The Free Rider

In practice

Start with ethical egoism. The watering profits him; if it stays hidden, the wickedness objection's point lands — the theory does not merely allow the lawn, the theory prescribes it. But press the arbitrariness objection: his exemption from the rationing needs a relevant difference between his household and every parched neighbor's, and "it is mine" names an owner, not a difference. Special pleading, by its Unit 1 name. Now switch to the contract lens. The drought is a many-person prisoner's dilemma: each household gains by watering whatever the others do, and if all reason that way the reservoir dies. The conservation rule is exactly the kind rational people accept on condition others accept it too — and he accepts it in the only sense that pays, taking the town's saved water while dodging his share of the saving. That is the free ride, and the free ride is the wrong: not the greenness of the grass but the exemption from a bargain he still collects on. Enforcement talk comes last and changes least — a fine would realign his payoffs, but the verdict arrived before any meter reader did. Three tools, one verdict, and the same shape each time: a rule for everyone, bent for one. The town never needed a new theory — only the nerve to apply the ones it already had.