What is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it Aristotle (Politics: 1261b33)

If there is such a thing as a classical genius whose ideas defy the test of time, not many can be found in the same league with Aristotle. For a man whose life tenure on earth predated Christianity, his rich array of writings on politics, logic, rhetoric, zoology, biology, physics, ethics, and so on and so forth were so phenomenal that quite a string of schools of thought emerged from them. An interested reader on Aristotle is certain to come across a voluminous literature of publications of his works as well as reinterpretations by scholars of the highest pedigree. As a litmus test in present day scholarship, one only needs to type the word �Aristotle� in Google Scholar to find about 311,000 documents in a matter of 0.17 seconds! In this brief note, I shall not indulge into any synopsis of Aristotelian thinking which, in any case, is definitely an improbability in physical and mental space. Rather, I borrow some insights from one of his conceptualizations to provide a critical examination of life at the start of the third millennium in Ethiopia. This is done with the view that unless we change our ways in many aspects we certainly are playing a negative sum game (by far an inferior outcome even to a zero sum game). 

We first digress a bit to elaborate on why individual and social rationalities often mismatch. Say, our source of livelihood is a given natural resource that depletes exponentially as a function of amount of resource used. It is easy to grasp that under such situations individuals set out to maximize utility by putting more effort towards exploiting the natural resource. Because resource use by A implies that less is available for B, both A and B rationally discount the future by a high degree. Equally true is the fact that a few years down the line when the resource is fully depleted then all will lose out. A socially efficient outcome would have been one that sanctions on individual use to an optimal level whereby the resource was utilized in a sustainable way. In the economists� technical jargon, this scenario mirrors the prisoners� dilemma where the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium is clearly socially inefficient. Globally and at different spots in time, the model explains quite a long list of real life phenomenon in politics, economics, social conflict and environmental issues.

Then in 1968 writing for the Science Journal, Garrett Hardin borrowed from Lloyd�s parable to put a provocative name to it: the tragedy of the commons. 
Politically, our survival critically hinges on having a political system that sufficiently mediates diversity. The temporal dimension of the Ethiopian political landscape has always been characterized by a dichotomy of winners and losers. A political culture shaped by a-winner-takes-it-all types of institutions has dominated political competition in this country. As a consequence, we continue to produce incumbents who would go to great length to paralyze opposition while the latter also often entertain vengeful agenda. 

The parallel with the tragedy of the commons is that, because conflicts do not get solved politically, such useful variables as tolerance and cooperation do not enter the political equation. It is also sad to note that we missed opportunities to rectify the situation three times in as many decades. In so far as we need to be wary as to why a sizeable proportion of the population might have preferred a constitutional amendment (note the votes for CUD), we should also be inquisitive of why groups choosing a disintegrated Ethiopia gain ground. Similarly, the conflict mediation roles of elections is very much compromised by the application of a plurality rule in single-member district size for a highly divided society like ours. The list goes on with the gist of the matter being the way political competition is conducted in Ethiopia is likely to weaken (and possibly destroy) the common, i.e. the country. 

Economically, fiscal policy is the obvious candidate for the common pool resource problem. Theory and empirics have shown that heterogeneous societies are prone to these kinds of problems that materialize through large redistributive outlays and associated fiscal deficits. These scenarios emerge as a result of the fact that legislatures internalize the benefits of area-based public spending while costs externalize economy-wide. Against all such odds, the Ethiopian government has managed to ensure a sound fiscal policy with reasonable deficits and expenditure geared towards provision of public goods and services. A more worrisome development relates to the development of the agricultural sector. If land policy is encouraging intensification of agricultural production in the face of rising marginal costs (including more human pressure on land, loss of natural productivity, environmental depletion) then one can say the tragedy of the commons is inevitable. As for urban lands, one is forced to cast a doubt if the ridiculously high land prices map into equally high value economic activities. However, if what we see is a scramble for land backed by soft loans and through bureaucratic corruption then we run the risk of the common pool resource problem. The perennial question is whether present-day Ethiopia is suitable for wealth creation or redistribution. 

Politico-economically, we should examine the degree to which, if at all, our political institutions induce growth-promoting behavior on the part of economic agents. Economic history is full of stark contrasts in growth trajectories as in the cases between colonial times British and Spanish monarchies; resource-rich and growing Botswana and same but decadent Nigeria; socially diverse, stable but regressing Tanzania vis-�-vis vibrant Mauritius as well as those between a predatory regime of the 1950s Ethiopia and pro-growth South Korean rulers of same period. That some governments choose welfare-maximizing policies does not mean they are particularly and naturally benevolent. Rather, it means that in these countries groups holding the helm of political power do gain from fast economic growth or were able to compensate losers and achieve a Pareto optimal allocation. Rhetoric set aside, is it in the interests of the ruling party for the country to be on a speedy growth path?

Since, as we all know, economic growth implies intensified economic transactions among agents unfettered by artificial barriers, how much is it prepared to replace ethnic lines with economic lines? Would it follow myopic policies that maximize current political and economic ends or establish a credible regime of growth-enhancing policies and institutions whereby the country�s economic is insulated from the pitfalls of political office turnover? Would it depoliticize the civil service (not in the sense that the civil service is an independent entity detached from political control) so as to make professionalism get hold or continue with �spoil�s system� the Americans abandoned in 1848! The cases are countless but the message of the tragedy of the commons that exists in our systems is crystal clear. If we let Ethiopia continue to be a common pool resource and if we do not stop believing that the Ethiopian entity is not beyond a simple sum of its individual parts then our tragedy ends in a failed state.