Taking and building

The cooperative move in a collective action problem is either restraint or contribution.

• Taking: cooperating means holding back: not overfishing, not emitting, not arming. Defecting imposes a cost on others.
• Building: cooperating means putting something in: work, money, code, turning up. Defecting withholds a benefit.

Defined by restraint versus contribution, the axis also covers cases that aren't commons in the narrow sense. Arms races are taking problems: each side's arming harms the other.

Ostrom's version

The axis is a simplification of Ostrom's split, within common-pool resources, between appropriators who withdraw resource units and the providers and producers who arrange for, build and maintain the resource system (Governing the Commons, 1990, pp. 30–31).

Appropriation problems are concerned with the allocation of the flow; provision problems are concerned with the stock.

— Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990), p. 47

Both kinds are present in every common-pool resource, and the taking side comes first: unless appropriation problems are resolved, provision problems "may prove intractable" (p. 49). In a pure public good there are no appropriation problems, because resource units are not subtractable (p. 49). Ostrom's provision problems also include a demand-side part, regulating withdrawal so the stock survives (p. 49), which is really taking. So "taking and building" simplifies her distinction rather than quoting it.

What it does and doesn't change

• Not the equilibria. In a simple linear game the matrix for taking and building is the same. The axis is about the good.
• The remedies. Taking needs limits on withdrawal, boundaries and monitoring (Törbel's wintering rule; the Alanya rotation). Building needs Selective incentives, assurance, patrons and credit (priority in the Philosophical Transactions; Assurance contracts).
• Aggregation. Building goods often have thresholds or a best-shot technology, which pushes them towards the Stag hunt and Volunteer's dilemma (Aggregation technologies).

All three greed/fear patterns occur on both sides. Taking-side chicken cases include the Alanya fishing sites, which Ostrom says "cannot be represented as a PD game" (p. 47), and Taylor's fishery that tolerates two boats but collapses with three (The Possibility of Cooperation, 1987, pp. 43–44).

Information commons

Mostly building: knowledge is relatively non-subtractive (Hess and Ostrom, Understanding Knowledge as a Commons, 2007, pp. 5, 9), though enclosure can turn it into a common-pool resource (p. 10). They have a taking side too. Hess and Ostrom list commodification or enclosure, pollution and degradation, and nonsustainability as typical threats, with congestion and free riding on the web (pp. 4–5).

Kollock (1998) splits n-person dilemmas into public goods and commons dilemmas, which is close to building and taking; whether he uses a give-versus-take axis beyond that is unchecked [?].

See Patterns of collective action.