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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.

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
Earth
Progression
Human
Exploitation
Humans
Produced
Throughout
Destroy
Move
Moving
History
Colonize

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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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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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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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We see only what we have names for.
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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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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
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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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Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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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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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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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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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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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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