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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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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
Value
Possible
Comparing
Values
Relative
Action
Compare
Concept
Determined
Actions
Concepts

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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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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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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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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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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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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
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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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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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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.
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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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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 social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Garrett Hardin
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
Garrett Hardin