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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.

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
Population
Less
Optimum
Maximum

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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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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.
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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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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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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.
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A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
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But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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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.
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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We see only what we have names for.
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Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.
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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.
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