We know what is the tragedy of the commons. Any resource that has too few owners leads to overuse. Examples of this are overfishing of oceans and pollution of the environment, to name a few. A solution to the tragedy of the commons is private ownership. It assumes that the owner manages consumption and conserves a scarce resource.
Privatisation as a solution to the commons also has problems. In anticommons, there are too many owners, and each can exclude others from using, leading to underuse. It becomes a coordination failure. In other words, some resources don’t get invented or don’t reach the market.
Heller, Michael, The Tragedy of the Anticommons: A Concise Introduction and Lexicon (October 10, 2012). 76 Modern LR 6-25 (2013), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4366226 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4366226
