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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
Optimum
Maximum
Population
Less

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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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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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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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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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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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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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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
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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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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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The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.
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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.
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People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.
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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.
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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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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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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