Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy Of The Commons

Garrett Hardin published in Psychology Today in September 1974. This passage is an excerpt from his popular paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” as a warning that overpopulation was dangerous due to how limited Earth’s resources are. This theory is reflected in Hardin’s thesis that the rich should do nothing to help the people of poor nations and turn away those trying to come in. Hardin used the imagery of a lifeboat almost filled in a sea full of drowning people to pose and answer a single question, “what should the lifeboat passengers do?” (290). Hardin's answer was to defend the boat against all trying to board. If anyone felt guilty about this course of action they should feel free to swap places with a drowning man and give them their

Common pool resources denotes natural resources used by many individuals in common, such as fisheries, groundwater basins, and irrigation systems. Such resources have long been subject to overexploitation and misuse by individuals acting in their own best interests.

While fear itself is a healthy emotion, irrational fears cause people to take irrational actions. In The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner, the aspects of human's response to fear are explained in four different groups. When people experience fear, naturally they come together with the people who share similar beliefs (Gardner 15). Gardner describes this gravitation as “group polarization” and with this comes confirmation bias. When the groups of people come together with the bias they hold to be true if confirmed and strengthened by those who share them (Gardner 15). The actions of these groups are based on the two systems of thinking. System one thinking is fast, involving feelings and emotions. Whereas system two thinking is based on reason and logic within one's actions (Gardner 15). However, the actions caused by fear are sometimes out of the thought of fear rather than the reality of it. The reality is that “ the only thing we have to fear … if fear itself-

Have you ever thought about how your actions or opinions affected the environment around you? We’re constantly unaware of what we do that impacts the environment’s condition. One author named Wendell Berry blames the public in his article regarding the way society and the industry has treated the environment and its natural resources. This raises concerns whether we should be putting more importance on the economy or the land that we live in for the sake of our future survival. While I agree with most of Berry’s points and perspectives I slightly disagree with a few of his opinions, but nonetheless he brings up a great matter in today’s modern society.

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

Sometimes no negative, fear-based thoughts may seem a bit unreasonable. At some point, one will creep into our mind. Canfield

The Treadmills of Consumption and Production together explain Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons. According to the textbook An Innovation to Environmental Sociology, Treadmill of Consumption theory is the process of moving materially ahead without making any real gain. In other words it is the process of consumers fighting to stay ahead of neighbors, making more money to keep buying more and better items. However, these material things do not actually bring people much more happiness or personal gain, because once the consumer has consumed, he or she needs more. In the Tragedy of the Commons, there is a common grazing land for cattle. Each farmer eventually asks himself how he can best maximize his gain, the answer; adding more and more cattle to his herd. Eventually, the land does not support the amount of cattle that all the farmers have added, and the commons area is ruined. The treadmill of consumption theory explains the first part of the tragedy well, as it explains why the farmers wanted to expand their herds in the first place. Each farmer wanted the gains that came from adding cattle, and having a large herd than others. According to the textbook, Treadmill of Production is “mutual economic pinching that gets everyone running faster but without much advancement”, tending to only escalate production and push aside any concern for the environment. Treadmill of Production in the Tragedy of the Commons explains why the farmers continued to add cattle to their herds to the

When parents around the world raise their children, it is common for them to pass on their political, social, and economic ideologies, and although there can be outliers it’s not nearly as common. For example, a child raised in a Catholic home is more likely to follow the Catholic faith than a child who is raised to be agnostic. And the reverse is also true, the child who is raised agnostic is most likely going to remain agnostic in their adult life, because that’s what their parents passed on to them. However, as Garrett Hardin explains in his essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” “conscience is self-eliminating.” Although some readers may believe the proper interpretation of this is that people’s ideologies will naturally change over time, I disagree. I contend that what Hardin means is certain mindsets will die out based on the decision by parents to either pass on their ideology to their children, or not to. This is because if parents choose not to pass their beliefs onto

