"The
Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett Hardin, Science, 162(1968):1243-1248.
At the
end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, J.B. Wiesner
and H.F. York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are…confronted
by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing
national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this
dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look
for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result
will be to worsen the situation.'' [1]
I would
like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (national
security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached,
namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. An implicit
and almost universal assumption of discussions published in professional
and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion
has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one
that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences,
demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or
ideas of morality.
In our
day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome.
Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes courage to assert
that a desired technical solution is not possible. Wiesner and York
exhibited this courage; publishing in a science journal, they insisted
that the solution to the problem was not to be found in the natural
sciences. They cautiously qualified their statement with the phrase,
"It is our considered professional judgment...." Whether they
were right or not is not the concern of the present article. Rather,
the concern here is with the important concept of a class of human problems
which can be called "no technical solution problems," and
more specifically, with the identification and discussion of one of
these.
It is easy
to show that the class is not a null class. Recall the game of tick-tack-toe.
Consider the problem, "How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?"
It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions
of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put
another way, there is no "technical solution" to the problem.
I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word "win."
I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can falsify the records. Every
way in which I "win" involves, in some sense, an abandonment
of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course,
openly abandon the game — refuse to play it. This is what most
adults do.)
The class
of "no technical solution problems" has members. My thesis
is that the "population problem," as conventionally conceived,
is a member of this class. How it is conventionally conceived needs
some comment. 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. They think
that farming the seas or developing new strains of wheat will solve
the problem — technologically. I try to show here that the solution
they seek cannot be found. The population problem cannot be solved in
a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of
tick-tack-toe.
What
Shall We Maximize?
Population,
as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow "geometrically,"
or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means
that the per-capita share of the world's goods must decrease. Is ours
a finite world?
A fair
defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite or
that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems
that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology,
it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not,
during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the
terrestrial human population is finite. "Space" is no escape.
[2]
A finite
world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth
must eventually equal zero. (The case of perpetual wide fluctuations
above and below zero is a trivial variant that need not be discussed.)
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?
No —
for two reasons, each sufficient by itself. The first is a theoretical
one. It is not mathematically possible to maximize for two (or more)
variables at the same time. This was clearly stated by von Neumann and
Morgenstern, [3] but the principle is implicit
in the theory of partial differential equations, dating back at least
to D'Alembert (1717-1783).
The second
reason springs directly from biological facts. To live, any organism
must have a source of energy (for example, food). This energy is utilized
for two purposes: mere maintenance and work. For man maintenance of
life requires about 1600 kilocalories a day ("maintenance calories").
Anything that he does over and above merely staying alive will be defined
as work, and is supported by "work calories" which he takes
in. Work calories are used not only for what we call work in common
speech; they are also required for all forms of enjoyment, from swimming
and automobile racing to playing music and writing poetry. If our goal
is to maximize population it is obvious what we must do: We must make
the work calories per person approach as close to zero as possible.
No gourmet meals, no vacations, no sports, no music, no literature,
no art…I think that everyone will grant, without argument or proof,
that maximizing population does not maximize goods. Bentham's goal is
impossible.
In reaching
this conclusion I have made the usual assumption that it is the acquisition
of energy that is the problem. The appearance of atomic energy has led
some to question this assumption. However, given an infinite source
of energy, population growth still produces an inescapable problem.
The problem of the acquisition of energy is replaced by the problem
of its dissipation, as J. H. Fremlin has so wittily shown. [4]
The arithmetic signs in the analysis are, as it were, reversed; but
Bentham's goal is unobtainable.
The optimum
population is, then, less than the maximum. The difficulty of defining
the optimum is enormous; so far as I know, no one has seriously tackled
this problem. Reaching an acceptable and stable solution will surely
require more than one generation of hard analytical work — and
much persuasion.
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.
Theoretically
this may be true; but in real life incommensurables are commensurable.
Only a criterion of judgment and a system of weighting are needed. In
nature the criterion is survival. Is it better for a species to be small
and hideable, or large and powerful? Natural selection commensurates
the incommensurables. The compromise achieved depends on a natural weighting
of the values of the variables.
