While the 'Tragedy of the Commons' describes the overuse of a shared resource, the 'Tragedy of the ___' describes a situation where too many owners have the right to exclude others from using a resource, leading to its severe underutilization.
- arbitrage (or resale)
- Treasury
- anticommons
- countervailing
Answer: anticommons
Coined by Michael Heller, this concept occurs when property rights are excessively fragmented. For example, if a single piece of land requires the unanimous consent of 50 different heirs to be developed into a hospital, the project will likely fail, and the land will sit empty. It highlights the economic dangers of having too many veto players and overlapping intellectual property patents.