The *'Tragedy of the Anticommons **or** The Tragedy of Private
Property*' is a type of [coordination
breakdown](Coordination_Breakdown "wikilink"), in which a single
resource has numerous [private owners](Private_Property "wikilink") who
prevent others from using it, frustrating what would be a [socially
desirable outcome](Pareto_Optimality "wikilink"). It is a mirror-image
of the older concept of [tragedy of the
commons](Tragedy_of_the_Commons "wikilink"), in which [commons-based
arrangement](Commons "wikilink") leads to resource depletion as no one
person feels responsible for its maintenance.