tragedy of the commons

a social dilemma that occurs when a course of action benefiting individual members of a community in the short term is detrimental to the long-term welfare of the community. In the original example of this dilemma, if each herdsman in a village seeks to maximize his individual gain by keeping as many of his cattle as possible on common grazing land, this will eventually make the land unusable by all, because the grass of the pasture is a limited resource. The tragedy is that complete freedom in a society brings ruin to all. Also called commons dilemma. [introduced in 1968 by U.S. ecologist Garrett Hardin (1915–2003)]

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Psychology term of the day

October 10th 2024

SSE

1. abbreviation for subacute spongiform encephalopathy. See Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.

2. symbol for sum of squared errors. See error sum of squares.