Oasis ecology punishes water hoarding even for the hoarder

Evidence

A proud prince, passing through, desired the garden and the cleverest of the maidens for himself alone. He seized the spring and tried to wall the garden off for his private pleasure, taking all the water for his own roses and letting the rest of the oasis go dry. But a garden, like a town, cannot live on a hoarded spring: his walled roses bloomed for a season and then, as the diverted water sickened the soil and the unwatered town withered around him, his garden died too, for a single garden cannot flourish in a dying land. … The wise maiden told the chastened prince the secret her twelve sisters had always known: ‘Water shared makes a whole oasis bloom; water hoarded kills even the one who hoards it. The spring was never ours to own — only ours to share well.’ — , A Year of World Stories, 12044

Categorization

• XREF: The commons logic parallels Hardin’s tragedy of the commons reversed — here sharing, not enclosure, is what sustains.