Heller, a professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School, describes a mirror of the classic tragedy of the commons, where unconstrained access to a resource leads to overuse that ultimately destroys the resource's value; the traditional remedy for this is privatization of the resource. He coins the term tragedy of the anticommons to describe the problems of underuse that occur when too many private interests have veto power over the use of a resource, leading to gridlock and a loss of potential value.

He identifies cases of underuse in real estate (in cities and farmland), patent law (in both software and pharmaceuticals), and wireless spectrum, and offers some starting ideas for resolving problems without resorting to heavy-handed abuse of eminent domain. The book is a starting point for identifying problems and inventing solutions, not a well-developed toolbox, but provides a welcome balance to the "privatize everything" extreme beloved of free market fundamentalists.

(I discovered this book via a post on BoingBoing.) ( )