In Governing the Commons (1990), Elinor Ostrom says Hardin???s argument is not new:

Aristotle long ago observed that ???what is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest??? (Politics Book II, ch. 3). Hobbes???s parable of man in a state of nature is a prototype of the tragedy of the commons: Men see their own good and end up fighting one another???[1]

She goes on to cite a long list of other sources, the growing sum of which have long since snowballed into a single widely held conclusion: ???Much of the world is dependent on resources that are subject to the possibility of a tragedy of the commons.???[2]

Yet Hardin???s model, she explains, is an argument of one very narrow kind: a prisoner???s dilemma, ???conceptualized as a noncooperative game in which all players possess complete information ??? When both players choose their dominant strategy??? they produce an equlibrium that is the third-best result for both.??? The game is fascinating for scholars because ???The paradox that individually rational strategies lead to collectively irrational outcomes seems to challenge the fundamental faith that rational beings can achieve rational results.??? She adds, ???The deep attraction of the dilemma is further illustrated by the number of articles written about it. At one count, 15 years ago, more than 2,000 papers had been devoted to the prisoner???s dilemma game (Grofman and Pool 1975).???[3]

The “Tragedy of the Commons” is one of the lamest assessments of humans I know. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is equally bogus. Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, now we’re talking interesting.