If several villagers do this, the common will be depleted and ultimately destroyed. Societies down the ages have resolved this problem in myriad ways – mostly through standards of normative behaviour rather than regimes of regulations and their enforcement. In a modern economy that is large, complex and organically interrelated, such problems require elaborate and explicit rules and regulations and their administration and enforcement.
6. Regulations thus are supposed to modify behaviour of those covered by the regulation and ensure that they behave in a socially desirable way. But whether the regulations will have to be in the nature of a nudge or a shove depends upon how the regulated entities respond to.