An un-human “logic” drives the “tragedy of the commons.” Garrett Hardin coined that term for the overexploitation of common resources by “rational beings each…seeking to maximize his gain,” which causes collective disaster by damaging what they depend on. But this is no unavoidable fate. Rather it’s a tragedy of poor thinking by supposedly elite reasoners, blind to simple solutions. Elinor Olstrom won a Nobel Prize in Economics for researching how groups overcome Hardin’s hard-of-thinking hurdle. But her work isn’t widely known. Before her Nobel, even prominent economists hadn’t heard of her. But we shouldn’t need Nobel laureate to see the obvious. Our survival has long required cooperation. We’ve evolved and developed ways to manage joint resources (e.g. punishing free riders) over about 10,000 generations. - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/26/greek-myths-about-human-origins/