Man must
imitate this process. There is no doubt that in fact he already does,
but unconsciously. It is when the hidden decisions are made explicit
that the arguments begin. The problem for the years ahead is to work
out an acceptable theory of weighting. Synergistic effects, nonlinear
variation, and difficulties in discounting the future make the intellectual
problem difficult, but not (in principle) insoluble.
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. Any people that has intuitively identified
its optimum point will soon reach it, after which its growth rate becomes
and remains zero.
Of course,
a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population
is below its optimum. 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.
We can
make little progress in working toward optimum population size until
we explicitly exorcise the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of practical
demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth of Nations (1776) popularized
the "invisible hand," the idea that an individual who "intends
only his own gain," is, as it were, "led by an invisible hand
to promote…the public interest." [5]
Adam Smith did not assert that this was invariably true, and perhaps
neither did any of his followers. But he contributed to a dominant tendency
of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based
on rational analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions
reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire
society. If this assumption is correct it justifies the continuance
of our present policy of laissez faire in reproduction. If it is correct
we can assume that men will control their individual fecundity so as
to produce the optimum population. If the assumption is not correct,
we need to reexamine our individual freedoms to see which ones are defensible.
Tragedy
of Freedom in a Commons
The rebuttal
to the invisible hand in population control is to be found in a scenario
first sketched in a little-known Pamphlet in 1833 by a mathematical
amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). [6]
We may well call it "the tragedy of the commons," using the
word "tragedy" as the philosopher Whitehead used it [7]:
"The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides
in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things." He then
goes on to say, "This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated
in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness.
For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident
in the drama."
The tragedy
of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all.
It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle
as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably
satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease
keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity
of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is,
the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality.
At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates
tragedy.
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 decisionmaking
herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.
Adding
together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes
that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal
to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each
and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. 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. Ruin is the destination
toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a
society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons
brings ruin to all.
Some would
say that this is a platitude. Would that it were! In a sense, it was
learned thousands of years ago, but natural selection favors the forces
of psychological denial. [8] The individual benefits
as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society
as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers. Education can counteract
the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession
of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly
refreshed.
A simple
incident that occurred a few years ago in Leominster, Massachusetts
shows how perishable the knowledge is. During the Christmas shopping
season the parking meters downtown were covered with plastic bags that
bore tags reading: "Do not open until after Christmas. Free parking
courtesy of the mayor and city council." In other words, facing
the prospect of an increased demand for already scarce space, the city
fathers reinstituted the system of the commons. (Cynically, we suspect
that they gained more votes than they lost by this retrogressive act.)
In an approximate
way, the logic of the commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps
since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property
in real estate. But it is understood mostly only in special cases which
are not sufficiently generalized. Even at this late date, cattlemen
leasing national land on the Western ranges demonstrate no more than
an ambivalent understanding, in constantly pressuring federal authorities
to increase the head count to the point where overgrazing produces erosion
and weed-dominance. Likewise, the oceans of the world continue to suffer
from the survival of the philosophy of the commons. Maritime nations
still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the "freedom of
the seas." Professing to believe in the "inexhaustible resources
of the oceans," they bring species after species of fish and whales
closer to extinction. [9]
The National
Parks present another instance of the working out of the tragedy of
the commons. At present, they are open to all, without limit. The parks
themselves are limited in extent — there is only one Yosemite
Valley — whereas population seems to grow without limit. The values
that visitors seek in the parks are steadily eroded. Plainly, we must
soon cease to treat the parks as commons or they will be of no value
to anyone.
What shall
we do? We have several options. We might sell them off as private property.
We might keep them as public property, but allocate the right to enter
them. The allocation might be on the basis of wealth, by the use of
an auction system. It might be on the basis of merit, as defined by
some agreedupon standards. It might be by lottery. Or it might
be on a first-come, first-served basis, administered to long queues.
These, I think, are all objectionable. But we must choose — or
acquiesce in the destruction of the commons that we call our National
Parks.
Pollution
In a reverse
way, the tragedy of the commons reappears in problems of pollution.
Here it is not a question of taking something out of the commons, but
of putting something in — sewage, or chemical, radioactive, and
heat wastes into water; noxious and dangerous fumes into the air; and
distracting and unpleasant advertising signs into the line of sight.
