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Garrett Hardin: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Garrett Hardin, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Shared resources get destroyed by individually rational choices

  Garrett Hardin described a shared pasture where every herder benefits from adding one more cow, even though the pasture collapses if everyone does. Each individual decision is rati…

  — Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons

• Shared resources get overused precisely because no one owns them

  Ecologist Garrett Hardin described how herders sharing an open pasture each have an incentive to add one more animal, since they get the full benefit but share the cost of overgraz…

  — Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons

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