Tragedy of the commons
= Tragedy of the commons
{wiki=Tragedy_of_the_commons}
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is an economic concept and social theory that describes a situation in which individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, deplete or degrade a shared resource (the "commons") despite knowing that this depletion is contrary to the collective long-term interest of the group. The term was popularized by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in his 1968 essay.