The calculations of utility are much the same as before. The rational
man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into
the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing
them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of
"fouling our own nest," so long as we behave only as independent,
rational, free enterprisers.
The tragedy
of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something
formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us cannot readily
be fenced, and 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. We have not progressed as far with the solution of this problem
as we have with the first. Indeed, our particular concept of private
property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of
the earth, favors pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a
stream — whose property extends to the middle of the stream —
often has difficulty seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy
the waters flowing past his door. The law, always behind the times,
requires elaborate stitching and fitting to adapt it to this newly perceived
aspect of the commons.
The pollution
problem is a consequence of population. It did not much matter how a
lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste. "Flowing water
purifies itself every ten miles," my grandfather used to say, and
the myth was near enough to the truth when he was a boy, for there were
not too many people. But as population became denser, the natural chemical
and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a
redefinition of property rights.
How
to Legislate Temperance?
Analysis
of the pollution problem as a function of population density uncovers
a not generally recognized principle of morality, namely: the morality
of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is
performed. [10] Using the commons as a cesspool
does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because
there is no public; the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
A hundred and fifty years ago a plainsman could kill an American bison,
cut out only the tongue for his dinner, and discard the rest of the
animal. He was not in any important sense being wasteful. Today, with
only a few thousand bison left, we would be appalled at such behavior.
In passing,
it is worth noting that the morality of an act cannot be determined
from a photograph. 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. "One picture is worth a
thousand words," said an ancient Chinese; but it may take ten thousand
words to validate it. It is as tempting to ecologists as it is to reformers
in general to try to persuade others by way of the photographic shortcut.
But the essence of an argument cannot be photographed: it must be presented
rationally — in words.
That morality
is system-sensitive escaped the attention of most codifiers of ethics
in the past. "Thou shalt not…" is the form of traditional
ethical directives which make no allowance for particular circumstances.
The laws of our society follow the pattern of ancient ethics, and therefore
are poorly suited to governing a complex, crowded, changeable world.
Our epicyclic solution is to augment statutory law with administrative
law. Since it is practically impossible to spell out all the conditions
under which it is safe to burn trash in the back yard or to run an automobile
without smogcontrol, by law we delegate the details to bureaus.
The result is administrative law, which is rightly feared for an ancient
reason — Quis custodies ipsos custodes? —Who shall watch
the watchers themselves? John Adams said that we must have a "government
of laws and not men." Bureau administrators, trying to evaluate
the morality of acts in the total system, are singularly liable to corruption,
producing a government by men, not laws.
Prohibition
is easy to legislate (though not necessarily to enforce); but how do
we legislate temperance? Experience indicates that it can be accomplished
best through the mediation of administrative law. We limit possibilities
unnecessarily if we suppose that the sentiment of Quis custodiet denies
us the use of administrative law. We should rather retain the phrase
as a perpetual reminder of fearful dangers we cannot avoid. The great
challenge facing us now is to invent the corrective feedbacks that are
needed to keep custodians honest. We must find ways to legitimate the
needed authority of both the custodians and the corrective feedbacks.
Freedom
to Breed Is Intolerable
The tragedy
of the commons is involved in population problems in another way. In
a world governed solely by the principle of "dog eat dog"
—if indeed there ever was such a world—how many children
a family had would not be a matter of public concern. Parents who bred
too exuberantly would leave fewer descendants, not more, because they
would be unable to care adequately for their children. David Lack and
others have found that such a negative feedback demonstrably controls
the fecundity of birds. [11] But men are not birds,
and have not acted like them for millenniums, at least.
If each
human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children
of improvident parents starved to death; if thus, over breeding brought
its own "punishment" to the germ line — then there would
be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families. But our
society is deeply committed to the welfare state, [12]
and hence is confronted with another aspect of the tragedy of the commons.
In a welfare
state, how shall we deal with the family, the religion, the race, or
the class (or indeed any distinguishable and cohesive group) that adopts
over breeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandizement? [13]
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.
