The tragedy of the unused commons

Hope for the good sense and guts to handle it

“The tragedy of the commons” as you may recall, refers in economics to the overexploitation of shared resources because of unregulated access. The tragedy results from shared resources being depleted or degraded because users pursue their own interests, contrary to the common good. This leads to unsustainable depletion or degradation. The atmosphere and oceans are examples of such shared resources.

There are also reverse situations, in which resources that are available for the benefit of society are unused, to the detriment of the common good. In such cases, there are opportunity costs from disuse that result in detriments, because the