When the incentive is global and the accountability is national, the commons loses every time.
**Climate.** Every nation is rewarded for growth measured in GDP and punished for unilateral abatement. The atmosphere is the shared metric no one is paid to defend. The Paris architecture is an attempt to re-price that downside; it is still under-funded relative to the upside of cheating.
**Capture across borders.** Pharma, finance, and platforms route through whichever jurisdiction prices their behavior cheapest. Regulators compete to be lenient because lenience attracts headquarters. The race to the bottom is not a metaphor — it is a working incentive.
**Geopolitics and the commons.** Fisheries, antibiotics, orbital space, undersea cables, model weights. Each is a shared resource governed by national reward structures. Each is being depleted on schedule. The civilizational question is whether we can design a reward layer that outranks the national one before the commons collapses.
At civilizational scale, the redesign is governance. Price the commons. Reward the steward.