> Ah yes, the Tragedy of the Commons couldn't have existed because people were too materially poor to damage anything. This isn't the main thrust of the articl

> Ah yes, the Tragedy of the Commons couldn't have existed because people were too materially poor to damage anything. This isn't the main thrust of the article. > But I'm going to go ahead and assume that the fact that farmers commonly established their own informal governance rules over common areas does kind of imply that there were overgrazing problems. The article argues that there was the potential for overgrazing problems, but that the informal governance effectively dealt with them.