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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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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
General
Metropolis
Conditions
Commons
Public
Frontier
Doe
Frontiers
Unbearable
Harm
Using
Behavior
Cesspool

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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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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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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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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.
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
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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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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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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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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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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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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.
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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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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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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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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
Garrett Hardin