Tragedy of the Commons or: Our Coffee Pot is Sentient

Here's something I find interesting, a phenomenon called the Tragedy of the Commons. The title refers to a time in medieval Europe when there were shared grazing pastures for farmers to freely use. Rather than only consuming enough resources to make the communal fields sustainable for all, each farmer was looking out for their own interests, and over grazing pretty much ruined the nice set up for all. Broadly speaking, everybody's responsibility becomes nobody's responsibility as we pass the buck on to the next guy.

To see this in action take a look at our coffee pot in the MBA lounge and you'll see a graphic example of this problem. What you will find is either an undiscovered cure for cancer or some organic matter slowly becoming sentient. What started out (possibly months or years ago) as a nice, free shared resource of a coffee pot has now morphed into a container for a weird green growth. This shouldn't be a surprise when you consider the responsibility for cleaning the pot falls on all of us and by default, none of us. I'll be following the situation as it continues to develop and will let you know if this growth ends up somehow meaningfully contributing to society.