Although similar ideas may go right the way back to Aristotle, it was only relatively recently that Garrett Hardin published in Science his famous and much-discussed essay, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. It’s had a profound impact since - possibly because of the snappy title.
Science magazine has a special issue online that republishes the original essay and responses from a suprisingly wide range of academic subjects.
Hardin has been misrepresented - or the idea has been misrepresented - by the more swivel-eyed evangelicals and the point he was making about the ‘tragedy’ applied to an unregulated commons. Still, since I came across it, it’s made me more amenable to arguments about, say, road tolls.
