Tragedy of the Commons $1.69 AUD
Category: Ideas & Concepts
The Tragedy of the Commons is a situation in which a jointly-owned resource is overused or destroyed because each person takes more than they would if the resource was privately owned. With each individual acting independently, the combined pressure on the resource exceeds what is in the interests of the community as a whole. The term was coined in 1967 by Garrett Hardin, a biologist from the University of California, in a famous article in the journal Science.
According to Hardin, there are some kinds of problems which society cannot resolve through technology, but which instead require a wholesale change in morality and behaviour – what we might now call a cultural shift. Hardin used the example of global population growth, which he felt would eventually threaten our ability to survive as a species by placing too much pressure on the environment. Regardless of how advanced our technologies become, unrestrained population growth will ultimately result in widespread shortages of basic economic resources like land and water. Hardin’s insight has since been applied to many kinds of environmental problems, including over-fishing, over-irrigation and pollution.