Unfortunately
this is just the course of action that is being pursued by the United
Nations. In late 1967, some thirty nations agreed to the following:
"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family
as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any
choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably
rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.'' [14]
It is painful
to have to deny categorically the validity of this right; denying it,
one feels as uncomfortable as a resident of Salem, Massachusetts, who
denied the reality of witches in the seventeenth century. At the present
time, in liberal quarters, something like a taboo acts to inhibit criticism
of the United Nations. There is a feeling that the United Nations is
"our last and best hope," that we shouldn't find fault with
it; we shouldn't play into the hands of the archconservatives. However,
let us not forget what Robert Louis Stevenson said: "The truth
that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy."
If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, even though it is promoted by the United
Nations. We should also join with Kingsley Davis [15]
in attempting to get Planned Parenthood-World Population to see the
error of its ways in embracing the same tragic ideal.
Conscience
Is Self-Eliminating
It is a
mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the
long run by an appeal to conscience. Charles Galton Darwin made this
point when he spoke on the centennial of the publication of his grandfather's
great book. The argument is straightforward and Darwinian.
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 differences will be accentuated, generation
by generation.
In C. G.
Darwin's words: "It may well be that it would take hundreds of
generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in this way, but
if it should do so, nature would have taken her revenge, and the variety
Homo contracipiens would become extinct and would be replaced by the
variety Homo progenitivus. [16]
The argument
assumes that conscience or the desire for children (no matter which)
is hereditary-but hereditary only in the most general formal sense.
The result will be the same whether the attitude is transmitted through
germ cells, or exosomatically, to use A. J. Lotka's term. (If one denies
the latter possibility as well as the former, then what's the point
of education?) The argument has here been stated in the context of the
population problem, but it applies equally well to any instance in which
society appeals to an individual exploiting a commons to restrain himself
for the general good — by means of his conscience. To make such
an appeal is to set up a selective system that works toward the elimination
of conscience from the race.
Pathogenic
Effects of Conscience
The long-term
disadvantage of an appeal to conscience should be enough to condemn
it; but it has serious short-term disadvantages as well. If we ask a
man who is exploiting a commons to desist "in the name of conscience,"
what are we saying to him? What does he hear? — not only at the
moment but also in the wee small hours of the night when, half asleep,
he remembers not merely the words we used but also the nonverbal communication
cues we gave him unawares? Sooner or later, consciously or subconsciously,
he senses that he has received two communications, and that they are
contradictory: 1. (intended communication) "If you don't do as
we ask, we will openly condemn you for not acting like a responsible
citizen"; 2. (the unintended communication) "If you do behave
as we ask, we will secretly condemn you for a simpleton who can be shamed
into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the commons."
Every man
then is caught in what Bateson has called a "double bind."
Bateson and his co-workers have made a plausible case for viewing the
double bind as an important causative factor in the genesis of schizophrenia.
[17] The double bind may not always be so damaging,
but it always endangers the mental health of anyone to whom it is applied.
"A bad conscience," said Nietzsche, "is a kind of illness."
To conjure
up a conscience in others is tempting to anyone who wishes to extend
his control beyond the legal limits. Leaders at the highest level succumb
to this temptation. Has any president during the past generation failed
to call on labor unions to moderate voluntarily their demands for higher
wages, or to steel companies to honor voluntary guidelines on prices?
I can recall none. The rhetoric used on such occasions is designed to
produce feelings of guilt in noncooperators.
For centuries
it was assumed without proof that guilt was a valuable, perhaps even
an indispensable, ingredient of the civilized life. Now, in this post-Freudian
world, we doubt it.
Paul Goodman
speaks from the modern point of view when he says: "No good has
ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion.
The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves,
and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to
their anxieties.'' [18]
One does
not have to be a professional psychiatrist to see the consequences of
anxiety. We in the Western world are just emerging from a dreadful two
centuries-long Dark Ages of Eros that was sustained partly by prohibition
laws, but perhaps more effectively by the anxiety-generating mechanisms
of education. Alex Comfort has told the story well in The Anxiety Makers;
[19] it is not a pretty one.
