You’re the Reason Our Planet Is Dying - Tragedy of the commons - Future IQ

5,939 views Wait, is this logic right? • Aug 08, 2025

Slog Reference: Tragedy of the Commons

Description

In this episode of Future IQ, we dive into the fascinating yet dangerous economic trap known as the “Tragedy of the Commons”, a phenomenon that explains why shared resources almost always end up overused and degraded. From 19th-century British pastures where farmers overgrazed their livestock, to modern-day internet bandwidth battles and groundwater depletion in fast-growing cities, the pattern is eerily consistent across history and geography. We explore how human psychology, short-term incentives, and flawed governance systems combine to make people act against their own long-term interests and why even intelligent, well-meaning communities fall into this trap. Backed by real-world research and striking historical parallels, this episode reveals why the commons fail, why some societies manage to break the cycle, and what it really takes to protect shared wealth before it disappears forever.

More Videos:
What is Prisoner's Dilemma?: https://youtu.be/y9kOyRu6FGU
Ganga is Always Clean Even With Poop: https://youtu.be/eEfmHpstjSg
Was Old Justice System Better?: https://youtu.be/ipcIZE1cJw4

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Overfishing: https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing
250k deaths from climate change: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/4183/
200+ million people displacement by climate change: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050
Elinor Ostrom’s solution: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/niassa-reserve-mozambique-conservation-success
Why did Elinor Ostrom Win a Nobel Prize: https://econforeverybodyblog.wordpress.com/2023/09/04/tchova-tchova/
Apple’s Net Zero commitment: https://www.apple.com/in/newsroom/2020/07/apple-commits-to-be-100-percent-carbon-neutral-for-its-supply-chain-and-products-by-2030/
India ranks 4th in Mismanaged Waste Index: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/waste/india-among-the-12-countries-responsible-for-52-of-the-world-s-mismanaged-plastic-waste-report-90927
https://www.popsci.com/now-you-can-see-all-space-junk-floating-around-earth-real-time/
Stuff In Space, by James Yoder: https://stuffin.space/

00:00 Introduction
00:26 We are the problem!
01:21 Selfish People Are Ruining the Resources
03:00 India is low-trust society
03:49 Water pollution
06:25 Climate Change
07:21 Antibiotic Resistance
10:38 This is everyone's problem
11:51 Capitalism is the
12:44 How can we solve this
14:26 Culture
15:20 Religion - Shravan
16:25 Public Pressure
17:22 Money Always Works
19:46 Elinor Ostrom
20:00 Conclusion

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

#futureiq #tragedyofthecommon

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Transcript

- Why are all nice things damaged in India? Our air is polluted. Our water is polluted. Our roads are filled with idiots who don't want to follow traffic rules. Our environment is getting screwed because of which our climate is getting screwed. And our roads are filled with spit stains that are causing TB. Yeah. Someone should do something about it. Oh yeah. You want to put a SCP field around it. Someone else's problem. So, you know, push it. But we are the problem. We are the problem. Yes, this is the tragedy called the tragedy of the commons. Okay, tragedy is exaggerating it a little bit.

0m 36s Naven, let's see if by the end of the episode you think the same. Okay, but the word tragedy I used because tragedy of the commons is a standard term in literature. Okay, this is studied in economics. Okay. And this happens when there is some public resource common thing which is kind of free for everybody to use like our air, water, roads and so on. And if everyone uses it responsibly then it is sustainable. It is great. Everyone loves it and so on. But there are a few selfish people who use it irresponsibly.

1m 12s Yeah. And then as a result it gets overused and suddenly it is no longer a nice resource. Right. It is like a complete mess. Yes. So pretty much those selfish people are killing the goose that lays a golden egg. Right. That's an interesting way to put it. Right. See, for example, roads. Okay. Now, a road is one way for a reason. Okay. Uh and if everybody follows the oneway rule, overall traffic is good. Everyone saves time on an average. Correct? Right. Except that for this one guy who needs to go the other way, right? He would have to go all the way around and this is a little extra cost for him.

