The Lorax and Property Rights

Reinterpreting The Lorax in terms of the Tragedy of the Commons.

Although The Lorax is often seen as a tale of capitalist greed run amok, it could just as easily be interpreted as exhibiting the inherent flaws of common property resources, flaws that can sometimes be alleviated through privatization:

Viewing the tale of the Lorax through an institutional lens, ruin is not the result of corporate greed, but a lack of institutions. The truffula trees grow in an unowned commons. (The Lorax may speak for the trees, but he does not own them.) The Once-ler has no incentive to conserve the truffula trees for, as he notes to himself, if he doesn't cut them down someone else will. He's responding to the incentives created by a lack of property rights in the trees, and the inevitable tragedy results. Had the Once-ler owned the trees, his incentives would have been quite different — and he would likely have acted accordingly — even if he remained dismissive of the Lorax's environmental concerns.