The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin) - Key Concepts

Main Idea

• The big problem of overpopulation cannot be solved only with science or new technology; it needs a major change in how we think about what is right and wrong (our morality).
• This idea is like what Wiesner and York said: some problems, like nuclear war, don't have only a technical fix. This author, Hardin, says population is one of these problems—it needs changes in our values and ethics, not just scientific fixes.
• Key Term: "No technical solution problems": These are special kinds of problems that cannot be fixed by just using more science, technology, or money. Instead, they require a fundamental change in how people behave or what they believe is morally right or wrong. The population problem is considered one of these because simply inventing new food sources or medicines won't stop people from having too many children if they believe it's their right.
• Think of it like this: In tic-tac-toe, if your opponent knows all the best moves, you can't technically win. You have to change what winning means, or stop playing altogether. The population problem is similar; a simple technical solution won't just make it disappear.
• The main point: Trying to solve population growth just with technology (like creating new types of wheat or farming the oceans) won't work in the long run. We need to change our basic moral beliefs and assumptions.

What Should We Aim For?

• Key Term: "Bentham's goal": This refers to the idea from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who believed that the best society is one where the greatest good is provided for the greatest number of people. However, in a world with limited resources, this goal is very hard to achieve because you often have to choose between different good things; you can't have all of them at their maximum at the same time. The author argues that when it comes to population, trying to maximize both the number of people and their well-being simultaneously is impossible.

• In our world with limited stuff, if the population keeps growing, the amount of good things each person gets tends to go down, leading to more suffering. You simply cannot make two (or more) things as high as possible at the exact same time.

• Math thought process:

  • Key Term: "Exponential population growth": This describes a type of growth where the population increases at a rate proportional to its current size, meaning it gets faster as the population gets larger. Mathematically, it's expressed as P(t) \propto e^{rt} where P(t) is the population at time t, e is the base of the natural logarithm, r is the constant growth rate, and t is time. If r>0, the population continuously grows, becoming larger at an ever-increasing pace, much like a snowball rolling downhill and gathering more snow. This rapid growth quickly butts against the finite limits of our planet.
  • A world with limited space and resources can only support so many people. If population growth stops (zero growth), the world reaches a steady, balanced state.

• Energy counting idea:

  • Each person needs a certain amount of energy just to live and maintain their body. This is referred to as Key Term: "Maintenance calories", which is approximately m = 1600\ \text{kcal/day}. This is the minimum amount of food-energy a human needs just to survive and keep their body functioning without doing any significant work or having any luxuries.
  • Beyond just surviving, people use energy for work and for enjoyment (like hobbies or entertainment). If we tried to fit the largest possible population, people would only get maintenance calories, and all the 'goods' that make life more than just survival would disappear.
  • If the total energy available each day is E\ \text{(kcal/day)}, then the absolute maximum population that could survive (using only maintenance energy) is given by:

  P_{\max} = \frac{E}{m} = \frac{E}{1600}\,

  • Even if we had endless energy, we'd have a different problem: how to get rid of (dissipate) all that extra heat and waste. So, even with unlimited energy, aiming for "greatest good for greatest number" still doesn't work perfectly.

• The best population size (if we could find it) would therefore be smaller than the maximum possible population. Figuring out and reaching this acceptable, stable best population would need careful thought over many generations.

• Key Term: "Incommensurable goods": This refers to good things or values that cannot be easily measured or compared using a single standard or scale. For example, how do you directly compare the value of preserving a beautiful wilderness area with the economic benefits of building a ski resort on that land? Or the importance of estuaries for wildlife versus using that land for a factory? Since there's no single unit to measure "good" across all these different items, it's hard to make decisions that maximize a single "good" for everyone.

• Currently, no known society is both wealthy and has zero population growth in a balanced way. In fact, fast population growth often goes hand-in-hand with hardship, which suggests that growth doesn't always lead to the "maximum goods."

• Key Term: "Invisible hand" (Adam Smith): This is an economic concept introduced by Adam Smith, suggesting that individuals seeking their own self-interest, when they interact freely in a market, unintentionally create a greater benefit for society as a whole. The author argues that this "invisible hand" does not work for population ethics; individual decisions about family size, driven by personal desires, do not automatically lead to the best population outcome for the entire society.

