When we think of the “tragedy of the commons,” we typically turn to Garrett Hardin’s classic essay by that name. The argument is that people acting out of self-interest can and will exhaust a commonly-held resource as they have no incentive to moderate their usage. Thus, the owner of sheep will permit the animals to graze on land open to one and all, as will the shepherd next door and the owner of sheep in the next dwelling. The common grazing area, valuable to all, will eventually become worthless. To correct this situation requires moral insight and a willingness to adopt policies concerning the use of a resource. We think about this when we opt to buy a car that emits a smaller quantity of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

I often invoke the tragedy of the commons in a commercial context (where some people stare at me, apparently wondering where the hell is this guy coming from?). Corporations have a “commons,” too, though it is not the commons of sheep farmers or the air we all breathe. In any organization, there are resources that are shared internally, and often the many subdivisions of the organization fight to get primary access to those resources. Most often, there is a complaint about the development queue in the information technology department (“I need to get this platform built now, but the IT guys can’t get to it for a year”), but the IT department is not at risk of withering away (though it could — and probably should — be outsourced); more likely, it will simply survive as a corporate bottleneck, allowing opportunity to pass by the company. Other resources, however, can and do decline from overuse. At the top of this list is the customer database, the green pasture of business opportunity.

At the lowest level, the customer database is simply a list of people who have bought things from you. A company then logically says that if I sold something to Henry before, I may be able to sell him something again. Thus, if Henry purchases a router at Best Buy, he may find emails every single day in his inbox, urging him to buy something else. I use Best Buy as an example advisedly, as my purchase of a Sonos audio system unleashed a torrent of emails. Best Buy is in the company of other organizations that “mine” their customer lists with annoying frequency. Some of my personal antagonists include Orvis, L. L. Bean, Rochester clothing, Brooks Brothers (why oh why did I buy those socks?), United Airlines (grrr), and, of course, Verizon and Verizon Wireless, the twin demons of the abuse of the captured customer. In the world of the Kitchen reader, we could nominate a few entities, but I will forebear. I will be interested in seeing readers’ lists of nasty direct marketers in the comments section of this blog post. Watch your language, please! There are children listening.

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