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The “tragedy of the commons” disproven yet again

By Ben Brangwyn 2nd February 2011

At school, the history class that covered the “Tragedy of the Commons” didn’t ring quite true. My subsequent reading as an adult showed that as a theory it doesn’t hold water unless you’re working on the assumption that all the “rational economic beings” operate for purely selfish motivations.

I’ve just seen an excellent article on Energy Bulletin on the subject, focusing on fisheries. Definitely worth reading and shows how common stewardship looks like being a firm step in the right direction.

Incidentally, I’ve only just figured out why that history lesson didn’t ring true. In the rather cutthroat environment that typified my school, the “commons” (ie the playground) would have theoretically been a chaotic maelstrom of multiple football games. However, it wasn’t “overplayed”. Instead, without lines, without written rules and without police, our playground was demarcated into about six evenly sized football match areas, and we all shared that resource with a level of maturity that our history teacher could not extrapolate into a challenge to the textbook analysis that justified the enclosures.

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