Is it quite so simple? I remember having to read and discuss this work for a Green Poliitcs course I undertook a few years ago – several in fact now I come to think of it! – and the main conclusion we drew from it was that, actually, the "commons", by which we took Hardin to mean the wealth provided by Nature, needed greater [i]collective[/i] regulation. In the end, his view is fully compatible, I think, with a libertarian socialist view that only by collective management of natural resources will we all benefit in the end. Indeed, historical studies of former societies have shown that people were adept at managing resources collectively. (Hardin, iirc, mixes up the economic logic of one epoch with the economic/legal framework of another).

If nothing else, though, the moral of the story – that the individual pursuit of economic self-interest destroys commonly held resources to the detriment of all – rings true. Think of fish stocks, for instance, or CO2 emissions, etc., etc.

As you note, however, "The commons" as a communally-owned resource is not the same thing as an unowned/free-for-all. With regards to "the commons", these things are defined (even if relatively informally) and so the necessary condition for tragedy is lacking.

Now, whether are guilty of extrapolating unfairly, or equivocating, is another question altogether.

However, I share your enthusiasm in using this new research as a weapon against ancaps and all others enemies of more social constructions of resource management.

Right?