10th anniversary post: The tragedy of the commons (life)

Litter is a plague on our cities (4/1/2026) Ten years ago this month, I wrote about a fellow who used the grassy median on our street as his dog's toilet. "Neither the man nor his dog cleans up afterwards," I noted. It served as a homely example of Garret Hardin's belief that people had incentives to over-use common property, such as a village green for grazing sheep, or a grassy median on Blake…