In an optimal growth setting, where the only productive asset is a renewable resource which is jointly exploited, it is shown that competitively the resource may be over-used or under-used. The possibility of under use is counterintuitive and challenges our understanding of externalities and the tragedy of the commons. It is, however, not without precedent. Under-use has been derived as an equilibrium phenomenon elsewhere when agents strategically interact in a dynamic game. Subsequently it has been postulated that this result may be due to the ability of agents to manipulate a common state variable even when they are constrained to memoryless Markov strategies. I show that such manipulation or strategic interaction is unnecessary to observe under-use by considering a continuum of agents. As opposed to the dynamic game literature where neoclassical production functions for the resource have been assumed, I show that a decreasing portion of the production function, as in logistic growth of the resource, is sufficient when certain criteria are met, to imply under-use. More generally, when the discount rate is high relative to natural growth the inherent externality drives stock levels above the optimal. Although agents in the current setting exhibit memorylessness in their plans through myopia that arises due to perfect foresight, they do not strategically interact. The phenomenon of under-use here arises because the externality pushes implicit resource prices downwards when production is increasing in stock levels at a rate greater than the rate of discount, but pushes them upwards when production is not increasing at a rate greater than the rate of discount, or decreasing, in stock levels. In addition to this result, a variety of other complicated behavior is shown to arise in this model. Examples are provided that exhibit chaotic dynamic equilibria and multiple steady state equilibria. Such possibilities are interesting in light of their consequences for effective policy to manage the resource.