The Tragedy of the Commons
Lloyd's most well-known idea has come to be known as the tragedy of the commons, although this was not a phrase used by him at any time. The basic issue and idea as originally presented was developed in response to two related questions.
Lloyd asked, why was the cattle reared on commonly owned land often so stunted, and why was the plant life on the common itself often so worn, compared to cattle kept on privately owned land, the latter usually being in much better condition? He answered as follows:The difference depends on the difference of the way in which an increase of stock in the two cases affects the circumstances of the author of the increase. If a person puts more cattle into his own field, the amount of the subsistence which they consume is all deducted from that which was at the command, of his original stock... But if he puts more cattle on a common, the food which they consume forms a deduction which is shared between all the cattle, as well that of others as his own. In an inclosed pasture, there is a point of saturation. beyond which no prudent man will add to his stock. In a common, also, there is in like manner a point of saturation. But the position of the point in the two cases is different (Lloyd 1833 [2017]: 28).
In modern formulation, individual behaviour that is detrimental to society as a whole, but which benefits an individual or a smaller sub-set of society, will sometimes be undertaken whenever the detrimental effects (or costs) are not directly coupled with the associated benefits.
The solution proposed by a well-known twentieth-century author on the issue, Garrett Hardin, who first coined the phrase “the tragedy of the commons”, was better sustainable management of commonly held resources, together with the enforcement of the actual cost-benefit association of using them (see Hardin 1968). Hardin later clarified that by the phrase “the tragedy of the commons”, he had really meant the tragedy of the unregulated commons, and went on to link this topic to unrestricted population growth (see Hardin 1995).
It should be noted that the tragedy of the commons is not limited to human affairs, but extends into the animal world as well. Predators that over-deplete their prey animal stock can face the issues of either heightened scarcity of the prey or, in extreme cases, prey extinction, either directly by over-hunting or indirectly by disturbing the natural habitat of the prey. In addition, it has been pointed out that pre-industrialised human communities also sometimes suffered from similar commons-depletion issues, especially when power was very unequally distributed between the various parties involved in using the commonly held resources. As such, the tragedy of the commons has a very long history (see Ruttan and Borgerhoff Mulder 1999).
Finally, it is worth pointing out that Lloyd transferred his analysis of the commons in metaphoric terms to the operation of the labour market, judging about this market that ‘the field for the employment of labour is in fact a common, the pasture of which is free to all. In the common for man, the child begins.by the possession of a pair of hands competent to labour' (Lloyd 1833 [2017]: 29). For Lloyd, this meant in turn that the labour market conceived as a commons pasture was always and invariably stocked at saturation point, putting pressure on both the price of labour and the capacity to supply the growing population with necessary food.
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