The tragedy of the commons

Abstract

The author postulates that the "population problem" as traditionally conceived has no technical solution, and that most people who anguish over the population problem are really looking for a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without abandoning any of the privileges they enjoy today. He adds that human misery will increase greatly in the near future if we do not assume that the terrestrial world is finite, and that a finite world can only support a finite population. Closes the article with some guidelines to address what he calls the tragedy of the common resources.