Common good (economics)

Thus, they constitute one of the four main types based on the criteria: As common goods are accessible by everybody, they are at risk of being subject to overexploitation which leads to diminished availability if people act to serve their own self-interests.

Despite its growing importance in modern society, the concept of the common good was first mentioned more than two thousand years ago in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero.

Water flows can be tapped beyond sustainability, and air is often used in combustion, whether by motor vehicles, smokers, factories, wood fires.

Fish stocks in international waters - Oceans remain one of the least regulated common resources.

To describe situations in which economic users withdraw resources to secure short-term gains without regard for the long-term consequences, the term tragedy of the commons was coined.

[3][4][5] However, wise-use advocates consider common goods that are an exploitable form of a renewable resource, such as fish stocks, grazing land, etc., to be sustainable in the following two cases: Tragedy of commons is a problem in economics in which everybody has an incentive to use a resource at the expense of everyone else who uses it, with no way of preventing anyone from consuming it.

The tragedy of the commons was originally mentioned in 1833 by the Victorian economist William Forster Lloyd, who was a member of the Royal Society .

Individuals may theoretically limit their use in order to avoid depleting a shared resource, if they so chose.

For example, imagine there are several shepherds, each with their own flock of sheep, who have access to a communal field which they all use for grazing.

Before English enclosure laws were enacted, there were agreements in place between lords and rural villagers to overcome this problem.