My daughter Shannon first introduced me to the term “tragedy of the commons” after she heard it in an undergrad economics course. I may have missed the concept myself in college but I didn’t miss its relevance to the major challenges that confront us today. From oil spills to loose nukes to global warming, there are some problems so big that they transcend borders, so seemingly intractable that they invite paralysis. They’re everybody’s problem, so they wind up being nobody’s problem.

Humankind’s next great evolutionary challenge, it seems to me, is to recognize and put in place rational responses to avoid such “tragedy of the commons” before the tragedy part is a foregone conclusion.

This challenge goes straight to the heart of our free enterprise/free market economy. We can debate endlessly about just how free our free market system actually is, but it’s fair to say that in recent years, some corporations have freely pursued short-term profits with little to no regard for the long-term public interest. For them, rules and regulations of any kind represent annoying bureaucratic speedbumps, to openly mocked and scorned. In hindsight, it would seem that BP, Goldman Sachs, and the like may have run a little too “free.” [...]