The essay deals with a class of problems Hardin called "no technical solution problems". He claimed that the "population problem" is in that class, and he described the tragedy of the commons as a way of rebutting the notion that rational self-interest would address the "population problem".
The tragedy of the commons is a situation where people are incentivized to deplete a common resource, due to the costs of the overuse being dispersed among everyone, while the benefits are concentrated to particular individuals. Here's Hardin's description --
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/v1003/lectures/population/TragedyoftheCommons.pdf
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/v1003/lectures/population/TragedyoftheCommons.pdf
Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons
The rebuttal to the invisible hand in population control is to be found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known pamphlet (6) in 1833 by a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). We may well call it "the tragedy of the commons", using the word "tragedy" as the philosopher Whitehead used it (7): "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things." He then goes on to say, "This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama."
The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.
1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.
2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
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That people will overuse something when it is free, or does not cost them extra to do so, seems like a pretty common sense notion — it is just the Law of Demand again, in that demand for something tends to increase as the price falls. Even in the example Hardin uses, where harm is being caused in the long run, the behavior is still rational as he indicated, since individuals who refrain from behaving this way cannot change the outcome with their behavior, since they cannot control the population as a whole.
From dirty public restrooms, to over fishing, to excessive pollution in places like Iran and China, the world has numerous examples to demonstrate this behavior --
http://science.time.com/2013/10/18/the-10-most-polluted-cities-in-the-world/
http://www.ahwaziarabs.info/2013/03/ahwaz-confirmed-most-polluted-city-on.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/feb/25/air-pollution-in-china-in-pictures
Garret Hardin also wrote that the S&L crisis of the 1980's was an example of the tragedy of the commons --
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/TragedyoftheCommons.html
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The tragedy of the commons also arose in the savings and loan (S&L) crisis. The federal government created this tragedy by forming the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC). The FSLIC relieved S&L depositors of worry about their money by guaranteeing that it would use taxpayers’ money to repay them if an S&L went broke. In effect, the government made the taxpayers’ money into a commons that S&Ls and their depositors could exploit. S&Ls had the incentive to make overly risky investments, and depositors did not have to care because they did not bear the cost. This, combined with faltering federal surveillance of the S&Ls, led to widespread failures. The losses were “commonized” among the nation’s taxpayers, with serious consequences to the federal budget (see savings and loan crisis).
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This is also an example of moral hazard, where the parties taking a risk do not bear its ultimate cost. The original statement of the tragedy of the commons is somewhat different, in that it did not involve any sort of promise to protect against failure.
Again, we see the same effect that Hardin described in his original essay published back in 1968 — dispersed cost, and concentrated benefit — where the recipient of a benefit (the herdsman in Hardin's example) gets the full benefit of maximizing his consumption, while the costs are dispersed over others. That participants pay into government entitlement programs does not alter the situation — an individual's contributions are used to pay benefits to older participants, so there is still an incentive for everyone to minimize their contributions by opposing tax increases, while maximizing their benefit in any way possible.
Taxpayer money has always been a commons, regardless of any particular policy that increased the opportunities for exploitation.
But in the case of government spending, the effect Hardin described is even more pronounced, because the ultimate failure can be pushed to future generations, and the effects are not even visible to anyone other than a small minority of knowledgeable observers — government spending is a tragedy of the commons on steroids --
http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/us-federal-debt-by-president-political-party.jpg
http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/http:/truthfulpolitics.com/comments/us-fed-debt-by-president-party/
As an aside, you can find comments like these, claiming that Hardin simply started a myth with his original essay, because he supposedly did not present any evidence --
http://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/Misc/MythTragCommons.htm
http://archive.is/RiXLX
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Garrett Hardin hatches a myth
The author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" was Garrett Hardin, a University of California professor who until then was best known as the author of a biology textbook that argued for "control of breeding" of "genetically defective" people (Hardin 1966: 707). In his 1968 essay he argued that communities that share resources inevitably pave the way for their own destruction; instead of wealth for all, there is wealth for none.
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Where's the Evidence?
Given the subsequent influence of Hardin's essay, it's shocking to realize that he provided no evidence at all to support his sweeping conclusions. He claimed that the "tragedy" was inevitable -- but he didn't show that it had happened even once.
Hardin simply ignored what actually happens in a real commons: self-regulation by the communities involved.
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Hardin, Garrett. 1966. Biology: Its Principles and Implications. Second edition. San Francisco. W.H. Freeman & Co.
Would someone who is ignoring the obvious evidence, acknowledge it, if it were presented to him?
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