Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) has been incredibly influential generally and within economics, and it remains important despite some historical and conceptual flaws. Hardin focused on the stress population growth inevitably placed on environmental resources. Unconstrained consumption of a shared resource—a pasture, a highway, a server—by individuals acting in rational pursuit of their self-interest can lead to congestion and, worse, rapid depreciation, depletion, and even destruction of the resources. Our societies face similar problems, with respect to not only environmental resources but also infrastructures, knowledge, and many other shared resources. In this article, we examine how the tragedy of the commons has fared within the economics literature and its relevance for economic and public policies today. We revisit the original piece to explain Hardin's purpose and conceptual approach. We expose two conceptual mistakes he made: conflating resource with governance and conflating open access with commons. This critical discussion leads us to the work of Elinor Ostrom, the recent Nobel Prize in Economics laureate, who spent her life working on commons. Finally, we discuss a few modern examples of commons governance of shared resources.

中文翻译：

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回顾：50年后的公地悲剧

加勒特·哈丁（Garrett Hardin）的《公地悲剧》（1968年）在整个经济学领域都具有不可思议的影响力，尽管存在一些历史和概念上的缺陷，但它仍然很重要。哈丁将注意力集中在不可避免地依靠环境资源的人口压力增长上。理性地追求自身利益的个人无限制地消耗共享资源（牧场，高速公路，服务器）会导致拥塞，甚至导致资源快速贬值，消耗，甚至破坏。我们的社会不仅在环境资源方面而且在基础设施，知识和许多其他共享资源方面都面临类似的问题。在本文中，我们研究了经济学文献中公地的悲剧如何发生及其与当今经济和公共政策的相关性。我们重新审视原始作品，以解释哈丁的目的和概念方法。我们揭露了他犯的两个概念性错误：将资源与治理结合在一起，以及将开放访问与公地结合起来。这次重要的讨论使我们想到了最近获得诺贝尔经济学奖的埃里诺·奥斯特罗姆（Elinor Ostrom）的工作，她一生都在为公地工作。最后，我们讨论共享资源公共治理的一些现代示例。