Since proof
is difficult, we may even concede that the results of anxiety may sometimes,
from certain points of view, be desirable. The larger question we should
ask is whether, as a matter of policy, we should ever encourage the
use of a technique the tendency (if not the intention) of which is psychologically
pathogenic. We hear much talk these days of responsible parenthood;
the coupled words are incorporated into the titles of some organizations
devoted to birth control. Some people have proposed massive propaganda
campaigns to instill responsibility into the nation's (or the world's)
breeders. But what is the meaning of the word conscience? When we use
the word responsibility in the absence of substantial sanctions are
we not trying to browbeat a free man in a commons into acting against
his own interest? Responsibility is a verbal counterfeit for a substantial
quid pro quo. It is an attempt to get something for nothing.
If the
word responsibility is to be used at all, I suggest that it be in the
sense Charles Frankel uses it. [20] "Responsibility,"
says this philosopher, "is the product of definite social arrangements."
Notice that Frankel calls for social arrangements — not propaganda.
Mutual
Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon
The social
arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create
coercion, of some sort. Consider bank robbing. The man who takes money
from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. 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.
The morality
of bank robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept
complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say "Thou
shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions. But temperance
also can be created by coercion. Taxing is a good coercive device. To
keep downtown shoppers temperate in their use of parking space we introduce
parking meters for short periods, and traffic fines for longer ones.
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. Not
prohibition, but carefully biased options are what we offer him. A Madison
Avenue man might call this persuasion; I prefer the greater candor of
the word coercion.
Coercion
is a dirty word to most liberals now, but it need not forever be so.
As with the four-letter words, its dirtiness can be cleansed away by
exposure to the light, by saying it over and over without apology or
embarrassment. To many, the word coercion implies arbitrary decisions
of distant and irresponsible bureaucrats; but this is not a necessary
part of its meaning. The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual
coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
To say
that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required
to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it. Who enjoys taxes? We all
grumble about them. But we accept compulsory taxes because we recognize
that voluntary taxes would favor the conscienceless. We institute and
(grumblingly) support taxes and other coercive devices to escape the
horror of the commons.
An alternative
to the commons need not be perfectly just to be preferable. With real
estate and other material goods, the alternative we have chosen is the
institution of private property coupled with legal inheritance. Is this
system perfectly just? As a genetically trained biologist I deny that
it is. It seems to me that, if there are to be differences in individual
inheritance, legal possession should be perfectly correlated with biological
inheritance-that those who are biologically more fit to be the custodians
of property and power should legally inherit more. But genetic recombination
continually makes a mockery of the doctrine of "like father, like
son" implicit in our laws of legal inheritance. An idiot can inherit
millions, and a trust fund can keep his estate intact. We must admit
that our legal system of private property plus inheritance is unjust
— but we put up with it because we are not convinced, at the moment,
that anyone has invented a better system. The alternative of the commons
is too horrifying to contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin.
It is one
of the peculiarities of the warfare between reform and the status quo
that it is thoughtlessly governed by a double standard. Whenever a reform
measure is proposed it is often defeated when its opponents triumphantly
discover a flaw in it. As Kingsley Davis has pointed out, [21]
worshipers of the status quo sometimes imply that no reform is possible
without unanimous agreement, an implication contrary to historical fact.
As nearly as I can make out, automatic rejection of proposed reforms
is based on one of two unconscious assumptions: (1) that the status
quo is perfect; or (2) that the choice we face is between reform and
no action; if the proposed reform is imperfect, we presumably should
take no action at all, while we wait for a perfect proposal.
But we
can never do nothing. That which we have done for thousands of years
is also action. It also produces evils. Once we are aware that the status
quo is action, we can then compare its discoverable advantages and disadvantages
with the predicted advantages and disadvantages of the proposed reform,
discounting as best we can for our lack of experience. On the basis
of such a comparison, we can make a rational decision which will not
involve the unworkable assumption that only perfect systems are tolerable.
Recognition
of Necessity
Perhaps
the simplest summary of this analysis of man's population problems is
this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under
conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased,
the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another.
First we
abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm land and restricting
pastures and hunting and fishing areas. These restrictions are still
not complete throughout the world.
Somewhat
later we saw that the commons as a place for waste disposal would also
have to be abandoned. Restrictions on the disposal of domestic sewage
are widely accepted in the Western world; we are still struggling to
close the commons to pollution by automobiles, factories, insecticide
sprayers, fertilizing operations, and atomic energy installations.
