Tragedy of the Commons

I am reading a book "Here comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky. A great book that explores one of the fascinating trends of our times - technology enabling human beings to connect,create and collaborate thereby shattering current models/ways of doing things.


I want to talk about one interesting point highlighted in this book. - Tragedy of Commons. It is a phrase to describe situations when the individuals have an incentive to damage the common good. It is very thought provoking and has implications in everything we do. Let me paraphrase Clay Shirky's comments on this concept. A pasture is jointly owned by a group of shepherds. They let the sheep graze on this pasture. It is in every one's interest to keep the pasture healthy and not to let the sheep overgraze. As long as no one is greedy everyone benefits. Here is the problem though - the individual shepherd's incentive is to minimise the cost of feeding the sheep while raising a fattest possible sheep. If one shepherd lets the sheep graze for one hour longer he benefits but the others will be subsidising his costs and not sharing his gains. One of the most popular responses in these situations is to retaliate by letting their sheep graze longer thereby damaging the pasture (the common good). Clay Shirky goes on to discuss how we go about resolving this issue.



As i read this several situations came to my mind. Organisations and shared resources, apartment/community living, joint/umbrella families ......

It is interesting to explore how we manage this conflict in various situations. I am now researching this conflict and solutions. Will write about when i come up with more news on this and happy to hear from anyone who reads this post as well.