• LwL@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I never even thought it was that deep (idk if in other countries ppl go over it in school or something, I first heard of it online) so I never really understood how people are relating it to any economic system. All it’s saying to me is that one bad actor can be enough to ruin something for everyone - as far as I’m concerned it’s just prisoners’ dilemma in a larger group. So we need some way of enforcing that, if a shared ressource is vulnerable to singular bad actors (which isn’t all of them, e.g. some people abusing welfare doesn’t suddenly skyrocket costs), it won’t be abused.

    Edit: just realized I forgot whether tragedy of the commons was about some few fucking up the pasture for everyone, or everyone slightly overusing it. The latter is ofc a bit different, but “ah I can cheat the system a little, I need it after all” isn’t an uncommon sentiment. That one usually just means you need a bit of a buffer, though, because most people won’t grossly abuse something. (And of course, it’s still quite independent of economic systems - regional software pricing for example is ultimately a capitalist thing to sell more, and yet would fall under this as it’s usually possible to get these prices from other regions.)