"The Tragedy of the Commons" is a term used to describe what happens to common resources as a result of

human greed. It was first coined in an article in Science in 1968 by Garrett Hardin. The commons dilemma was seen
long before Hardin, but he brought widespread attention to it and described it in a common-sense fashion that
made it easily accessible.

At its core, the Tragedy of the Commons demonstrates that in an situation where the consequences of a course of
action are shared among a collective, while the benefits are reaped by an individual or single group within the
collective, people will tend to take actions that in the long term are detrimental to the group as a whole. The
Tragedy of the Commons is a tragedy because in seeking their own personal gain, the members of the group
actually ultimately hurt themselves.

The example Hardin uses to illustrate the Tragedy of the Commons is of a group of ranchers and a shared land
area. Each farmer is assumed to be keeping their own cattle on the land, from which they yield a personal profit,
but the land is assumed to be collective shared, or leased from a government. Each additional head of cattle has a
cost and a gain associated with it: the cost is in land use and wears on the land, while the gain has to do with the
profit that can be reaped from that cattle. The trick is, when a rancher adds a cow to his herd, he gains all the
benefit of the extra cow, while sharing only a small portion of the cost in terms of land use.

It is therefore rational, in a strict short-sighted view, for a rancher to try to increase his herd as much as he can.
And in fact, that view could work out quite well if only one rancher were to take it. But since it is a rational course
of action, we can assume all of the ranchers will pursue it, at which point the land will be degraded such that no
cattle can use it, and all will lose. This is the Tragedy of the Commons, the loss of common space through individual
pursuit of a rational course of action. Since actions are not taken in a vacuum, what seems like a smart strategy is
in fact wrong-headed.

The Tragedy of the Commons can be applied to any sort of common resource, and has been used to describe a
number of different situations. Fisheries are one of the most obvious victims of the Tragedy of the Commons,
where a single fisherman might be able to fish as much as they wished without reaching the limit of a seemingly
infinite resource. With tens of thousands of fishermen all pursuing the same strategy, however, the fisheries
become depleted and there are no fish for anyone, another example of the Tragedy of the Commons.

The Tragedy of the Commons can also be used when describing national parks, river use, air quality, oil, forests,
and even things such as radio frequencies. The Tragedy of the Commons is an important theory for designing
resource usage plans, as its fundamental assumption about how rational humans can act in a way to bring about
destruction of their resource gives a reason to set artificial limitations on usage through governmental policy.

The tragedy of the commons definitions relates to the article written by Garret Hardin called Tragedy of the
Commons. In the tragedy of the commons essay he argues that people will exploit public land for their own misuse
or greed. He states that the definition of tragedy of the commons is that people will become selfish due to their
own greed or carelessness and either the government has to take over the use of the public land or the land has to
be purchased by a private owner. He feels that only when one has a stake in this land will they take proper care of
it.

For example, many fishermen disrupt ecosystems in order to catch fish and generate sales. The body of water that
the fisherman fishes off of is considered public waters however; it is this type of destruction that Garret Hardin
refers to when he discusses the tragedy of the commons fisheries