The narrative is that someone will always overgraze or spoil the water source and the collective pasture will become useless to everyone due to the reign of selfishness. Therefore, the story goes, land should be privatized rather than communally held, converting a commonly held source of abundance to individual property in order to safeguard against the Tragedy. This powerful idea has been used as justification for commodifying what was once understood as a shared gift. But what if it’s wrong? What if there’s a different story, one that the privateers sought to erase? The groundbreaking work
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