(Ekonomi) The Tragedy of the Commons is a type of social trap, often economic, that involves a conflict over resources between individual interests and the common good. The "Tragedy of the Commons" is a structural relationship between free access to, and unrestricted demand for a finite resource. The term derives originally from a comparison noticed by William Forster Lloyd with medieval village land holding in his 1833 book on population. It was then popularized and extended by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons." However, the theory itself is as old as Thucydides and Aristotle, the latter of whom said "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."
Garett Hardin's famous essay (first described by William Forster Lloyd) explaining how a pasture managed as a "commons" will be overgrazed because the costs are shared by all, while most benefits are collected by the greedy
(chapter 5) A term coined by Garrett Hardin for excessive appropriation from a common-pool resource that occurs because (1) each user imposes appropriation externalities on the others, and (2) governance structures that might limit appropriation to sustainable levels are inadequate or lacking See the "rent dissipation" entry
Thought experiment in which demonstrates that any ethics is mistaken if it allows a growing population to steadily increase its exploitation of the ecosystem which supports it An Abstract of "A General Statement of Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons"
An inexorable process of degradation of communal resources due to selfish self-interest of "free riders" who use or destroy more than their fair share of common property See open access system