The sacred religion of "The Tragedy of the Commons" states that any commonly owned piece of pasture land will be overused, because each individual has the incentive to maximize profit and will feed as many cattle as he can. With a large population, the piece of land will be overgrazed.
If you look carefully, you might notice that this argument seems familiar. It will seem to you that the logic in this argument is similar to the logic of another argument. Anarchists and libertarians should find it even more familiar. Well it sounds familiar, because this argument uses an example, the other is more direct. The tragedy of the commons is the same argument as the anti-anarchist classic: "If maximum freedom and power equality are given to the people, then each individual will use violence against others when he/she sees fit and thus it results in chaos." Add "in the commons", right after "power equality"; replace "use violence" with "abuse"; "against others" with "common land" and "chaos" with "tragedy". Now see where the argument comes from!
Hasn't that argument been refuted again and again? You'd think that by now the terms mutual aid, co-operation, self-interest, markets, liberty, solidarity, ethics, non-aggression and management would have become boring to statists. However, you'd be wrong; the statists obvioously like being refuted, but they can't find new ways to challenge us, so they just use the old classics. They also say "you know, let's not bore the anarchists... How about we change some words?"
The tragedy of the commons is not just an argument against the commons and socialism, it is also an argument against liberty, anarchism and haudauctorism. It can even be considered an argument against free markets: "If the markets were truly free, then people would abuse them". Sounds familiar doesn't it? This is why anarchists, market or otherwise, should take some time to refute the tragedy of the commons; not solve it, but prove that there is no tragedy!
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