[07] Thus the mere growth
of society involves danger of the gradual conversion of
government into something independent of and beyond the
people, and the gradual seizure of its powers by a ruling
class — though not necessarily a class marked off
by personal titles and a hereditary status, for, as
history shows, personal titles and hereditary status do
not accompany the concentration of power, but follow it.
The same methods which, in a little town where each knows
his neighbor and matters of common interest are under the
common eye, enable the citizens freely to govern
themselves, may, in a great city, as we have in many
cases seen, enable an organized ring of plunderers to
gain and hold the government. So, too, as we see in
Congress, and even in our State legislatures, the growth
of the country and the greater number of interests make
the proportion of the votes of a representative, of which
his constituents know or care to know, less and less. And
so, too, the executive and judicial departments tend
constantly to pass beyond the scrutiny of the
people.
[08] But to the changes
produced by growth are, with us, added the changes
brought about by improved industrial methods. The
tendency of steam and of machinery is to the division of
labor, to the concentration of wealth and power.
Workmen are becoming massed by hundreds and
thousands in the employ of single individuals and firms;
small storekeepers and merchants are becoming the clerks
and salesmen of great business houses; we have already
corporations whose revenues and pay-rolls belittle those
of the greatest States. And with this concentration grows
the facility of combination among these great business
interests. How readily the railroad companies, the coal
operators, the steel producers, even the match
manufacturers, combine, either to regulate prices or to
use the powers of government! The tendency in
all branches of industry is to the formation of rings
against which the individual is helpless, and which exert
their power upon government whenever their interests may
thus be served. ... read the
entire essay
Trebah Garden is a spectacular piece of paradise in
Cornwall, England, a ravine with a huge variety of trees
and shrubs that winds its way down to a beach on the
Helford River. Several years ago I visited this garden to
enjoy its beauty. I soon learned that its history and
governance are as interesting as its flora.
The property is first recorded in the Domesday Book of
1086 as belonging to the Bishop of Exeter. It passed
through the hands of many squires and farmers until it
was acquired in 1831 by a wealthy Quaker family, which
developed the extraordinary garden. In the twentieth
century the property changed hands several more times and
the garden gradually deteriorated. The last private
owners sank a small fortune into restoring the garden,
then donated it to the Trebah Garden Trust, so it could
be opened to the public and preserved for future
generations.
Today, anyone can become a lifetime member of this
trust by making a donation of £250. Members get free
access to the garden (other visitors pay an admission
fee) and elect a council to manage the property. They
receive an annual report, audited accounts, and notices
of meetings at which they may vote and submit
resolutions. At present, there are about a thousand
voting members of the trust.
As I wandered through the acres of ferns and
rhododendrons, it struck me that Trebah is a microcosm
for the ideas in this book. It has passed from private
ownership to a form of common ownership that enables it
to be shared and preserved. If we think of the world as
an assemblage of gardens — that is, of ecosystems
in which humans play active roles — the Trebah
model becomes extremely interesting. It illuminates both
a process by which natural gifts can shift from private
to common ownership, and an institutional model —
the trust — for managing such gifts as permanent
parts of the commons.
Trusts are centuries-old institutions devised to hold
and manage property for beneficiaries. The essence of a
trust is a fiduciary relationship. Neither trusts nor
their trustees may ever act in their own self-interest;
they’re legally obligated to act solely on behalf
of beneficiaries.
Trusts are bound by numerous rules, including the
following:
* Managers must act with undivided loyalty to
beneficiaries.
* Unless authorized to act otherwise, managers must
preserve the corpus of the trust. It’s okay to
spend income, but not to diminish principal.
* Managers must ensure transparency by making timely
financial information available to beneficiaries.
These rules are enforceable. The basic enforcement
mechanism is that an aggrieved beneficiary or a state
attorney general can bring suit against a trustee. When
that happens, the trustee must prove she acted prudently;
if there’s any doubt, the trustee is fined or
fired. As Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo once put
it: “A trustee is held to something stricter than
the morals of the marketplace. Not honesty alone, but the
punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is the standard
of behavior.”
A trustee isn’t the same thing as a steward.
