The Tragedy of Commons

The dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security has led the major reasons for nuclear war. This dilemma has no solution. If the solution could be find with the help of science and technology, the solution will worsen the problem. The article does not focus on the technical solutions but it focuses on the conclusions the thinkers has came with. A universal view published in scientific journals says that there is a technical solution for this problem; this technical solution is defined as the change in techniques of natural science. This universal view did not consider the need of change in human values and ideas of morality. Wiesner and York insisted that the solution to this problem is not in the natural sciences, they called this problem as no technical solution problem, and they think that these problems are closely related with the human class. Malthus said that the world is finite and this finite world can support finite population. Population growth will lead to miserable problems because the increasing population energy consume by the increasing population. Increasing population does not lead to increase goods. Each one of us seeks to maximize his gain, what is the utility to me, if I add one more animal to my herd? This utility has one negative and one positive component. The positive component is that the person will receive an additional value by the sale of one more animal. The positive utility is + 1. The negative component is the function of additional overgrazing created by one more animal. The negative utility is 1.

Tragedy of commons is based on the idea that freedom in common brings ruin to all, if a resource is held in common for use by all, then ultimately that resource will be destroyed. To avoid the ultimate destruction, we must change our human values and ideas of morality. The Tragedy of common plays an important role here; a common man finds that his share of cost of realizing wastes into the common is less than his share of costs of purifying his wastes before releasing them. The tragedy of common leads to the problem of Pollution. We are living in a system which pollutes our own nests. The tragedy of commons must be prevented by different means by coercive laws or taxation devises that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharged them untreated. The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not matter how a lonely America disposed his wastes. As the population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling process has became overloaded.

How to legislate temperance: There is no public as such; the individual acts are harming the environment. One does not know how badly his act haring others until one knows the total system in which his act appears. One does not know whether a man killing an elephant or setting fire to the grassland is harming others, the person has to take the whole system into consideration. In order to deal with the situation, as Adam Smith said we must have a government of laws no men. Prohibition is easy to legislate but how do we legislate temperance? It is not right to say that we can control the breeding of mankind by an appeal to conscience. We need not actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants to: we need merely make it extremely expensive for him to do so. We all grumble about the taxes but we accept the compulsory taxes because we recognize that voluntary taxes would favor the conscienceless. We institute and support taxes and other coercive devices to escape the horror of commons. Our alternative (to deal with the tragedy of commons) is the real estate and other material goods supported by the institution of private property. But we should must admit that our legal system of private property plus inheritance is unjust. This system is based on the rule that those who are biologically more fit to be custodians of property and power, should legally inherit more. We are moving with this unjust system because, no one has invented a better system (than this). The simplest summary of this man population problem is as follows: First we abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm land and restricting pasture and hunting and fishing areas. The restrictions are still not complete throughout the world. After this waste disposal is the another aspect we have to restrict. In the Western world, the restrictions on the disposal of domestic sewage are widely accepted but we are still struggling to control the commons from causing the acts of pollution by automobiles, factories, insecticide, sprayers, fertilizing operations and atomic energy installation. The only way we can preserve and nurture more precious freedom (of others) is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, the role of education is important to do so. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation.