Hardin called this the “tragedy of the commons,” and it has become one of the primary lenses through which economists, political scientists, and the environmental movement view large-scale ecological crises like pollution and climate change. “When I was a kid, there was this thing called leaded gasoline,” says Avrim Blum, Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and game theorist. “Leaded was ten cents cheaper or something, but it pollutes the environment.… Given what everyone else is doing, how much worse really are you personally [health-wise] if you put leaded gasoline in your own car? Not that
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