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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.

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
Shortage
Supply
Increasing
Cure
Cures

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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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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.
Garrett Hardin
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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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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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
Garrett Hardin
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
Garrett Hardin
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
Garrett Hardin
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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
Garrett Hardin
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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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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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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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We see only what we have names for.
Garrett Hardin