Krzyzewskiville!
The secret history, the untold story, the dope tale....
My new column at AIER, on Kville.
In January of 2026, just like every January since 1986, a basketball Brigadoon will rise on Duke’s campus. This village, locally known as “Krzyzewskiville,” exists for just a few short weeks every year, and then disappears. But while it lives, it is a beehive of activity, with surprisingly specific and aggressively enforced rules. K-Ville is not just a place, but a student-organized system of governance with its own rules, enforcement, and dispute resolution mechanisms. Elinor Ostrom herself couldn’t have come up with a better example of an emergent institution to create and enforce property rights to a common pool resource.
Fond memories of a year at Duke!
A competence test followed by a lottery (and a ban on post-allocation trade) would balance desert and transparency, without the massive commitment that is Krzyzewskiville. It would be more efficient, but less ritualistic. (I am assuming that the knowledge test is a reliable indicator of being a keen fan.)
I imagine that K-ville is more a process benefit than a costly signal of commitment. Or a process benefit camouflaged as a costly signal. But the requisite commitment probably deters even some keen fans from seeking tickets.
I graduated in '82; lining up in the morning for a 1PM Carolina game was a big deal :-) The current system is very cool and thanks for documenting and annotating it so diligently. I guess this isn't too unexpected as emergent from a group of people selected for high intelligence of one form or another. Kind of like Coase meets Hayek meets Stanford prison experiment.