The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin - The Garrett Hardin Society - Articles - 5 views
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In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome.
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alperin on 11 Nov 11a truism?
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S Chou on 15 Nov 11An assumption.
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Now I know where the inspiration came for the scene from the greatest hacker movie of all time (spoiler alert): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWjlCaIrQo
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" This is the "lesson" scene from the movie War Games. Where we learn that the only way to win in Nuclear War is not to play."
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It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing any of the privileges they now enjoy.
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The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe.
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"Space" is no escape
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We want the maximum good per person; but what is good? To one person it is wilderness, to another it is ski lodges for thousands. To one it is estuaries to nourish ducks for hunters to shoot; to another it is factory land. Comparing one good with another is, we usually say, impossible because goods are incommensurable. Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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Any people that has intuitively identified its optimum point will soon reach it, after which its growth rate becomes and remains zero.
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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component. 1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1. 2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.
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Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited.
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My only problem with the cattle or sheep analogy is that there is someone making the decision about whether or not to add more. His argument seems to be concerning the optimal population of humanity. If that were the case, we would be akin to the cattle. And do the cattle have any idea of the tragedy of the commons? Who would be the higher authority figure weighing the costs and benefits of adding one more?
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Yeah, there is an odd analogy here that free parking is just like the commons but this doesn't really work for me because parking slots are a set and clearly defined resource. The city as a whole does not lose parking or destroy by making it free (although you could make the argument that they lose some tax revenue). There just isn't really a comparable tragedy here. On the other hand, if the city had allowed for parking ANYWHERE, on lawns, in public parks, on sidewalks, that might make more sense to me.
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Plainly, we must soon cease to treat the parks as commons or they will be of no value anyone.
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openly abandon the game--refuse to play it.
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tendency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society
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pollution problem is a consequence of population
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One does not know whether a man killing an elephant or setting fire to the grassland is harming others until one knows the total system in which his act appears.
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Parents who bred too exuberantly would leave fewer descendants, not more, because they would be unable to care adequately for their children.
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Curious connection to the tendency now in the US to have only one child and focus one getting advantages for that one
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Statistically one child families are on the rise in the US http://www.parentmap.com/article/choosing-to-have-just-one-dispelling-the-myths-of-the-only-child
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To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.
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Some people have proposed massive propaganda campaigns to instill responsibility into the nation's (or the world's) breeders.
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it must be presented rationally--in words
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commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density.
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"Who shall watch the watchers themselves?"
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There is a feeling that the United Nations is "our last and best hope,'' that we shouldn't find fault with it;
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People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The difference will be accentuated, generation by generation.
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I don't fully buy this argument about conscience. Is it proven that it is a genetic trait? On the other hand, this argument does hold for creating more inequality and poverty in todays society: people with higher levels of wealth have fewer babies, concentrating the wealth in smaller and smaller groups of people, while the poor are trapped in cycles of poverty in growing numbers...
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The argument assumes that conscience or the desire for children (no matter which) is hereditary
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"Responsibility," says this philosopher, "is the product of definite social arrangements." Notice that Frankel calls for social arrangements--not propaganda.
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We need not actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants to; we need merely make it increasingly expensive for him to do so.
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persuasion
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another great radio show, all about the advertising industry (very well produced and entertaining) http://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/
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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
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a criterion of judgment and a system of weighting are needed
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To conjure up a conscience in others is tempting to anyone who wishes to extend his control beyond the legal limits.
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When this condition is met, what will be the situation of mankind? Specifically, can Bentham's goal of "the greatest good for the greatest number" be realized?
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However, by any reasonable standards, the most rapidly growing populations on earth today are (in general) the most miserable. This association (which need not be invariable) casts doubt on the optimistic assumption that the positive growth rate of a population is evidence that it has yet to reach its optimum.
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so the tragedy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated.
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How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we follow Frankel's lead and insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither deny nor regret.