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Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species

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
Develop
Species
Dangerous
Potency
Free
Hubris
Others
Economists
Nature
Equations
Economist
Satisfied

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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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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
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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 social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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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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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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We see only what we have names for.
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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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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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
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Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.
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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
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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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