In a still
more embryonic state is our recognition of the evils of the commons
in matters of pleasure. There is almost no restriction on the propagation
of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping public is assaulted
with mindless music, without its consent. Our government has paid out
billions of dollars to create a supersonic transport which would disturb
50,000 people for every one person whisked from coast to coast 3 hours
faster. Advertisers muddy the airwaves of radio and television and pollute
the view of travelers. We are a long way from outlawing the commons
in matters of pleasure. Is this because our Puritan inheritance makes
us view pleasure as something of a sin, and pain (that is, the pollution
of advertising) as the sign of virtue?
Every new
enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody's personal
liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because
no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements
that we vigorously oppose; cries of "rights" and "freedom"
fill the air. But what does "freedom" mean? When men mutually
agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became more free, not less
so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to
bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion,
they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said,
"Freedom is the recognition of necessity."
The most
important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity
of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue
us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin
to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted
to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation
must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences
selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and
an increase in anxiety in the short.
The only
way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is
by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom
is the recognition of necessity" — and it is the role of
education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to
breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the
commons.
Notes
1. J. B.
Wiesner and H. F. York, Scientific American 211 (No. 4), 27 (1964).
2. G. Hardin,
Journal of Heredity 50, 68 (1959), S. von Hoernor, Science 137, 18,
(1962).
3. J. von
Neumann and O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1947), p. 11.
4. J. H.
Fremlin, New Scientist, No. 415 (1964), p. 285.
5. A. Smith,
The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library, New York, 1937), p. 423.
6. W. F.
Lloyd, Two Lectures on the Checks to Population (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, England, 1833).
7. A. N.
Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Mentor, New York, 1948), p.
17.
8. G. Hardin,
Ed., Population, Evolution, and Birth Control (Freeman, San Francisco,
1964), p. 56.
9. S. McVay,
Scientific American 216 (No. 8), 13 (1966).
10. J.
Fletcher, Situation Ethics (Westminster, Philadelphia, 1966).
11. D.
Lack, The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
England, 1954).
12. H.
Girvetz, From Wealth to Welfare (Stanford University Press, Stanford,
Calif, 1950).
13. G.
Hardin, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 6, 366 (1963).
14. U Thant,
International Planned Parenthood News, No. 168 (February 1968), p. 3.
15. K.
Davis, Science 158, 730 (1967).
16. S.
Tax, Ed., Evolution After Darwin (University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1960), vol. 2, p. 469.
17. G.
Bateson, D. D. Jackson, J. Haley, J. Weakland, Behavioral Science 1,
251 (1956).
18. P.
Goodman, New York Review of Books 10 (8), 22 (23 May 1968).
19. A.
Comfort, The Anxiety Makers (Nelson, London, 1967).
20. C.
Frankel, The Case for Modern Man (Harper & Row, New York, 1955),
p. 203.
21. J.
D. Roslansky, Genetics and the Future of Man (Appleton-Century-Crofts,
New York, 1966), p. 177.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE TRAGEDY
OF THE COMMON REVISITED
by Beryl Crowe (1969)
reprinted in MANAGING THE COMMONS
by Garrett Hardin and John Baden
W.H. Freeman, 1977; ISBN 0-7167-0476-5
"There has developed in the contemporary natural sciences a recognition
that there is a subset of problems, such as population, atomic war,
and environmental corruption, for which there are no technical solutions.
"There
is also an increasing recognition among contemporary social scientists
that there is a subset of problems, such as population, atomic war,
environmental corruption, and the recovery of a livable urban environment,
for which there are no current political solutions. The thesis of this
article is that the common area shared by these two subsets contains
most of the critical problems that threaten the very existence of contemporary
man." [p. 53]
ASSUMPTIONS
NECESSARY TO AVOID THE TRAGEDY
"In passing the technically insoluble problems over to the political
and social realm for solution, Hardin made three critical assumptions:
(1) that
there exists, or can be developed, a 'criterion of judgment and system
of weighting . . .' that will 'render the incommensurables . . . commensurable
. . . ' in real life;
(2) that,
possessing this criterion of judgment, 'coercion can be mutually agreed
upon,' and that the application of coercion to effect a solution to
problems will be effective in modern society; and
(3) that
the administrative system, supported by the criterion of judgment and
access to coercion, can and will protect the commons from further desecration."
