The tragedy of the commons

A two-minute riso-print film on why shared resources get overused – and why they don’t have to be. With captions and sound.

0:00

Pair discussion

After the class brainstorm at the end of the film, pause for these questions in pairs.

  1. What did each herder gain from one more sheep – and what did everyone lose? Why is that sum lopsided?
  2. Who, if anyone, is to blame for the collapse? Would a better-informed herder have acted differently?
  3. What makes an agreed limit stick? Who checks it, and what happens to someone who cheats?
  4. Hardin’s pasture had no rules at all – it was really open access. Real commons usually have rules. Does that change the lesson?

Further reading

William Forster Lloyd, Two Lectures on the Checks to Population (1833).

Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Science 162 (1968), 1243–1248.

Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Ostrom shared the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for this work.

Credits

Directed by
Steven Williams
Script, research, illustration, animation, riso printing (virtual), captions and discussion prompts, original score, sound design and voice of the sheep
Claude
Inspired by
Window Seat, a riso film by sevenevesai
Typeface
Archivo by Omnibus-Type
Made with
Claude Opus 5.5 on high effort

No sheep were harmed in the making of this film.