The Tragedy of the Commons

• Key Term: "The Tragedy of the Commons": This is a powerful concept used to explain why shared, unregulated resources tend to be overused and eventually destroyed, even when every individual acting rationally knows it's bad for the group in the long run. It describes a situation where many people share a resource (the "commons"), like a public pasture, a fishing ground, or even clean air. Each person, wanting to maximize their own gain, uses more and more of the resource. Because the costs of this overuse are spread among all users, while the benefits are individual, no one feels the full negative impact of their own actions. This leads to a situation where individual rationality (acting selfishly) leads to collective ruin (the destruction of the shared resource).

• Older idea: William Forster Lloyd in 1833 described a shared field (a "commons") where individuals, acting selfishly, eventually use up the resource completely.

• Hardin's explanation (the tragedy): When a resource is open for anyone to use (a "commons"), logical people will each try to use more of it for themselves. This individual self-interest, when multiplied across many people, leads to the destruction of the shared resource for everyone.

• How it works (for each herdsman):

  • The good part: When a herdsman adds one more animal to the shared pasture, they get all the profit from selling that animal. This is a private gain, roughly like +1 unit of value.
  • The bad part: The extra grazing caused by that one animal damages the pasture a little. But this damage is shared by all the herdsmen. So, the cost to the individual herdsman is just a small fraction of the total damage.
  • If there are H herdsmen sharing the pasture, the extra private benefit for one herdsman adding another animal is:

  \Delta U_i = +1 - \frac{1}{H}\,

  This formula shows that as long as there's more than one herdsman (H>1), the individual gain from adding an animal is always positive for the person adding it. So, each smart herdsman keeps adding animals, eventually destroying the pasture for everyone.

• The tragedy is this: The very freedom to use a shared resource without limits can end up destroying the resource itself, and therefore, ending the freedom it once offered.

• This problem applies to other shared resources too, like oceans, air, water, and public parks, especially when what individuals want (more use for themselves) does not match what's good for everyone together.

Education, Learning, and How Wisdom Can Be Lost

• Education can help people understand why it's important not to harm shared resources. However, knowledge and wisdom can be forgotten or disappear over generations if not constantly taught and reinforced.
• A quick example: The town of Leominster once again had a problem with parking meters during busy times. People treated parking spots like a free-for-all resource (a commons), suggesting that social rules can break down if there isn't consistent policy or enforcement.
• In reality, places like our oceans and National Parks show an ongoing struggle to balance open access (letting everyone use them) with using them in a way that keeps them healthy for the future.
• Solutions often involve making shared resources more like private property, or creating rules to control who gets access (based on money, merit, a lottery, or first-come-first-served). But all these solutions have their own downsides.

Pollution as a Shared Resource Problem

• Pollution is a shift from taking resources (like fish from the ocean) to dumping waste into shared resources (like sewage, chemicals, heat, or fumes into air and water).
• The idea of private property works well for protecting things like food, but it's hard to use for air and water pollution because these resources cannot be easily owned or "fenced off."
• A moral rule: What is considered right or wrong depends on the situation at the time. What might be acceptable when there are very few people (frontier conditions) becomes completely unacceptable when many people live close together (dense populations).
• A problem with using photos: You can't make fair moral judgments just from a single picture without understanding the whole system and all the details around the action shown.
• Administrative law (rules made by government agencies, not just written laws) is needed to manage complex situations that change quickly. Standard laws can't predict every possible future problem. This system needs strong, continuous checks on the people in charge (the "watchers") to prevent corruption or misuse of power. This brings up the question: Key Term: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" This is a Latin phrase meaning "Who watches the watchers?" It highlights the critical problem of oversight: if those in power who are meant to protect the public good are themselves unchecked, who will ensure they act properly and don't abuse their authority?
• Outright bans (prohibition) are easy to make into laws but often don't work well. Controlling behavior like how much people drink (temperance) or how much pollution they create is better achieved through government rule-making and through "mutual coercion."

How to Create Rules for Moderation? Mutual Coercion

• The main idea: Simply asking people to act responsibly because of their conscience is not enough and can actually cause problems in the long run.
• Key Term: "Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon": This is the central solution proposed by Hardin. It means that freedom in the commons must be managed through social arrangements where people collectively agree to coerce (or compel) each other to act in ways that benefit the common good. This isn't about top-down dictatorship, but about shared rules that individuals support because they understand it's necessary to avoid chaos and ruin. Examples include taxes, laws against pollution, or parking fees. These measures restrict individual absolute freedom but protect the long-term freedom and well-being of the group by preventing the destruction of shared resources.
• Examples: This includes things like taxes, fees, or other ways to control behavior that make polluting or using too many resources more expensive than choosing sustainable options.
• The goal is not to ban things completely, but to gently push choices towards what benefits the public.
• The alternative to having open shared resources (the commons) is not a perfectly fair system, but a practical system that works.
• Having private property and family inheritance rules, even if they aren't perfectly fair, prevent total disaster and are better than the breakdown that comes from having everything as shared resources.
• Change is necessary: Staying exactly as we are often leads to vague but serious bad consequences eventually. Practical changes should be judged by how much good they are expected to do compared to their costs.

