Communities can manage a shared resource well without owners or regulators

Garrett Hardin argued shared resources are doomed to be overused. Elinor Ostrom studied real fisheries, forests and irrigation systems and found communities often govern commons sustainably on their own, using local rules, monitoring and graduated sanctions — no privatization or top-down control required. It won her the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics awarded to a woman.

— Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action — Cambridge University Press, 1990
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