No, we’re not talking witches today; we’re talking about one of the prime industries that Tasmania (or Van Diemen’s Land , as it was then) has ever seen, albeit fleetingly. The years 1836 to 1841 marked the peak of the Tasmanian whaling industry , in 1836 there were nine stations in and about Hobart. By 1841, thirty-five bay whaling stations in Tasmania were manned by more than 1000 men, but by then they had managed to kill the goose that lay the golden eggs. I have always found the rise and fall of the Tasmanian whaling industry a really useful example of what Stephen Lukes calls ‘ the Tragedy of the Commons ’. Putting on the political science hat for a moment, the tragedy of the commons is best understood as a kind of social trap that involves a conflict over finite resources between individual interests and the common good. Hardin concluded that free and unregulated access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately - through its very structure - dooms the resource thro...