Tragedy of the Commons

Let's take the African commons maybe 50 years ago (I'm thinking the Idi Amin era). The "government" came in, divided the nomadic trail area into farmsteads, and gave it their cronies. The farms lasted maybe 5 years and collapsed, the soil was exhausted. And an eco-system that had survived for hundreds of years was devastated.

Even the original tragedy was very much down to outside forces. All of a sudden, villages were exporting food to London, Birmingham etc. The richer (minority) of commoners who had surplus food to sell did very well, and found themselves in a position to mount a take-over bid. Or the Scottish Clearances. Exactly the same, down to outside forces as the big landowners suddenly found that sheep-farming was much more profitable than tenant-farming.

The tragedy always gets blamed on the commoners for mis-management. But it's not mis-management, it's outside forces upsetting the apple-cart.

Cheers,
Wol