Comment by pixl97

>humans playing games don't follow game theory

The problem here is game theory is actually a huge set of different games/formulas based on cooperative and non-cooperative games.

The base tragedy of the commons is what happens in a winner take all non-cooperative game. Humans over time figured out that this behavior generally sucks and leads to less than optimal outcomes for most of the entities in the game. The tragedy of the commons is then overcome by forming a cooperative game (think tit-for-tat) where defectors are punished.

The problem then arises again, not at an individual level but at things like state/nation level where two non-cooperative entities, even though they individually don't want to incorrectly use a resource, will incorrectly use said resource to prevent the other entity from having it.