The ethics of care and the tragedy of the commons

In this paper, we argue that the ethics of care can offer solutions to diverse tragedies of the commons. Building on Hayek’s (Law, legislation and liberty, Abingdon, Routledge, 1982) theory on the emergence of rules and norms, we outline the spheres of application of the ethics of care and the ethics of justice and outline how the two interact. We apply our analysis of the interaction of the ethics of care and the ethics of justice to the problem of the tragedy of the commons. The morality of care allows people to establish rules in small groups and to ensure the compliance with theoretically defined rules in the Great Society, thus potentially avoiding any tragedy of the commons in either realm. We illustrate our argument with two examples of the tragedy of the commons: fractional-reserve banking and environmental tragedies.