Stoicism and the Tragedy of the Commons

Gregory Ponthiere

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2025, vol. 88, issue 5, No 3, 1213-1238

Abstract: Abstract This paper revisits the Tragedy of the Commons - a Pareto-dominated overuse of a common resource - through the lenses of Stoicism, and, in particular, of the Stoic discipline of desires, according to which one should wish for nothing that is not under one’s control. Two economic accounts of the Stoic discipline of desires are explored: the I1 account (a requirement of indifference between outcomes differing only on things out of control) and the I2 account (requiring indifference between outcomes that are the best under each circumstance). When studying the implications of Stoicism for the outcome of an N-players simultaneous common pool resource game, it is shown that, under each of account of the Stoic discipline of desires, it is either the case that there is no overuse of the common resource at the symmetric Nash equilibrium, or the case that a suboptimal use of the common resource, if it occurs, is not seen as "tragic" at all.

Keywords: Tragedy of the Commons; Stoicism; Rationality; Common pool resource game; Land overuse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 D91 Q24 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10640-025-00964-4

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