Table of Contents

• Dedication to Garrett Hardin
• Tragedy of the Commons
• 1: Cows in the commons
• 2: Fishing the oceans dry
• 3: Littering and dumping
• What is a tragedy of the commons?
• 4: The "common" part
• 5: Portrait of a tragedy
• 6: The tragedy in action
• 7: Why bad things happen to good people
• Solving the Commons Problem
• 8: Types of solutions
• 9: Call to conscience
• 10: Why guilt (conscience) is bad policy
• 11: Coercion
• 12: Privatization
• 13: Private elephants
• Climate and commons
• 14: Climate and commons
• 15: Solving the climate commons
• 16: Cap and trade
• 17: Carbon tax
• 18: Review

The "common" part

The most important feature that all of these situations share is common ownership -- that is, some important resource is owned by a community, or a country, or indeed by the entire population of the world. Sometimes thinking about "ownership" is a little odd -- for example, we don't normally think of the ocean being owned by anyone in particular. So it may be more understandable to say a right to common use.

	In a commons situation, who has the right to use the grazing land?
	or the right to use the fish in the ocean?
	or the right to use unpolluted water?

 

On the other hand, many things in our daily life are NOT commons:

	McDonald's -- like most other companies out there -- charge you for their products
	That includes gasoline -- we may or may not be running out of it, and it certainly does cause a lot of environmental damage, but the gasoline itself is not free, you gotta pay at the pump.