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The Tragedy of The Commons
The Tragedy of The Commons
The Tragedy of The Commons
Garrett Hardin
American Ecologist and Microbiologist (1915-2003) Controversial figure Concerned with overpopulation Pro-abortion Pro-population control by government Pro-assisted suicide Anti-immigration Anti-international aid
The Tragedy of the Commons Published in Science magazine 1968 Had four children Committed suicide together with his wife when he was 88 (she was 81)
The Commons
Commons: common land available to all for grazing animals, gathering wood, etc.
Tragedy of the commons: every farmer will tend to maximize their own profits by increasing their herd or increasing their gathering of resources without regard to the long-term depletion of the land. This is rational because the benefit to the individual farmer (of, for example, grazing one more animal on the commons) is larger than that farmers share of the overall depletion of the shared resource (i.e. the commons).
Historical commons: not really a free-for-all. Not public land. Only small number of farmers had inherited limited bundles of rights, numbers of animals were limited.
Overpopulation
Hardins main concern. Freedom to breed is intolerable Overpopulation harms the world as a whole. The more people there are, the fewer resources there are available to each person.
As long as we have a welfare state, people will continue to have more children than is good for society. Rational agents maximize their own good (more children), when the cost to them is relatively low because the cost is shared in common with society as a whole.
Assumption: each child is a net good to its parents but a net bad to society. Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that none has: there is no prosperous population in the world today that has, and has had for some time, a growth rate of zero.
Solution
Hardin: appeals to individual conscience are bad because:
1) It discriminates against people of good conscience, and tends to eliminate them from the population.
2) It wont work in the long run. Natures revenge. People without conscience with outbreed the others, and population will increase again eventually. 3) It is not psychologically healthy to force people to act against their own interests on the basis of conscience.
Reading
Required:
Naess, Arne, (1983) The Deep Ecological Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects, in Environmental Philosophy, p. 193-211, on handout
Des Jardins, Environmental Ethics, Chapter 10, Deep Ecology p. 210-231, on handout
Suggested:
Des Jardins, Environmental Ethics, Chapter 7, Biocentric Ethics and the Inherent Value of LIfe p. 128-151, on reserve in Philosophy Dept.
Berry, Thomas, The Viable Human, , in Environmental Philosophy, p. 171-181,