Tragedy of the Commons?

I had an interesting thought while watching a documentary on consumerism in kids today. It got me thinking about two things, one is the tragedy of the commons. The general story is that there's some grazing land, open to everyone. Nobody has any incentive to go easy on it. The more livestock you have, the better off you are. It turns into a competition for resources where the more that's cornered the better you are. However, split the commons into private ownership and people then limit their herds to avoid over grazing and the land thrives again. We also see this in fish stock. When the catch is a quota open to everyone, it turns into a mad scramble to get as much fish in before the quota is filled. It winds up being not safe for the fishermen and floods the market resulting in lower returns for all.
While collectively every company and thus the economy as a whole will be better off with a wealthy consumer base, individually every company benefits from taking as many dollars as possible. Like the over grazing, the consumer base becomes over spent and everyone suffers.
This is an over simplification to the point of absurdity though since corporate profits pays payroll and investors. This personal income then becomes the consumer base that everyone is chasing. Also, the idea of splitting up the consumer base into privately owned blocks is absurd. Though if you ever felt like you live in a world of advertising, the consumer base being a common resource is one reason. In situations where there are exclusivity arrangements, those extend to venues, not individual consumers so marketers have an incentive to go nuts in hopes of influencing off venue spending patterns as well as overall total consumption.
The other thought. It talked about how marketing now pitched lifestyle to sell products. Individuality, acceptance, popularity, I wonder what my social values are. I should spend some time thinking about that.