[Reading the Classics] Tragedy of the Commons

While I knew the general ideas in Hardin's 1968 paper, I'd never actually read the original until just now. That's okay in science, where ideas take life beyond their original proposals... but still, it can be interesting to go back and read the sources. Biologists still get a bunch of ideas from Darwin's books, or find ideas prefigured there, because he was that smart *and* thorough a biologist; The Wealth of Nations is often not what you expect if you read it, as socialists like Brust and Chomsky have pointed out.

I invite others to read the essay, and post their reactions, ideally without seeing what others have said first. You can ignore Beryl Crowe's comments in the link, beneath the endnotes.

( My reactions )

( Outline of the paper )

Side note: he mentions "Charles Galton Darwin", so I looked him up; Wikipedia tells me Darwin's granddaughter married Keynes's brother. Uniting the great families! Huh, Francis Galton was half-cousin to Charles (Robert) Darwin.