[anon_e-moose]

That short-term individual success is at the expense of the wider long-term success.

If 10 people live in a lake and I fish more than everyone I will be better off that others. But then everyone else will seek the same individual short-term success because my first step in being an asshole was not punished. We will all end up starving in this scenario. A central authority agreed by all to manage this situation fairly is the way out. Rules agreed to in common beforehand and enforced by a neutral party.

[voidfunc]

You're missing the key next step where after you get yours you start figuring out ways to deny others from getting theirs either through bullying, state-supported violence or legal means :)

[thwarted]

Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.

[ninetyninenine]

It's only a tragedy if everyone acts the same way. If a few act against the grain then it's no longer a tragedy.

The common thief is an example. Also pirating games and movies is another example.

[ToucanLoucan]

Tragedy of the Commons is bullshit. Just one pessimistic, selfish asshole penning out a manifesto on how everyone is just as miserable and awful as he is. It assumes that individuals, left to their own devices, will inevitably over-consume shared resources out of selfishness. But this narrative ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary: communities around the world have sustainably managed commons through norms, trust, and mutual accountability.

And he wasn't just wrong for the hell of it. He used it to argue against immigration and for coercive population control, not to promote environmental stewardship. His model erases the role of governance, culture, and cooperation, reducing human behavior to a simplistic race to depletion.

In reality, the commons don’t fail because they’re shared. They fail when they’re mismanaged, privatized, or stripped of the social fabric that sustains them.

I would go so far to say that the only way this concept has ever come close to being "correct" is the culturally inert modern Western world which has replaced everyone's souls with aimless desires for products and cheap dopamine hits, far from anything approaching our natural state.

[komali2]

History bears out the truth of what you say. Native Americans managed the commons in communal ownership so well that some of their permaculture existed through to today, untended.

[llbbdd]

They have demonstrably not - they have generally failed until introducing capitalism-eseque cooperation. "They fail when they're mismanaged, privatized, or stripped of the social fabric that sustains them" - yes, these are obvious natural consequences of scale.

[komali2]

Not really. It didn't happen in syndicalized Spain. It didn't happen for millennia in ancient cities.

Scale being necessary seems to be unique to capitalism and state capitalism (Marxist industrialization requirements).

Maybe it was necessary before, I don't know but it's moot. We certainly have achieved post scarcity now and there should be no issues leveraging the tools our ancestors have given us to ensure it's distributed well.

[ToucanLoucan]

Yeah but that would make all the people who are rich because they own things very sad, so instead we're just gonna starve shitloads of people to death next to piles of food daily and call it rational.