THE PIG-SLICE. That's a Sniglet for the last piece of pizza that has been delivered to a dorm room. The definition suggests a stigma to taking it. So, sometimes, mote it be with common-property resources.

You read more about Dr. Ostrom’s work in these posts from David Bollier at Forbes.com, J.P. Freire at the Washington Examiner, Daniel and my colleague Catherine Rampell.

As Catherine notes, the comedian Larry David explains one way to avoid the tragedy of the commons in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Mr. David discusses the tradition requiring guests at a party to refrain from eating too many hors d’oeuvres at once. After your first helping, he says, you have to wait 20 minutes and make sure that the food isn’t disappearing too quickly before you go back for seconds. Does that qualify as polycentric governance?

On the other hand, we all cracked up in Madison when Claudia Goldin described the community pizza that got inhaled rather quickly. (And Maine lobstermen have been known to enforce taking privileges in their harbors by cutting traplines ...)

Via Insta Pundit, who correctly observes, "Sometimes I think the desire for coercion comes first, then the theory to justify it. . . ."