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 overgrazing. Scaled up, the same logic explains overfishing, deforestation and carbon emissions: individually rational choices add up to collective ruin.

— Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons — Science, 1968