Why Is The Tragedy Of The Commons Common

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Recommended: Summary of the problem of overfishing

I. Defining the Tragedy of the Commons. The tragedy of the commons is a situation where there is overconsumption of a particular product / service because rational individual decisions lead to an outcome that is damaging to the overall social welfare. The tragedy of the commons theory assumes that when making decisions, people take the course of action that maximizes their own utility. However, if many people seek to do this, the net effect may be to deplete a resource making everyone worse off in the long run. The tragedy of the commons was first observed in an area of common grazing land. Villagers all took their cows to this common grazing land, but this led to overgrazing and a loss of the resource. A more modern example is that of over-fishing. …show more content…

One of the important examples of the tragedy of the commons is overfishing. Fish can be found in lakes, oceans, rivers, and streams, which are typically not owned by any one person. Anyone can fish in these places, so the places are “common.” But there is never an infinite supply of fish. Each individual fisher may want to catch as many fish as he or she can, but if everyone does this, then the supply of fish will be depleted. The depletion is the “tragedy," and it is unsustainable. Eventually, there will be no more fish, and no one will be able to fish anymore. On the other hand, if everyone exercises restraint and doesn’t remove too many fish, then the fish will be able to reproduce, the supply of fish will not become depleted, and fishing can persist indefinitely. Overfishing is a major global issue. Many fish populations have become severely depleted due to overfishing. One example is the population of cod off the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada. The graph below shows the amount of cod captured and taken ashore (fish landings) between 1850 and 2000. The spike in landings beginning around 1960 was caused by innovations in detecting and capturing cod. Collapse of Atlantic cod stocks off the East Coast of Newfoundland in 1992. Fish landings had been relatively

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