Tragedy of the Commons

Whether you have kids or not, at some point you've probably encountered the absurdity that is school drop-off. Every day, cars line up--in some cases for blocks--to drop off children in the morning, and do it all again to pick them up in the afternoon. For me, there is no better demonstration of the inefficiencies inherent in the private auto commute.

There was a time when school buses were a given, but cash-strapped school districts cut them from their budgets, and left students and their parents to fend for themselves.

Of course, a responsive, functional political economy would prevent such short-sighted policy, wherein our representatives choose to burden the entire population for the illusion of fiscal responsibility.

But can we really blame them? Aren't private companies whose only commute program is providing free parking essentially doing the same thing? Sure, the employees are adults, so they can drive and park themselves, and flexible schedules obscure some of the bottlenecks--unless you count rush hour itself. The commute isn't on the company's books, so we're all good, right?

So what if we, as a society, are choosing car storage over, say, housing?