Re:Are we really running out of helium?
by fennecfoxen on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @10:20AM
(#9100999)
Tuna from the ocean at large may be a "commons", sure, but helium comes from natural gas deposits, which tend to be in areas where one nation or another claims exclusive rights to said deposits, treats them like property, and seeks to maximize the value they can extract from them (while still competing with other resource-holders in a market).
The price of Tuna is set of "how expensive is it to produce a can of tuna" rather than "how many tuna are left in the ocean". In fact, the lower the production cost of tuna fishing, the higher the risk that we empty the ocean of all the tuna.
It's really a problem of the Tragedy of the commons. There is no cost of tuna in the ocean, except the cost of fishing it. So it's a commons, and it will be overexploited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
also: be sure to understand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northw...