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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable

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
Competitive
Limited
Total
Resources
Freedom
Individual
Action
World
Intolerable

More quotes by 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.
Garrett Hardin
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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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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Garrett Hardin
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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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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
Garrett Hardin
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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 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 only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
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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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
Garrett Hardin
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
Garrett Hardin
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
Garrett Hardin
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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