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> Tragedy of the commons.

No, because there is no such thing, at least not as understood by Garrett Hardin, who put forward the phrase.

Commons fail when selfish, greedy people subvert or destroy the governance structures that help control them. If those governance structures exist (and they do for all historical commons) and continue to exist, the commons suffers no tragedy.

This recent slide deck talks about Ostrom's ideas on this, which even Hardin eventually conceded were correct, and that his diagnosis of a "tragedy of the commons" does not actually describe the historical processes by which commons are abused.

https://dougwebb.site/slides/commons

That said ... arguably there is a problem here with a "commons" that does in fact lack any real governance structure.



No idea why this is getting downvoted; this is a very important correction since the “tragedy of the commons” meme is based on a flawed premise that needs to be amended.




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