Hardin introduces the reader to the famous Tragedy of the Commons. This idea was first suggested by William Forster Lloyd back in the 1800's. It is partly explained by the classic owner-operator problem:
Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine year's lease of a garden and he will convert it into a garden. (Arthur Young)Donkey's Head
This chapter also mentions the account of a famine in Sweden in 1772. We who are quick to judge might have blamed the rich at the time for failing to come to the aid of the poor, including one woman who 'cut her child's throat, having had no food to give it, that it might not pine away in hunger and tears.'
However, Hardin points out that 'it would have done no good for the rich to donate money to a community chest because the food for a large population of needy people was simply not available for purchase. In a world of genuine scarcity a rich minority can offer the too numerous indigent little but sympathy.
There was a great famine in Samaria, as (the Syrians) besieged it, until a donkey's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove's dung for five shekels of silver. (2 Kings 6:32)
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