A Theory Of Normal Accidents

Throughout history there have been many examples of tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons is when people in a certain area over exploit a common resource which leads toa higher problem. Tragedy of the commons normally happens when people get greedy and get more than they really need. For example, if one farmer is public grazing area were to add a cow over the limit the field can sustain it won’t do much damage but if the other farmers also add another cow to the field it could end up harming it to the point where it is no longer usable.This comes to show that if even a single person becomes greedy it could ruin so many things for other people. Ideas will be pulled out from Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” to be used in this essay.

While appealing to humanitarian causes, this plan can lead to what Hardin calls “the tragedy of the commons”. Because the resources are equally distributed with equal access, no one person is in control. This can lead to abusing and overexploiting the resources. A real-world example of this theory is the World Food Bank. The World Food Bank was a suggestion that rich countries donate food to the bank and in an emergency any country could withdraw from it. Hardin argues that such a bank would perpetuate the cycle of world hunger and it would deplete the world of its natural resources, only making the problem

Accidents will continue to happen and occur. Be it a near-miss, minor-injury, disabling-injury, or fatality, an accident will happen somewhere, sometime, someplace. The optimum measure to minimize accidents is three-fold, which are education, reinforcement and

      Logos is the logic, internal consistency, and clarity of the argument and it is split into claims, reasons, grounds, warrants, backing, and qualifiers. Hardin begins his essay by establishing his main claim, which is the idea that he believes is the most believable, that the world’s resources cannot be distributed equally, and any attempts to equally distribute current resources will ruin them. He does this by using the metaphor of the earth and its resources as a lifeboat. Only so many people may fit on this lifeboat, just as so many people may have access to the world’s very limited resources, and trying to fit too many people on this lifeboat will sink it. This phenomenon he calls “The Tragedy of the Commons”. He supports this claim with reasons and grounds; reasons being claims which support his initial claim, and grounds being supporting evidence that leads the audience to support the reasons. His warrant, or understood belief, is that spoiling resources and leading the world to ruin is not optimal,

The tragedy of the commons is a pretty basic concept. So essentially, this theory states that people will use a shared resource to their own self-interests and ultimately “consume” the resource until its value is diminished (Brander, 2014).

The Tragedy of the Commons and the Lorax bring to the people’s attention that a growing population that is growing as if there are infinite amount of resources will do severe damage to the environment. The Tragedy of the Commons was an essay written in 1968 by an American ecologist by name of Garret Hardin. Hardin explains in his essay that the Tragedy of the Commons is an economic problem in which every individual who tries to reap the greatest benefit from a given resource. Then when demand for that particular resource surpasses the supply, every individual who consumes another unit of that resource will directly harm others who cannot reap the benefit as well. This particular economic problem is analogous to what happens in the movie The Lorax. The Lorax is about a greedy businessman known as Once-ler who shows up to a forest. Then cuts down all the trees to make his invention, while being chastised by a furry orange create known as the Lorax but he doesn’t listen. By the end of the movie there are no more trees and all the animals have lost their homes and Once-ler is poor again. The Lorax indirectly address the issue of the Tragedy of the Commons since it deals with the fundamental problem of unlimited needs and wants and limited resources.

Garrett Hardin wrote an essay titled “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”. In this essay he spoke of the Earth being similar to a lifeboat in which it has limited capacity and resources. This is a fair assumption, as the Earth does have limited resources and carrying capacity. He mentions that we are “adrift in a moral sea” saying that in today’s world it is morally abhorrent to not help a person in need but that we should do what we have to in order to survive ourselves. Hardin mentions a “tragedy of the commons” he states that if a pasture were to become a commons it would only take one person to not show restraint to ruin the system and cause mass suffering. He uses the world’s air and water as an example claiming that they

In Hardin’s, The Tragedy of the Commons, he makes two major points that are still widely accepted. He argues that people act in their own self interest which causes them to over use the resources in the commons and that the only way to solve this problem is by utilizing socialism or privatizing free enterprises. This is not always true because there are people who have organized themselves in a way to manager common pool resources that allowed them use a long-term sustainable institution for governing resources. Government ownership and privatization does not always work. In China, Mongolia, and southern Siberia, there are signs of degradation where there is government regulation of the land. China and

Garrett Hardin first proposed in 1998 that the tragedy of the commons cannot be solved with a technical solution, which he claims is the most socially acceptable type of solution. Hardin goes on to point out and question social boundaries by challenging his reader to ask him or herself what is “good” (Hardin 1244). He acknowledges that “good” is usually considered to be a varied concept that is open to human interpretation and construction; however, “natural selection commensurates the incommensurable” (1244). Hardin’s proposal that freedom is the catalyst for ruin in a communal society is one of his most controversial claims because he argues that autonomy leaves room for selfish motivations that lead to the destruction of the overall good. For example, Hardin briefly discusses world pollution. The atmosphere and oceans are shared resourced or “commons” for which many people do not feel responsible, and thus, they are commons which have been damaged and polluted, affecting both those culpable and inculpable of the created “cesspool” (1245). Hardin’s interpretation challenges traditional morals that stem

Answer 1: Tragedy of the commons exposes the ignored truth that supply of resources is limited. Everyone has equal right on common resources and this freedom works if there are limits. Increase in demand by an additional unit will reduce supply by same and at certain stage the demand will overwhelms the supply. This situation occurs when individuals tries to maximize the benefit while neglecting the society. Water is going through same phase due to which it’s being privatized and may be in future it is not -common.

Motor vehicle travel remains the foremost mode of transportation not only in the United States, but in all countries, which provides a great degree of flexibility. However, for all its advantages, injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes are still the leading cause of death for individuals under the age of 27. As many have witnessed, accidents can arise at any time and occur about every 60 seconds. When operating motor vehicles a person increases the probability of triggering an accident or being involved in one, with that in mind, the worst outcome can take place. Fatalities are a reality and the worst aftermath of an accident, as well as, the most devastating. Fatalities on the highway occur about every 16 minutes, according to

The classic essay Tragedy of the Commons describes the dilemma society faces when the interests of a group conflicts with the interests of individuals (Hardin, 1968). The example presented is that of a group of cattle ranchers commingling their cattle in a common pasture. At full capacity, each cattle owner still has an incentive to include additional cattle, since the slight decrease in overall yield per animal is offset by the additional animal. Unfortunately, this overgrazing inevitably leads to failure of the commons. The community goal of maximizing food production can only be achieved by placing controls on the interests of the individual cattle ranchers in favor of those of the community (Hardin, 1968). This paper is

‘A general view of accident causation in complex systems’, in Human Error, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Normal accident theory and Swiss cheese model are influential models in studying system accident causation. This paper is going to help us to gain understanding of both models and to critically compare them. The first part of the study is an introduction of the both models. In the second part, Three Mile Island nuclear accident will be taken as an example to see how the models analyse causations of an accident. In this part, the fact of the accident will be presented first, then normal accident theory and Swiss cheese model will be invited to identify the causes of the accident respectively. The evaluation and comparison of the two models will be discussed in the final part. Both models conclude that accidents are

The aim of this essay is to determine the inevitability of organisational accidents. An organisational accident is defined as an undesired or potentially disastrous event that is caused by the decisions and actions of the company. This essay will argue that organisational accidents cannot be avoided. As a first step, this essay will detail Perrow’s Normal Accident Theory in which he asserts that the implementation of complex systems by organisations / companies has resulted in unpreventable organisational accidents. The 2011 Fukasmi nuclear accident will be explained to support this assertion. As a second step, human error by those in the organisation as a factor which causes accidents will be analysed through Reason’s