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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.

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
Religion
Dogs
Moping
Keep
Atheist
Reputed
Also
Dog
Flabby
Must
Blessing
Duly
Atheism
Fundamentalists
Created
Fleas
Situation
Thankful
Getting
Blessings
Rationalists

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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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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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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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But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
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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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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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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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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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We see only what we have names for.
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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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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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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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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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