[throw0101a]

People may want to look at the "Criticism" section of that article, as the commons wasn't as big of a tragedy as people think it was when Garrett Hardin popularized the notion:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Critici...

Garrett Hardin was a (neo)Malthusian:

>Hardin blamed the welfare state for allowing the tragedy of the commons; where the state provides for children and supports over-breeding as a fundamental human right, Malthusian catastrophe is inevitable. Hardin stated in his analysis of the tragedy of the commons that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."[1]:1244 Environmental historians Joachim Radkau, Alfred Thomas Grove and Oliver Rackham criticized Hardin "as an American with no notion at all how Commons actually work".[8]

>In addition, Hardin's pessimistic outlook was subsequently contradicted by Elinor Ostrom's later work on success of co-operative structures like the management of common land,[9] for which she shared the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver E. Williamson. In contrast to Hardin, they stated neither commons or "Allmende" in the generic nor classical meaning are bound to fail; to the contrary "the wealth of the commons" has gained renewed interest in the scientific community.[10] Hardin's work was also criticized[11] as historically inaccurate in failing to account for the demographic transition, and for failing to distinguish between common property and open access resources.[12][13]

>Despite the criticisms, the theory has nonetheless been influential.[14]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Hardin

[_Microft]

The meaning of commons is here as described in the last sentence of the first paragraph:

In this modern economic context, commons is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, roads and highways, or even an office refrigerator.

...or WiFi spectrum.

[kstenerud]

Hardin was concerned primarily with overpopulation and the welfare state. His intention was to demonstrate that the welfare state contributes to overpopulation, which will doom us all. The more general concept of "tragedy of the commons" outgrew his incorrect assumption, and so his original theory and its criticisms are of little consequence outside of a historical curiosity.