Stewards care for an asset, but their obligations are
voluntary and vague. By contrast, trustees’
obligations are mandatory and quite specific. Trusteeship
is thus a more formal and rigorous responsibility than
stewardship.
Trusts can be in charge of financial as well as
physical assets. In this chapter, my concern is natural
assets — gifts we inherit from creation. One of my
premises is that each generation has a contract to pass
on such gifts, undiminished, to those not yet born. If we
are to keep this contract, someone must act as trustee of
nature’s gifts, or at least of the most endangered
of them. The question is, who?
The candidates are government, corporations, and
trusts. I argued earlier that neither corporations nor
government can fulfill this function; they’re both
too bound to short-term private interests. That leaves
trusts. ...
A trustee isn’t the same thing as a steward.
Stewards care for an asset, but their obligations are
voluntary and vague. By contrast, trustees’
obligations are mandatory and quite specific. Trusteeship
is thus a more formal and rigorous responsibility than
stewardship.
Trusts can be in charge of financial as well as
physical assets. In this chapter, my concern is natural
assets — gifts we inherit from creation. One of my
premises is that each generation has a contract to pass
on such gifts, undiminished, to those not yet born. If we
are to keep this contract, someone must act as trustee of
nature’s gifts, or at least of the most endangered
of them. The question is, who?
The candidates are government, corporations, and
trusts. I argued earlier that neither corporations nor
government can fulfill this function; they’re both
too bound to short-term private interests. That leaves
trusts.
Common Property Trusts
The Trebah Garden Trust isn’t a rarity. Across
Britain, the National Trust — a nongovernmental
charity founded in 1895 — owns over six hundred
thousand acres of countryside, six hundred miles of
coastline, and two hundred historic buildings and
gardens. It has over three million members who elect half
of its fifty-two-person governing council (the other half
are appointed by nonprofit organizations that share the
trust’s goals). In the United States, there are now
over fifteen hundred Trebah-like trusts, protecting over
nine million acres. On top of that, the
fifty-five-year-old Nature Conservancy protects more than
fifteen million acres.
Let’s posit, then, a generic institution, the
common property trust. It’s a special kind of trust
that manages assets that come from the commons and are
meant to be preserved as commons. Common property trusts
manage these assets first and foremost on behalf of
future generations. They may have secondary
beneficiaries, such as public education or residents of a
particular locale, but such living beneficiaries take
backseats to the yet-to-be-born. These trusts carry out
their missions by owning and managing bundles of property
rights. Here are two examples from my own backyard: the
Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) and the Pacific
Forest Trust (PFT). The demise of family farms and the
loss of open space around cities are seemingly
unstoppable trends. Yet in Marin County, just north of
San Francisco, family-owned dairy, sheep, and cattle
ranches have survived. A big reason is that ranchers
there have an option: selling conservation easements to
MALT.
A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement
between a landowner and a trust that permanently limits
uses of the land. The owner continues to own and use the
land and may sell it or pass it on to her heirs. However,
the owner gives up some of the rights associated with the
land — for example, the right to build additional
houses on it or to clear-cut trees. The trust that
acquires the easement makes sure its terms are followed
by the current as well as future owners.
In Marin County, MALT has preserved nearly forty
thousand acres of farmland by buying conservation
easements from ranchers. This represents about a third of
the land currently farmed. The ranchers receive the
difference between what the land would be worth if
developed and what it’s worth as a working farm. In
effect, they’re paid to be land stewards and to
forgo future capital gains.
Most of MALT’s money comes from public sources.
What the public receives isn’t an old-fashioned
commons of shared pasturage, but a lasting pastoral
landscape and a viable agricultural economy. That’s
not a bad alternative to suburban sprawl.
In much the same way, the Pacific Forest Trust
acquires what it calls working forest conservation
easements from private woodlands owners. Some of the
easements are purchased, others are donated by owners in
exchange for tax benefits. Here again, owners keep their
land but agree to forgo nonforest development and to
harvest trees sustainably.
PFT’s goal is to protect not only forests
themselves but the many species that live in them, as
well as the ecosystem services — such as clean
water and carbon absorption — that forests provide.
As with MALT, some of PFT’s money comes from public
sources. In return, the public gets healthy forests for
considerably less than it would cost to buy and manage
them outright.
read the whole chapter