[p. 55]
ERODING
MYTH OF THE COMMON VALUE SYSTEM
"In
America there existed, until very recently, a set of conditions which
perhaps made the solution to Hardin's subset possible; we lived with
the myth that we were 'one people, indivisible. . . .' This myth postulated
that we were the great 'melting pot' of the world wherein the diverse
cultural ores of Europe were poured into the crucible of the frontier
experience to produce a new alloy — an American civilization.
This new civilization was presumably united by a common value system
that was democratic, equalitarian, and existing under universally enforceable
rules contained in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
"In
the United States today, however, there is emerging a new set of behavior
patterns which suggest that the myth is either dead or dying. Instead
of believing and behaving in accordance with the myth, large sectors
of the population are developing life-styles and value hierarchies that
give contemporary Americans an appearance more closely analogous to
the particularistic, primitive forms of 'tribal' organizations in geographic
proximity than to that shining new alloy, the American civilization."
[p. 56]
"Looking
at a more recent analysis of the sickness of the core city, Wallace
F. Smith has argued that the productive model of the city is no longer
viable for the purposes of economic analysis. Instead, he develops a
model of the city as a site for leisure consumption, and then seems
to suggest that the nature of this model is such is such that the city
cannot regain its health because the leisure demands are value-based
and, hence do not admit to compromise and accommodation; consequently
there is no way of deciding among these value- oriented demands that
are being made on the core city.
"In
looking for the cause of the erosion of the myth of a common value system,
it seems to me that so long as our perceptions and knowledge of other
groups were formed largely through the written media of communication,
the American myth that we were a giant melting pot of equalitarians
could be sustained. In such a perceptual field it is tenable, if not
obvious, that men are motivated by interests. Interests can always be
compromised and accommodated without undermining our very being by sacrificing
values. Under the impact of electronic media, however, this psychological
distance has broken down and now we discover that these people with
whom we could formerly compromise on interests are not, after all, really
motivated by interests but by values. Their behavior in our very living
room betrays a set of values, moreover, that are incompatible with our
own, and consequently the compromises that we make are not those of
contract but of culture. While the former are acceptable, any form of
compromise on the latter is not a form of rational behavior but is rather
a clear case of either apostasy or heresy. Thus we have arrived not
at an age of accommodation but one of confrontation. In such an age
'incommensurables' remain 'incommensurable' in real life." [p.
59]
EROSION
OF THE MYTH OF THE MONOPOLY OF COERCIVE FORCE
"In the past, those who no longer subscribed to the values of the
dominant culture were held in check by the myth that the state possessed
a monopoly on coercive force. This myth has undergone continual erosion
since the end of World War II owing to the success of the strategy of
guerrilla warfare, as first revealed to the French in Indochina, and
later conclusively demonstrated in Algeria. Suffering as we do from
what Senator Fulbright has called 'the arrogance of power,' we have
been extremely slow to learn the lesson in Vietnam, although we now
realize that war is political and cannot be won by military means. It
is apparent that the myth of the monopoly of coercive force as it was
first qualified in the civil rights conflict in the South, then in our
urban ghettos, next on the streets of Chicago, and now on our college
campuses has lost its hold over the minds of Americans. The technology
of guerrilla warfare has made it evident that, while the state can win
battles, it cannot win wars of values. Coercive force which is centered
in the modern state cannot be sustained in the face of the active resistance
of some 10 percent of the population unless the state is willing to
embark on a deliberate policy of genocide directed against the value
dissident groups. The factor that sustained the myth of coercive force
in the past was the acceptance of a common value system. Whether the
latter exists is questionable in the modern nation-state." [p.p.
59-60]
EROSION
OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS
"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one
writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop
regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread
and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about
establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just,
and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest
in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of
the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period
of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a
general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political
quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested
groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient
pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency
to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase
even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the
agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [p.p. 60-61]