We can't keep doing this.

[mike_c]

39. Garrett Hardin was right all along....

I still think The Tragedy of the Commons was one of the most important and prescient papers ever published: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full

Someone will always cheat. Capitalism is constructed to laud and reward cheating for personal advantage, but it arises naturally out of human nature. As Hardin points out, the only solution is coercive, and even still will likely fail. But ask yourself-- suppose you had the solution to all of world's human caused problems, and implementing them would lead to generations of sustained better living, but the only way to do so was by coercion, probably draconian. What's better, letting humans be their and the world's worst enemy, or creating a prison life that forces them to be nice? That's the choice that Hardin proposes we face.