In 1968 ecologist, Garrett Hardin, wrote The Tragedy of the Commons. The arguments that he made have been used This publication became a key argument for the privatization of shared or public recourses. Hardin uses an allegory of a shared pasture in a medieval peasant village to convey his message on self sabotage actions. He comes to the conclusion that the tragedy of the common is inevitable.
In The Tragedy of the Commons, Garret Hardin asks his readers to, "picture a pasture open to all" (Hardin 1968, pg 1244). In this shared pasture, he argues that each peasant acting in their own interest would send as many cows to graze their as they could. So many cows would be sent to graze in that pasture that the land would be inevitably destroyed.