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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'

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
Plausible
Followed
Policy
Question
Must
Every

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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
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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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We see only what we have names for.
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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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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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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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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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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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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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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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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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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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Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.
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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Garrett Hardin