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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.

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
Arrangements
Injustice
Produce
Create
Sort
Responsibility
Social
Coercion

More quotes by Garrett Hardin

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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.
Garrett Hardin
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
Garrett Hardin
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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
Garrett Hardin
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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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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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?
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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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.
Garrett Hardin
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Garrett Hardin
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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
Garrett Hardin
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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
Garrett Hardin
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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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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.
Garrett Hardin