&gt; If everybody owns something, then nobody owns it. We should probably rethink our notion of what &quot;the commons&quot; means, vis-a-vis property rights.<p>Good point. Of course, that rethink might go in either way, moving more things from public to private or from private to public. It&#x27;s a good idea to periodically review what we consider public property and try to make it more consistent with the idea of privatizing externalities.