Tragedy of the Commons

So, I did like the journal prompt said, and I typed in Tragedy of the Commons into Wikipedia search bar; what came up was a summary of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay about how the concept of individual gain, short term gain, can have long term negative consequences.  His example was about how a group of herders sharing a "common" grazing area will keep adding cattle to the "common" because he reaps 100% of the benefit, but the consquence is spread out among the group and eventually the common is depleted for everyone.  This concept can be applied to many different "tragedies" such as pollution, water supply, forresting, energy sources, etc.  It made me think of how selfish people really can be with resources and how most of what we do and consume is for our very own benefit, without thinking much of the greater good or how it may turn out it the end for everyone involved.  I've never really thought about it in this way before, and this concept seems very accurate to our way of living.  Tying into this concept is the free-market issue; if we continue to all have free for all on our resources with very little government intervention, the rate at which our varying "commons" is greatly increased.