Below the Tide Line, Nobody Is in Charge: Surfing as a Working Commons

The wave is one of the few valuable resources in California with no owner and no regulator, and the way surfers ration it is a lesson in order without law

The Surf Lineup as a Commons: Order Without Government

Walk down any California beach and you cross an invisible boundary. Above the mean high tide line, land may be private. Below it, the shore and the sea belong to the public. A guide to the state’s hard-to-reach surf spots makes the point in connection with one privately bordered coast: the surf breaks and beaches are still public property below the mean high tide level, so it is possible to surf there if you go by boat.

That rule, inherited from Roman and English law and written into the state’s constitution, means that the wave itself is owned by no one. It cannot be bought, fenced or licensed. And yet a good wave is scarce. Only one person can ride it at a time. On a crowded day, dozens want to.

Economists call a resource like this a commons. The textbook prediction for a commons is tragedy.

The Prediction

In the standard account, when a valuable resource is open to all and owned by none, each user takes as much as possible, since restraint only leaves more for others. The resource is overused and its value destroyed. The proposed remedies are two: privatise it, so that an owner has reason to manage it, or have the state regulate it.

Neither has happened to surf breaks. No one owns them. No agency assigns waves. By the theory, lineups should be chaos.

What Actually Happens

They are not, or not usually. Surfers everywhere follow a set of unwritten rules. The rider closest to the breaking part of the wave has priority. Do not drop in on someone already riding. Do not paddle around others to steal position. Take turns. A surf site’s guide to the subject describes these norms and their darker cousin in an explainer on what surf localism is, distinguishing ordinary etiquette and local knowledge from aggressive territorial behaviour.

These rules were not issued by any authority. They emerged from repeated interaction among people who shared a resource and had to get along. They are enforced by social pressure: a word, a look, a cold shoulder, and occasionally worse.

Ostrom in a Wetsuit

The economist Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel prize for showing that communities around the world manage common resources successfully without either private ownership or state control. Alpine pastures, irrigation systems and fisheries have been governed for centuries by local rules that users devised and policed themselves. She identified conditions under which this works: clear boundaries, rules matched to local conditions, monitoring by the users, graduated sanctions and ways of resolving disputes.

A surf break fits remarkably well. The boundary is the takeoff zone. The rules are known. Everyone can see who breaks them. Sanctions start mild. It is one of the most visible examples of self-governance in everyday American life.

Localism as Informal Property

Localism is the uncomfortable part. At some breaks, regulars claim priority over visitors, and outsiders are made unwelcome. In economic terms this is an informal property right asserted by a group over a commons. It limits crowding and gives those who invest in a place, by learning its moods and cleaning its beach, a return on that investment.

It is also, at its worst, exclusion backed by intimidation, sometimes by vandalism or violence, on a shore that legally belongs to everyone. A few California breaks have been the subject of lawsuits and police attention for exactly that. A system of order that depends on threats is not one a defender of individual liberty can endorse.

The Line Between Them

The distinction worth holding is between norms that coordinate and norms that exclude. “Wait your turn” is a rule that applies equally to everyone and makes the resource more valuable to all. “This is our wave, go home” is a claim to ownership that the law does not recognise and that the claimants have not paid for. The first is voluntary order. The second is a private taking of public property.

Why Regulation Would Be Worse

Imagine the alternative. A permit system for surf breaks, with timed slots, wristbands and a state employee on the sand. Some resorts abroad have restricted well-known waves to paying guests. The costs are obvious: administration, enforcement and the loss of the freedom to simply paddle out. Most surfers would regard it as the end of something essential.

The informal system, with all its faults, costs the taxpayer nothing and adapts hour by hour to conditions no bureaucracy could track.

The Pressure of Numbers

Informal rules strain as crowds grow. More people have taken up surfing, soft boards have lowered the barrier, and forecasting apps send everyone to the same spot on the same morning. Newcomers may not know the norms. When too many users arrive who have not absorbed the rules, self-governance weakens. That is consistent with Ostrom’s findings: commons work best when the community of users is stable enough to teach and enforce its customs.

The response from within the culture has been education. Shops, schools and websites teach etiquette. That is the system repairing itself.

A Lesson Beyond the Beach

The lineup is a small rebuttal to the assumption that every shared resource needs an owner or a regulator. People are capable of working out fair rules among themselves and holding each other to them. It does not always work, and when it turns to coercion the law has a role. But on most mornings, at most breaks, a few dozen strangers share a scarce and valuable thing peacefully, with nobody in charge.

From Another Shore

The British have their own unwritten codes about turn-taking. The London Prat examines them in its British satirical news on the foreshore and London satirical news about queue etiquette. Bohiney Magazine covers the American beach.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/