You're correct that the dictionary definition does not include that requirement.

Yet, the essay to which you linked specifically includes overgrazing, overfishing, and several other examples which leads to degradation/destruction (my words, not his) of the common resource. It's my opinion that the the potential for harm to the common resource by individual (i.e,. non-collective) actions is the sine qua non to the whole point of the essay - without that characteristic, the essay loses all meaning. As I indicated before, it is the essay, not the dictionary, from which I drew the interpretation.

Long story short, we'll just have to agree to disagree on the validity of my interpretation.:)

You are also correct that a discussion about a topic where the participants are not using the same reference point(s) can quickly get derailed and generate more noise than illumination. I will defer without further challenge to the definitions/reference points that you have identified in this thread.

On that we agree! And I believe that one of Ivan Illich’s points is that noise increasingly fills the silence -- which is a Commons -- that is essential for human communications.

And so I am fully agreeing that the question of degradation is a key one to examine, such as we’re doing, albeit not a defining criterion of the concept of Commons. :)

That said, I believe Hardin to be overly pessimistic -- even more so than Illich.

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Hey, Pete;

Your definition of Casuistry is too harsh. See Casuistry for the sense in which I meant it -- the act of splitting hairs on the details of a definition was what I meant; in the "I did not have sex with that woman" sense, true if "sex" is defined as "intercourse" but not otherwise, and my target was the point that ArcticStones just made about the inability to trash it excluding the internet from being a commons.