1m 54s Yeah. For the good of the society. Y but he does not want to do that right. So he goes the wrong way. Now as a result everyone else has to suddenly be careful. They have to get out of the way. There is honking and now traffic is getting messy. When two people, three people do it, right? Just traffic gets very bad. Not just that but all the other people who were doing a little bit of sacrifice and following the rules then ask themselves what kind of an idiot am I? Why am I sacrificing and these idiots are not right? So now everybody starts doing it and you can start seeing the parallels between this and the prisoners dilemma that we have

2m 32s talked about. Right? Instead of everyone cooperating and doing the right thing and resulting in a good outcome for society on an average, everyone is defecting just looking at their selfish gain and as a result everyone is worse off. Yeah, but doesn't this happen almost everywhere in the world to some degree or the other? Why single out India? Yes, it is true that this happens all over the world. Tragedy of the commons applies to pretty much everyone everywhere. But if you look closely, you will find that the situation is worse in India. And the reason is because India is a low trust society. We have talked about this in the past. And as a result, in India, there is higher chances of

3m 13s people playing a zero- sum game. Higher chances of deciding that it is better to be selfish because other people anyway are going to be selfish. Yeah. Right. And as a result, the selfish behavior is higher in India. In fact, everyone here probably knows of examples how Indians will litter in India, but the same people in the US will be so careful, right? Yeah. Uh, every single person probably has done it to some extent if they have been abroad. Yeah. And let's just go through a lot of examples of tragedy of the commons, right? Um, pollution of water, right?

3m 50s For many people, dumping something into water is the cheapest way of getting rid of something, right? Getting rid of something in the correct way costs more, takes more effort, right? Yes. Whereas putting it into the water is easy. Yeah. Okay. So, as a result, each person does a selfish thing of dumping it in. Correct. Okay. And because now everyone else is thinking that our water is much more polluted than it should be and that causes major health problems. Right. It is even worse with air pollution. Similar logic applies there.

4m 24s And we have shown previously that air pollution is actually causing serious health problems for everyone. Okay. Not just health problems, intelligence problems, it is causing IQ points to drop and millions of people are dying. So, tragedy. Tragedy. Yes. Tragedy. Uh, another example is say over fishing. Okay. If there is fish in the sea, at a certain rate of fishing, you can just take out the fish and new fish are born and it is sustainable in the long term. Correct? Right. But when there is one selfish company which fishes more than their share right now the fish cannot reproduce at the same rate and slowly over time the fish reduce and at some point the fish are just going to all die

5m 08s out and we will not have fish to eat. Right at this point 2/3 of all the fishing areas in the world are in danger of being overfished. Okay. Wow. Two. Yes. That's the tragedy of the commons. Okay. Right. Another completely different example. Space is a common right. Commons is a technical term here meaning things which is can be used by everyone. It is public and you don't have to pay for it. Uh right. So space is a commons and people putting satellites in space. Yeah. Right. Is you put too many satellites in space and now they're all in danger of bumping into each other. Plus when the satellite is no longer being used, it is

5m 49s just sitting there being debris and at some point it is going to lose momentum and fall to earth and kill people. Right. Yeah. And that's a very huge risk which is growing with each passing day. I believe there is a website that actually tracks the position of all the satellites in space. And now there are so many satellites that you can barely see earth behind those satellites. It's like a wall of satellites around earth. Yeah. So there's just many examples pretty much any area you pick I could come up with an example but instead what I'll do is I'll do one big example one surprising example one dangerous example all right let's start with the big

6m 25s example big example is climate change right which is one of the biggest problems facing you mankind today right and that is tragedy of the commons how because every country which is polluting the environment which is putting out greenhouse gases right what it is doing is taking the cheaper way out. Uh right. And as a result, our climate is changing. We are going to heat up a little bit and that is going to cause serious problems. The solution is for everyone to cooperate and to use the more expensive processes, right?

7m 03s But of course, there are lots of complicated issues there because you know the rich countries did it in the past and they want us to do it now and so on. And I'm not going to get into the politics except to point out that this is a tragedy of the commons. It is a tragedy of the commons. That much we are absolutely in agreement about. A surprising example is antibiotic resistance. Yeah. But how is that commons? Overall health of a society is a commons. Herd immunity is a commons.

7m 32s When most people in a society have immune systems which can fight certain bacteria, then those bacteria don't spread very fast. they can't cause epidemics and when they spread small amounts of spread and they go to someone who has a weaker immune system then we can use an antibiotic to kill that bacteria right but the antibiotic needs to be used sparingly okay the reason is that if we use the antibiotics too much then the bacteria can see the antibiotic again and again and again and each time they get hit by that antibiotic some of them evolve to be slightly different.

