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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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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
Understood
Estate
Perhaps
Estates
Since
Agriculture
Real
Invention
Long
Logic
Way
Discovery
Time
Private
Approximate
Property
Commons

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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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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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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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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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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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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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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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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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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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A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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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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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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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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