The individual asks him or herself ‘“What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?”’ (Tragedy of the Commons 1244). Using the logic of the commons, it is easier for the individual to rationalize harming the public while personally profiting. This results in people with weaker consciences receiving unfair gain from the system and eventually causing the behavior to proliferate. Hardin says “[t]o make such an appeal is to set up a selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience from the race.” He continues on to recommend “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected,” in effect, laws that punish detrimental behavior. In a finite world, we, as humans, must decide how to best distribute our limited resources. When people only consider themselves and their own gain, they rarely acknowledge that resources are limited. Couple this with a large population in a concentrated area, and the logic of the commons is simply unsustainable. If population growth continues at its high pace, it becomes clear that if people are operating by commons philosophy, the law must reconsider what rights we have as individuals and what must be enacted through formal legislation. This is applicable regarding the problem of pollution as everyone adds a small amount of pollution to the environment gradually decreasing the overall quality of our shared environment. The impurities will build up over time and cause muddied, unusable water and a smog-filled atmosphere. To avoid this, Hardin suggests taxing pollution-inducing plants so that it is more costly to pollute rivers and streams than it is to purify the water. As a plan that is both practical and applicable, it will divert the tragedy of the commons in a way that discourages rather than encourages

Garrett Hardin developed the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons. The basic concept is a giant pasture that is for everyone to have a piece of land and for the herdsman to have as many cattle a possible to sustain the land. This land should be able to maintain itself for quite a long time because of cattle dying as well as the population staying relatively stable. But at some point the population will begin growing and the herdsman will want to maximize their profits by having more cattle, which in return the land cannot sustain. The herdsman receives all the profit from adding one more animal to the pasture so the herdsman will eventually begin adding more cattle, but the overgrazing caused by that added animal will destroy the land

For hundreds of years, humans have exploited the environment for resources in a somewhat selfish manner. This has pushed Earth to breaking point, and caused large scale environmental problems such as global warming, deforestation, water pollution, air pollution and animal extinction. These problems have to be solved by those who created them, however there are contrasting arguments on the methods to do this. Garrett Hardin (1968) states in this Tragedy of the Commons paper that mutual coercion is needed to solved dilemmas involving the environment as appeals to conscience are too long term to make an effective mark, or alternatively making property private so each individual is responsible for their land and any issues that arise from their

The Tragedy of the commons is a resource shared by many individuals. An ecologist made the Tragedy of the Commons by the name of Garret Harding. There are many real life examples of Tragedy of the commons. Real life examples of Tragedy of the Commons are Grand Banks fisheries, Passenger Pigeons, Unregulated logging, and Population Growth.

After doing several hours of extended research on this topic, one thing has become very clear, we humans interfere far too often and usually end up causing destruction far more than good, even when intentions were well meant. Of course, it is quite impossible to always clearly foresee future results of our actions, but without taking the time to thoroughly think through all the possibilities, we achieve what we have with agriculture; a problematic planet which is slowly falling apart.

“The Tragedy of the Commons” written by Garret Hardin explains how the human population is degrading the environment. When Hardin refers to commons he is talking about a resource that is owned by no one and used by a group of people. Some examples of commons include the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the oceans we fish. The tragedy is that people don’t look at the bigger picture; the over use of commons for our own personal benefit leads to the destruction or extinction of these commons. For example if one fisherman wants to fish the oceans as much as possible that’s fine, but now imagine if every fisherman wants to fish the oceans as much as they can, this is one example of a common being destroyed by the human population. The

Hardin addresses the issue of pollution stating that “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” (Hardin, 1968, p. 1245). Thus, the rational man finds that it is more economical to discharge his waste into the commons. Hardin’s states that an increase in the population is vastly threatening our environment due to its direct relation to increased pollution. Therefore, to avoid pollution, it must be easier and lower in cost to treat the pollutants, than to get rid of them untreated. As the numbers of people increase, there will inevitably be rising levels of pollution, degeneration of the quality of agricultural land, deforestation, and deterioration of air and water quality. To prevent this deterioration, Hardin believes our first aim should be to arrest the growth of world