8m 11s Correct? And you overuse antibiotics, we will end up with bacteria which are resistant to that particular antibiotic. Whereas if you don't overuse, if you just use it sparingly only in the cases where the people with weakened immune system who couldn't have fought that bacteria by themselves, then this danger isn't there because there is not enough antibiotic in the system for the bacteria to learn how to evade it. Right? So people who are being selfish and saying you know what I don't want to suffer even for the four or five days it takes my immune system to kill the bacteria they quickly pop antibiotics. Similarly, doctors who want to be like heroes and collect their fees are prescribing

8m 53s antibiotics too much. And as a result, we are ending up in a situation where the bacteria are evolving into antibioticresistant bacteria. And in fact, there are bacteria which are called multi-drugresistant bacteria. So they are resistant to all the antibiotics we are aware of. These are super bugs and we don't know how to kill them at all. Right? This can be fairly dangerous. But this was the surprising example by the way. The dangerous example. This is not dangerous. There is something else more dangerous. Virus. Okay. Bacteria. At least we have antibiotics. Viruses. We don't have anything that can kill a virus. The only thing that works is vaccination. When you build immunity. problem is that only

9m 42s when everyone or a large fraction of people are immune to a particular virus then it works. Correct? When some people stop taking vaccines. What happens is that initially for a while they are protected because everyone around them has taken the vaccine and so there is nobody to infect them. But over time this increases because in all tragedy of the common situations what happens is that a few selfish people become examples for other people and then they also start becoming selfish and as we have discussed before this I mean you don't have a choice right I mean you have to follow people who are doing bad things otherwise you are at a major disadvantage right and so what will happen is that people

10m 31s stop taking vaccines And the disease comes back and kills many people. Yep. Tragedy. Tragedy of the commons. What I keep thinking is why is it so difficult for people to understand that this is not an SE as you said somebody else's problem. Why is it so difficult for people to understand that this is our problem? See if you just follow the money. Simple economics right? 100 people are doing something. Okay. And let's say it costs 100 rupees. Okay. Okay. There is a shortcut which costs 10 rupees. Okay.

11m 06s Right. If only five people are doing it. Right. Right. What is each person going to think? I will think let somebody else pay the 100 rupees. I will pay 10 rupees. Yeah. In fact, you know, not everyone has to be selfish. Okay. Assume that 90% of the people are actually good people, non-selfish people, happy to pay the 100 rupees, right? But 10 selfish people are still more than the five that the system could have handled. Right. And the system goes to the doctors. Yeah. Absolutely. Economics. I didn't think he would find the economics answer in this very uh passionate psychological question but he did.

11m 49s And another problem unfortunately I have to say this but problem is capitalism. Okay. This I have to hear. Yeah. So companies under capitalism are relentless profit maximizers. Yes. Okay. A small number of companies with very strong founders or a very strong culture can get away by saying that we are going to do the right thing even if it reduces our profit. Yeah. But most companies can't afford to do that because the CEO that does that is going to get replaced by a CEO who promises higher profits and gives up on some of these nice things. Right.

12m 24s Yeah. Responsibility to the shareholders and all that. Exactly. which is what causes most companies to take the shortcut which results in a tragedy of the commons. Yeah, Naven dissing capitalism is the highlight of this episode for me. Well, we are going to find solutions which also involve capitalism because none of the other systems work. Okay. Okay. This just got very interesting. So, let's talk about solutions. How do we go about solving this problem? There are four ways to solve this. Okay. laws, culture, religion, public pressure, very completely different aspects of life.

13m 02s Yeah. See the thing is tragedy of the commons is a big enough problem that it has been studied by many different disciplines and solutions have come from different areas. Okay, let's take them one by one. Yeah. So laws, regulation. So vaccine mandate is a law to fix the free rider problem in vaccine. Correct. anters. Basically, a different example is industry emission standards, right? It is cheaper to just let your industry pollute the air or the water, right? But when there is a law saying that your pollution has to remain below certain thing and it is actually enforced, then things actually improve.

13m 42s Enforcement is definitely an important thing there. But also in some sense I'm thinking the Paris climate agreement was also kind of a law/regulation for handling. Absolutely. And in fact that exists primarily to fix the tragedy of the commons associated with climate change. Right. Similarly the Montreal protocol existed to fix the ozone hole. Same problems, same issues, same solution and it actually worked. It is one of the great triumphs of humankinds that we have managed to all come together and all give up some of our selfishness to fix the ozone hole. Awesome. Right.

14m 20s So that is how laws and regulations can help fight the tragedy of the commons. Uh and the second one you said was culture, right? Yeah. So a lot of societies, tribes have run into this problem over like you know thousands of years and they have figured out ways which make it sustainable. Right. Okay. So for example, Eskimos hunting whales have a whole bunch of cultural norms and rituals which make sure that whale hunting is sustainable. So you know no hunting of pregnant whales, no hunting during certain seasons and if you manage to get a whale, you share it with everyone so that those who didn't catch this time don't have an incentive to go and catch

15m 00s another whale and then half the meat is wasted and so on. That's actually smart. That's actually very smart. And do you know how this works? because the tribes which didn't develop cultural norms like this died out. Yeah. So there is an evolutionary bit to it as well. Evolutionary angle to it as well. Interesting. So that's laws and regulation, culture and the third one was religion. Greatest example of that is shraan in Maharashtra. Right? People give up eating fish during that time. Okay? Turns out that that's because that's when fish are giving birth. And if you eat them at that time then that would cause a tragedy of the commons. This makes the practice sustainable. There

