The Economist this week has a tutorial on the economics of the Ccmmons. Garrett Hardin several decades ago showed how unregulated commons were subject to "tragedies" of resource depletion. It has since become clear that many traditional societies have evolved cultural means of regulation of use of common resources. In some cases similar means have been enacted in law for the sustainable development and management of environmental commons.
In the past several years, observers have noted that the ideas of the commons can be applied quite widely, and there has been especially significant efforts to apply those ideas to cyberspace.
There is now a Digital Library of the Commons which makes information on such thinking widely available. How appropriate.
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