This is fascinating. I am commenting here to add an accessible article on the subject: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/ and Wikipedia pages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom.

I had assumed the “Tragedy of the Commons” dated to medieval times, possibly as a school teacher had introduced the idea (and to a child teachers are older than dirt).

In 1833, the English economist William Forster Lloyd published “Two Lectures on the Checks to Population”

Garrett Hardin’s essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” published in Science magazine in 1968.

Political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded 2009’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on the issue, and others revisited Hardin’s work in 1999.

Net-Net it appears that the “Tragedy of the Commons” is yet another method to keep people from even trying to better their world.

Edit: Another article: https://www.aei.org/articles/elinor-ostrom-and-the-solution-to-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/