Tragedy Of The Commons
Categories: Financial Theory
The Commons: where the King would allow the commoners to bring their sheep to feed/eat and, well, you know. They fertilizied the fields for future generations of grass.
So...this sounds like a virtuous cycle. Pastoral. Idyllic. Awesome...right?
Yeah, not so much. Why? Well, sheep don't know when to stop. They'd eat and eat and eat until they went all the way down to the roots of the grass, as more and more sheep, with free access to the King's lands, came on down to eat and crap all over the place. The tragedy was that, since there was no gating against the wanton commoners, they didn't know to gate their sheep. So the next season, there simply was no grass to eat, as the roots were all gone. And, in true Disney film fashion, they all died.
Yeah...Disney was darker in the 18th century.
