> A rumor on Facebook said a farmer was giving away his potatoes. By sunrise, 150 tons of his hard-earned work had disappeared.

I don't know if you can blame the viral post itself. This has been my experience with humans in general. Take halloween. Leave a candy bowl out and ask people to take one or two 10-20% will comply and the rest will try to take the entire bowl.

The article itself said the farmer wanted people to "help themselves". It was his responsibility to set the rules and enforce them. Perhaps polish law is different but I doubt the police would do anything in the states (or any other western country). It's not theft when you say take what you want. I don't believe it's blaming the victim here to say that the farmer should've done a lot more work to meter out his potatoes.

This is just another example of the tragedy of the commons. You can't have truly shared resources because a minority will take the majority and ruin it for everyone. Every single time. This is also why food pantries and homeless shelters meter out food carefully. You even see this with super sales at the grocery store. I remember during COVID people were filling truck beds with discounted meat/fish/vegetables completely disregarding other people will need to eat too.