Selection #7 Tragedy of the Commons

Garrett Hardin, the author of this selection, controversial views on population, evolution , and birth control earned him an international reputation as an influencial, outspoken critic of the ecological and environmental community. The best known print was the "Tragedy of the Commons" where he explains a story of a pasture becoming overgrazed and destroyed because each herdsmen who's animals grazed on it considered only their families needs and not the future needs for the use of this land. Hardin compared this to the worlds food source from the oceans because the ocean is essentially not privately owned. His research went to prove that more food simply increases the population of the world.

In the past technical problems were solved with technical solutions. Technical solutions is defined by one that requires change only in the techniques of natural sciences, with little or no change to our values, or ideas of morals. The concern is the important concept of a class of human problems that can be called the "no technical solution problems". For example the game of tick-tack-toe would fit this class. It is well known that the game cannot be won, assuming that the opponent understands the game perfectly. In other words, there is no technical solution to this problem.

This class of problems has many more members, such as the population problem. People must let go of many priviledges they now enjoy, in order to solve this problem, because the population crisis cannot be fixed by farming the seas, or genetically modifying plants to grow faster. In a simpler term, the population problem cannot be solved technically no more than winning the game of tick-tack-toe.


We have a tendency to assume the actions taken individually are presumably the best for an entire society. If this assumption is correct, the assumption of each individual deciding what is the optimum population will continue. We need to reexamine our freedoms to see which ones are defensible.

There are both positive and negative results of tragedy of the commons, for example a pasture will bring an income to the farmer by selling the cattle. The negative effect would essentially be overgrazing, which is shared by all farmers using the same land. Each herdsman continues to add another cattle and another without any limits, the problem is the world has limits. Therefore if we continue this idea of individual benefit the society and future generations will suffer. The oceans of the world currently suffer but maritime nations still continue to respond about the freedom of the seas. They claim the oceans have abundant amount of resources, they are bringing many species of fish and sea mammals to extinction. Presently, National Parks have the same idea concluding the tragedy of the commons, since they are open to everyone. We must chose to either sell these parks as private land, or continue to inforce stronger regulations that will keep most people outside the parks.


We can say that pollution is working the opposite of the tragedy of the commons, such as pollution is additioning not diminishing things from our natural environment. We continue to add sewage, chemicals, radioactive waste in water, and dangerous fumes in the air, into our environment which will lead to a world wide tragedy of the commons crisis. Solving these problems means coercive laws, but the laws are always outdated so they must be changed to fit to new perspectives. The pollution problem we are facing is essentially one from an abundance of people on earth all contributing their share of wastes.


Our society is deeply commited to a welfare state, supported by the United Nations, heance our freedom to breed means everyone who is born has the same rights to the commons really locks our world into a tragic course of action. This being said we must supress the human rights of reproduction supported by the United Nations.

We make a mistake when we think we can control breeding of mankind in the long run. It would take us hundreds of generations to reproduce like this, but nature can take revenge and Homo Contracipiens will be extinct. Our desire for children is hereditarily so the message must be passed down hereditarily.

The way we will push family responsibilites is through coercion and not prohibition, with careful biased options. Mutual coercion is plausible, not that we have to enjoy the idea such as taxes. Our system is "like father like son" is the only system invented so we comply to it. We all make assumptions that only perfect systems work.