The Tragedy of the Commons
Every herder gains by putting one more animal on the shared field. The field is destroyed by people behaving reasonably.
196815 min read
American ecology and human ecology
Garrett Hardin
1915 – 2003
Professor of human ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" became one of the most cited papers ever published in the journal. Hardin's stated purpose was to argue for coercive limits on population growth, and his later writing - including "Lifeboat Ethics" (1974) and work with anti-immigration organisations he helped found - is widely described by scholars as nativist and racist.