The first public good
Build the thing everyone needs and nobody owns — and settle who pays for it.
Also listed under Water & Sanitation › Find and store water, Settlements & Planning › Settlement and planning, because that subject depends on it.
Everything for this step
- Field guide
- Wild water and wells → 8 sections Institutions: what to found, and how to run them → 32 sections
- Builds
- None yet.
- Reference sheets
- 1 sheet on this page ↓ · 1 sheet in Wild water and wells
- Sciences it rests on
- Engineering
- Track
- Public works and administration, level 1 of 6 · next: Count before you administer
Why this matters
A well, a drain, a bridge, a boundary wall, a granary roof. Each benefits everyone and is worth more than any single household will fund. This is the first genuinely political problem a settlement faces, and it arrives early — usually at the water supply. Solve it badly and you get the pattern that recurs for the rest of the site: infrastructure that exists but decays, because building it was somebody's project and maintaining it is nobody's. The maintenance rule matters more than the construction rule. Most abandoned public works in the record were not destroyed; they were simply never anyone's job.
The shape of it
- Decide how the decision is made before proposing the work. Deciding how you decide is the prerequisite; a formal procedure for motions and amendments prevents the loudest voice from being the deciding one.
- State the contribution as a rule, not a request — labour-days per household, or a share of produce. A voluntary contribution funds the first well and no second one.
- Name the maintainer and the inspection interval in the same decision that authorises the build. Not afterwards. This single habit is the difference between infrastructure and ruins.
- Write down who may use it and on what terms. An unrestricted common resource with real scarcity gets over-used; a resource with clear, enforced use rules does not — this is the empirically well-documented case, not the tragedy of the commons as usually told.
- Keep an account of contributions and expenditure that any contributor may inspect. This is where the tally starts doing public work.
- Start with the water supply. It is the highest-return public good in every settlement ever studied, and it forces the group to solve the contribution problem while the stakes are still legible.
Doing it, step by step
The summary above says what has to happen. This says how, with the numbers that decide whether it works.
1 · Put the proposal to the group with its full cost
Decide how the decision is made before proposing the work — see deciding how you decide. Then bring a written or recited proposal:
- What is to be built, and what problem it solves.
- The work broken into tasks, each estimated in labour-days and materials.
- A contingency of about half again on top of the estimate — first projects routinely overrun, and an honest margin prevents the half-finished work that nobody will fund a second time.
- The annual maintenance it will need, in labour-days.
2 · State the contribution as a rule, not a request
A voluntary contribution funds the first well and no second one. Fix the rule in the same decision that approves the work:
- Labour-days per household, or a share of produce, scaled to capacity or benefit — stated openly.
- What may substitute — goods or another person's labour — and at what rate.
- What happens to a household that does not contribute — graduated, from a reminder, to a charge, to reduced use of the finished work.
3 · Name the maintainer and the inspection date in the same decision
The maintenance rule matters more than the construction rule. Most abandoned public works in the record were not destroyed; they were simply never anyone's job.
The decision that authorises the build also names: the person responsible for maintaining it, their deputy, the inspection interval — at least yearly, and after every storm or flood for water works — and the maintenance labour each household owes each year. Not afterwards.
4 · Write down who may use it and on what terms
An unrestricted common resource with real scarcity gets over-used; a resource with clear, enforced use rules does not. Elinor Ostrom's work on long-lived commons found the same features again and again:
- Clear boundaries — who is entitled and who is not.
- Rules fitted to local conditions, made by the users.
- Monitoring by people accountable to the users.
- Graduated sanctions — small for a first breach, rising with repetition.
- Cheap, quick dispute resolution.
Write the use rules: who, how much, when, and in what order during shortage.
5 · Keep accounts any contributor may inspect
Record every contribution — labour-days, materials, goods — and every expenditure, in the settlement's record — see the debt record. Any contributor may inspect it at any time, and it is read aloud to the group at a fixed interval.
Accounts nobody may inspect end contribution faster than the cost does. The first public work is where the tally starts doing public work.
6 · Start with the water supply
The water supply is the highest-return public good in every settlement ever studied, and it forces the group to solve the contribution problem while the stakes are still legible.
Protect the source — see finding and holding water — then build the well head, spring box or intake and its drainage, with the platform and drain that keep surface filth out. See the wells guide.
7 · Inspect it on schedule, and record the result
On the inspection date, the maintainer and one other person inspect the work, record its condition and what needs doing, and schedule the repairs against the maintenance contributions.
The test comes a year after completion: the work still functions, and you can name the person responsible for it and the date it was last inspected.
Reference sheets
One drawn sheet covering the whole subject at once — the breadth a photograph cannot give, bought at the cost of accuracy. Read them for range and vocabulary, never as the thing you identify from.