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Incommensurables cannot be compared.

Garrett Hardin

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Garrett Hardin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1915
Born: April 21
Died: 2003
Died: September 14
Biologist
Demographer
Ecologist
Statistician
University Teacher
Dallas
Texas
Garrett James Hardin
Garrett J. Hardin
Compared
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
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You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.
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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
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Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
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We see only what we have names for.
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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
Garrett Hardin
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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
Garrett Hardin
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
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In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
Garrett Hardin
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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
Garrett Hardin
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A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Garrett Hardin