The way economists would probably explain the wastage of this clam resource is by saying that clams are free goods and are therefore subject to the tragedy of the commons effect. The tragedy of the commons effect is a theory in economics, postulated by the Victorian economist William Forster Lloyd.
The tragedy of the commons effect describes a condition within a shared-resource system where each user act freely according to their own self-interest, but their collective actions ends in the depletion or spoilage of that resource, thus having a negative impact on the common good of all users. In this case, commons is taken to refer to the clam resources.
