Tragedy of the Commons

The article "Tragedy of the Commons" explains Hardin's theory that a misguided or mistaken use of the human ethics is catastrophic and will result in what he called "Tragedy of the Commons". In this article, Hardin explains that "commons" are resources shared by the society as a whole with access to that "commons" without restrictions. Those are resources with maximum capacity and limit to support its usage. In his example on the herdsman, Hardin demonstrated the irrational behavior and unethical thinking of an individual for his own advantage to increase his demands on the commons. The result of this absurdity in behavior and unethical thinking maximized the capacity and consumption limit of that "commons" thus everyone who have access to that "commons" equally shared the harmful affect the "Tragedy to the Commons". In the article "Tragedy of the Commons", Hardin, claims that "human problems" have classes and cannot be resolved through science and technology, instead it will just generate another problem.

In this article Hardin relates the theory of the "Tragedy of the Commons" to other parts of the environment such as the national parks and pollution. National Parks are open for everyone without limitation such as the "Yosemite Valley". As population grew, the park gets crowded and the enjoyment the visitors previously experienced started to degrade thus devalue the importance and significance of the park itself. Hardin had mentioned several options to treat the park as commons to bring back its value and significance to the people as their national park. To mention one was to keep it public property but allocate the right to enter them which obviously will cause conflict to those taxpayers accessing the park and contributed to its construction. The options Hardin had mentioned needs to be given attention to maintain and protect the National Park from exploitation.

According to Hardin pollution was another aspect of the "Tragedy of the Commons". Pollution