The Tragedy of the Commons

What is the tragedy of the commons?

“The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory of a situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.”

If you paid for the pasture, you will take care of it and make sure it isn’t over-grazed. If everybody uses the pasture for free, you know you have to get your sheep grazing before everybody else does. Everybody else knows that too and, therefore, it is certain that the pasture will be over-grazed and destroyed.

The tragedy of the commons occurs because free goods are overused goods and because the free goods are scarce, they are overused immediately.

What do administrators do to keep the commons free but prevent the tragedy? They ration the pasture. If something is free, one way or another, it will be rationed.

Witness rationing in the UK.

NHS bosses are planning a massive expansion of the controversial rationing that forces smokers and obese patients to wait months in pain before they can have surgery, a leaked letter reveals.

The move will see local NHS bodies across England implement restrictions on access to treatment that will hit what doctors’ leaders believe will be tens of thousands of patients.

The plan is disclosed in a letter sent on 15 March by Dr David Black, NHS England’s medical director for Yorkshire and the Humber, to Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). In it, he praises the GP-led group that controls the NHS budget for treating the town’s residents for introducing what critics call “lifestyle rationing”, which compels dangerously overweight patients or those who smoke to wait for hip or knee surgery. “We are very supportive of your work to best manage resources for the benefit of all patients and understand that this may mean that difficult decisions need to be made,” Black wrote.

a) You can have free health care.
b) You can have quality health care.
c) You can have available health care.

Pick two.