Just a brief post to link to an important essay I came across a few years ago, Ian Angus’ refutation of Garrett Hardin’s popular text ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (1968) – Debunking the `Tragedy of the Commons’ (2008). The idea of the tragedy of the commons (that shared resources will always be depleted) has become a figure of speech, an idea that is apparently self-evidently true; in common with other popular ideas such as ‘zero tolerance’ or ‘broken-window’ theory in urban design and policing, it needs challenging.

(Sidenote: while looking for Angus’ text again I found this reference to Elinor Ostrom, who received the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2009, and whose work also apparently goes some way towards debunking the ‘tragedy’… http://dbzer0.com/blog/can-we-finally-bury-the-tragedy-of-the-commons-myth)