"Sometimes the excuse is that cpu and memory are cheap as if resources aren't under constant pressure from the hundreds of processes that all pretend they are the only one on the machine."
Does anyone know if there's a generalized name for this problem? It's the same one where your teacher gives you "only two hours of homework tonight" but forgets you have four other classes all doing the same thing.
Tragedy of the Commons, as mentioned by others, sounds most adequate. In general this is one of the whole class of coordination problems - where actors reach globally suboptimal outcomes by failing to coordinate with one another.
Tragedy of the Commons seems to imply some harm is happening to the actors themselves; the coordination problem with computing resources here is a little different, because most of the time, application vendors don't feel any impact of the problem they contribute to, which makes them even less incentivized to coordinate.
"Originally, Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", and the title of a book which made it well-known. However, in current understanding, Parkinson's law is a reference to the self-satisfying uncontrolled growth of the bureaucratic apparatus in an organization."
Hmm, I can see how they're related, but it doesn't seem to be quite what I'm talking about. I'm more referring to the overuse of resources by individual elements assuming or acting as if they're the only thing using it, like in the above examples of a teacher acting like their class is your only one, or a thread consuming resources like no others are active.
Parkinson's law more seems to be the result of the effect that I'm talking about (among others, like procrastination).
Does anyone know if there's a generalized name for this problem? It's the same one where your teacher gives you "only two hours of homework tonight" but forgets you have four other classes all doing the same thing.