42Josh Clark?

  You deserve to have. Well, thanks a lot.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Gijjs. The name you're trying to pronounce is Gijjs.

• 53:52Josh Clark?

  We appreciate the email. Thanks for filling us in. I had no idea about bitterballs and eating from the wall, or out of the wall, in Amsterdam. So, thank you. And if you want to be like...

• 54:05Speaker 02

  The name is Gijjs.

• 54:07Josh Clark?

  Then you can send us an email, too. Send it off to [email protected].

• 54:16Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:32Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota Fordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Curious people ask great questions and here's one. What's something you wish there was an app for? Well, with Base44, you can build it yourself. Maybe it's a tool to organize a project or track a hobby or share knowledge, solve a problem that's always bugged you.

• 55:17Josh Clark?

  Just describe what you want in your own words, no coding required. Base44 handles the database, login, backend and hosting. Try it for free. Go to base44.com to get started. Introducing Voices of VivGart. VivGart is also known as its generic name, F-Gart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease. Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.