Heller: The gridlock economy.How too much ownership wrecks markets, stops innovation, and costs lives

Garrett Hardin, in 1968, described the 'tragedy of the commons', communal property abused by overuse. As a consequence of this reality, Heller identified two responses, "regulation or privatization" (p. 17). Traditionally, regulation has implied a top-down, command and control, bureaucratic organizational structure. Privatization, on the other hand, connotes private property, market competition, and capitalism. Heller demonstrated how the later, when taken to an extreme results in "anticommons" (p. 18), or gridlock. Heller stated, "the term covers any setting in which too many people can block each other from creating or using a scarce resource" (p. 18). The antithesis of tragedy of the commons is the tragedy of the anticommons, according to Heller. Gridlock manifests itself throughout all aspects of human interaction--the shortage of organs for donations, air traffic control deficiencies, wind turbine restrictions, and the loss of Afro-American farms.

Heller suggested a number of remedies to the tragedy of the anticommons: identify the gridlock and remove the barriers by changing rules or behavior.


Heller, M. (2008). The gridlock economy: How too much ownership wrecks markets, stops innovation, and costs lives. New York: Basic Books.