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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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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
Process
Processes
Chemicals
Population
Redefinition
Calling
Denser
Property
Overloaded
Became
Recycling
Rights
Chemical
Natural
Biological

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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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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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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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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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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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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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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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We see only what we have names for.
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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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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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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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Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
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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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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 competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms skyhooks. Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.
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