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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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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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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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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.
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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 essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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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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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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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
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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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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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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
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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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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 population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
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We see only what we have names for.
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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