recover). The rate at which depletion of the resource is realized depends primarily on three factors: the number of users wanting to consume the common in question, the consumptive nature of their uses, and the relative robustness of the common. The same concept is sometimes called the "tragedy of the fishers", because fishing too many fish before or during breeding could cause stocks to plummet. Modern commons The tragedy of the commons can be considered in relation to environmental issues such as sustainability. The commons dilemma stands as a model for a great variety of resource problems in society today, such as water, forests, fish, and non-renewable energy sources such as oil and coal. Situations exemplifying the "tragedy of the commons" include the overfishing and destruction of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the destruction of salmon runs on rivers that have been dammed (most prominently in modern times on the Columbia River in the Northwest United States and historically in North Atlantic rivers), the devastation of the sturgeon fishery (in modern Russia, but historically in the United States as well), higher sickness and mortality rates from COVID-19 in individualistic cultures with less obligatory collectivism, and, in terms of water supply, the limited water available in arid regions (e.g. the area of the Aral Sea and the Los Angeles water system supply, especially at Mono Lake and Owens Lake). In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit. Negative externalities are a well-known feature of the "tragedy of the commons". For example, driving cars has many negative externalities; these include pollution, carbon emissions, and traffic accidents. Every time Person A gets in a car, it becomes more likely that Person Z (and millions of others) will suffer in each of those areas. Economists often urge the government to adopt policies that "internalize" an externality. The tragedy of commons can also be referred to the idea of open data. Anonymised data are crucial for useful social research and represent therefore a public resource better said, a common good which is liable to exhaustion. Some feel that the law should provide a safe haven for the dissemination of research data, since it can be argued that current data protection policies overburden valuable research without mitigating realistic risks. An expansive application of the concept can also be seen in Vyse's