Monsanto, Pamela Abegail C.

BS Accountancy 1-3

ASSIGNMENT NO. 2
(Tragedy of the Commons by Garett Hardin)

The article Tragedy of the commons was written by Garett Hardin in 1968. In this article,
he presented the population problem and reflected the philosophy and writings of Thomas Robert
Malthus and emphasized several times that there is no technical solution to the problem; the
solution was not to be found in sciences, and that the problem requires a fundamental extension
in morality. (Hardin, 1968)

Hardin didn’t support the idea that improving the world’s food production technology
(relying on sciences) will allow an indefinite increase in population or eventually solve this
problem: "A finite world can support only a finite population." (Hardin, 1968) To elaborate,
population growth and increase in food production cannot co-exist together. Mathematically,
both factors cannot be maximized at once; and biophysically, the calories available per person
must decrease as population increases. (Neumann and Morgenstern, 2007) This lead to Hardin’s
invalidation of Jeremy Bentham's goal of "the greatest good for the greatest number," and
concluded that "the optimum population is, then, less than the maximum."

Hardin also contests Adam Smith's (1776) article entitled, The Wealth of Nations. Smith
stated here that whenever people decide on things for their own good, these acts are guided by
the mechanism of the "invisible hand," (laissez faire) and will eventually lead to a collective
benefit for the society. Hardin argues that if this theory is correct, people will intuitively choose
to limit their number of children. If not, social controls are required.

Garett Hardin presented a lot of points in the article but something that I have learned
from it is that the increase in population will affect the economy, society, and the environment. It
will lessen the resources in the world because the population and our resources have an indirect
proportion relationship. In other words, if one increases, the other one decreases. And this may
cause scarcity in resources that will affect the world’s economy negatively.
 This leads us to the societal effect, because of the lack in resources, a lot of people’s
basic need will not be met, like food, shelter, clothing, etc. and this decrease the quality of life of
the people in the society.

Lastly, it will majorly affect the environment, as well. Because the world is
overpopulated, people will pollute the land/ soil, bodies of water, the atmosphere, and the natural
environment. There will be excessive land wastes and because majority of these are not
biodegradable or recyclable, we need to find a way how to dispose of them. Not only land
wastes, but also water wastes as well. Especially these wastes and chemicals that are dumped in
the bodies of water will cause the death of a lot of marine organisms and resources including,
fishes, corals, etc. For the atmosphere, air pollution caused by overpopulation will destroy the
ozone layer, the layer that protects us from the ultraviolet rays of the sun that causes skin
diseases or skin cancer. Finally, overpopulation will disturb the natural environment in order to
develop it into infrastructures. This will cause a lot of organisms to lose their natural habitat.

In the article, Hardin mentioned solutions how to address overpopulation. I think that we
should follow his advice while it’s not yet too late because we will suffer the consequences of
our actions in the future if we do not immediately find a way to prevent these consequences from
occurring.

REFERENCES

Von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (2007). Theory of games and economic behavior
(commemorative edition). Princeton university press.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Hardin and Baden (eds) Managing the
Commons.
Garrett, H. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248.
Smith, A. (1937). The wealth of nations [1776].