15m 42s are other religious things like there are sacred groves. The Kawu in Kerala, the urans in Rajasthan, the Sarna in Jarkand. They're sacred. So people are just not allowed to go and grab things there. That makes those growth sustainable. Right. Interesting. Religion helping solve the problem of the tragedy of the commons. Point being that it is just a stronger cultural norm. Right? If there is a cultural norm, there is still some incentive for some people, the extra selfish people to surreptitiously break the rule, right? Whereas when it is religion, you can't surreptitiously break the rule because God is always watching.

16m 23s Okay, those are sentences I never thought I would hear from Naven, but here we are. And the last one was public pressure. Yeah. So Apple huh decided to go net zero carbon neutral by 2020 and they have promised that by 2030 all their suppliers will also be net zero. Okay. Now there is no law actually requiring them to do this. Correct. Okay. There is no religion also saying this. So why is Apple doing this? Yeah. Simply because of public pressure. Right. People all over the world activists are making so much aage about being carbon neutral.

16m 59s right that Apple thinks it's good to be able to say that they're carbon neutral by 2020 and all their suppliers will be carbon neutral by 2030. Solic pressure works. There is a bit of costly signaling also involved here. Oh, of course. Of course. Yes. Very interesting. So, there are laws and regulations that can be used to beat defeat the tragedy of the commons. There is culture, religion and public pressure. And if none of these work, money, give them money. Money always works, right? capitalism we're back. A great example of this is the NASA animal reserve in Mozambique. Right?

17m 34s There there is a serious problem of poaching and you can obviously see why poaching is a tragedy of the commons problem. Right? Why can't it be stopped? Okay. Think of the incentive for the poachers. Poachers immediately get monetary rewards for poaching an animal. Correct. Who could stop the poachers? It's not easy for government to do that. Yeah. But the locals could because locals can see everything. They pretty much know what is going on, right? But what is the incentive for the locals to take on the risks of trying to stop poachers? No incentive.

18m 06s Poachers have guns. Exactly. That's why poaching continues. But to fix this, what this group decided was to give the correct kind of incentive to the community to police and stop this. M they created a community fund into which donors would put money for every good behavior. Right? So for every tourist visiting the center, $25 was put into the community center, right? So now the locals have an incentive to increase tourism. Correct? For every prize animal that was cited by tourists, dollar8 was put into the fund.

18m 43s Right? Again, now the locals have incentives to make sure that animals are cited and they are not killed, right? $155 were put into the community fund for every month without any evidence of poaching, right? And that was the carrot. Now, here's the stick, right? Okay. For every snare that is spotted, evidence of poaching, $19 removed. For every lion killed, $232 removed. For every elephant killed, $310 removed. Right? So you can see how the entire community which is going to benefit from that fund. That fund is for the community for local things, not going to the government, right? You can see how the entire community will come together to reduce poaching and increase the welfare of animals and the sightings and

19m 38s make the tourism better. Right. Fascinating. He actually promised that the solution was also capitalism and he actually proved it. Oh, economics, right? Elenor Astramm got a Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 for this work. Ah, we should go and check out her work sometime. You should go and check out her work sometime. We'll put links in the description of course. But uh coming back to the thing that we started off with uh it seems like the solution to India's tragedy of the commons lies somewhere in one of these three four five things either laws and regulations or culture or religion or public pressure or maybe just maybe monetary incentives to help them get there. But what is the

20m 21s final takeaway of all of this? Three things. One is that our country is going to complete 78 years of independence soon, right? So all of us need to make sure that we take care of it collectively and this is the only real method of doing that. And speaking of that, do subscribe to the channel because the next episode is going to be about India's independence because it's dropping on Independence Day. At the global level, this helps us to understand why some problems are so hard without easy solutions and why some of the solutions that exist seem so convoluted and weird.

21m 00s Okay. At a local level, these techniques you could actually start using at things that you can control your circle of competence like your society, your company, the local park, right? go see if you can help some minor small tragedy of the commons near you uh get fixed. Yeah, I was actually thinking is there a way to fix the traffic tragedy of the commons or the tragedy of the traffic commons using one of these methods that Naven mentioned earlier? All you have to do is find a Sanskrit schllo which says that God will smite you down if you go wrong way in one.

21m 41s If we could find that, if you know of a Sanskrit flow that exists, please put it in the comments. Let us know. We love reading your comments. And uh let us know of any other ideas that you have for solving these tragedies of the commons. Shriant Naven, Future IQ.