The idea of a tragedy of the commons is deeply rooted. It suggests that any communal resource will ultimately be depleted by the selfish actions of individuals. Common pasture is inevitably overgrazed.<\/p>\n
The theory was encapsulted in a 1968 article by Garrett Hardin. But the logic and facts behind it turn out to be questionable – well articulated in\u00a0Tim Harford’s article,\u00a0Do You Believe in Sharing?<\/a>\u00a0:<\/p>\n “The problem with Hardin\u2019s logic was the very first step: the assumption that communally owned land was a free-for-all. It wasn\u2019t. The commons were owned by a community. They were managed by a community. These people were neighbours. They lived next door to each other. In many cases, they set their own rules and policed those rules.”<\/em><\/p>\n Harford describes the work of political scientist, Lin Ostrom, who found many examples of communities where rules evolved to manage shared resources. The systems that evolve are not simple, but are “polycentric”:<\/p>\n “Polycentric systems have multiple, independent and overlapping sources of power and authority…\u00a0By their very nature, they are messy to describe and hard to compare with each other. Unfortunately for any tidy-minded social scientist, they are also everywhere.”<\/em><\/p>\n