Lou Reed on the Tragedy of the Commons
So there’s a central resource, say a bunch of programmers, developers, and application tweakers, which is free to a group of individuals, say for example some administrative departments, each of which has its own budget, priorities, and goals. Because the central resource is free, there’s no particular reason not to ask for whatever you like. So everyone asks for whatever they want and then the limiting factor becomes the availability of the central resource (time). People adjust their requests according to the schedule but the resource remains exploited and unappreciated for everyone’s constantly unhappy because, like Lou Reed’s man, … Continue Reading