The Freedom to Have Unlimited Children Is Not Acceptable

• Key Term: "Freedom to breed is intolerable": This is one of Hardin's most controversial and direct claims. He argues that in a world with limited resources and a growing population, the idea that every individual has an unlimited right to have as many children as they want is not sustainable and will inevitably lead to the destruction of the shared environment and all other freedoms. He says this freedom must be abandoned for the sake of survival and the common good of humanity. This doesn't mean banning children, but rather implementing societal controls on family size to prevent overpopulation.
• Imagine this (thought experiment): In a world where it's "every person for themselves" (dog-eat-dog competition), family size would be a private decision without anyone else worrying. Natural checks and balances (like those seen in birds, as studied by Lack) could control birth rates.
• But humans live in a welfare state, where the government helps people. This changes things: different groups (families, religions, races, classes) might decide to have many children to gain an advantage for their group, which then risks harming the shared resources for everyone.
• The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that the size of a family is a private matter. Hardin argues this is a dangerous idea that threatens the safety and well-being of the whole group.
• He believes we need to change how we see this "right" and actively go against it when talking about population ethics. He supports ideas promoted by Kingsley Davis and Planned Parenthood-World Population.
• Main argument: The "freedom to have unlimited children" must be given up to avoid disaster. This freedom cannot exist alongside other important freedoms and the overall good of society.
• Key saying: "Freedom is the recognition of necessity." Education should teach everyone that it is absolutely necessary to give up the freedom to have unlimited children.

Conscience Fails Over Time

• The effectiveness of appealing to people's conscience (their inner sense of right and wrong) is doubtful in the long run because of how humans and cultures evolve.
• Darwin's idea (from C. G. Darwin): Over hundreds of generations, if left unchecked, certain attitudes and behaviors about having children could be passed down, either through genes or culture. This could lead to a society where people naturally want to have more children.
• The risk of relying on conscience: If we only ask people to control themselves, those who are more conscientious might have fewer children, while those who are less conscientious might have more. Over time, this could lead to the disappearance of conscientious behavior.
• This problem applies to any shared resource: relying on conscience to stop people from overusing it can actually lead to fewer conscientious people existing in the future.
• Short-term mental costs: Asking people to rely on conscience can send confusing signals (a "double bind") that might increase worry and mental health issues, similar to what Bateson saw in his research on schizophrenia. Key Term: "Double bind": Originally from psychology, a "double bind" describes a situation in communication where a person receives two or more conflicting messages, making it impossible to respond appropriately, often leading to distress or mental health problems. Hardin uses this to explain how constant appeals to conscience without structural support can create psychological stress, as individuals feel trapped between their personal desires and societal expectations, without a clear path forward.
• Guilt as a tool is questioned; modern thinkers (like Paul Goodman) argue that guilt doesn't reliably lead to better actions and can even backfire, causing unintended negative results.
• What this means for policies: We should avoid using guilt-based messages alone. Instead, we should rely on built-in rules and systems within society to guide behavior.

Mutual Coercion: A Way to Build Rules into Society

• The concept of "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" means that groups of people can and should create rules to force everyone to hold back their individual desires for the common good.
• This approach doesn't ban behaviors entirely. Instead, it creates agreed-upon rules and costs that make harmful or unsustainable actions economically unattractive.
• Examples: This includes taxes and fees (like parking meter fees or pollution taxes) that make people pay for the hidden costs their actions create, stopping anyone from getting benefits without paying their fair share (free-riding).
• The practical choice is not between a perfect system and the current one, but a logical comparison between different workable systems, such as private property with inheritance versus the collapse of shared resources.
• The author admits that private property isn't perfect and can lead to unfairness, but argues it's still better than the complete ruin that happens when shared resources are unregulated.
• Critique of "double standards": People trying to make reforms are often accused of wanting an impossible perfect system. But history shows that gradual changes are possible and necessary.

Knowing What Is Necessary

• In short: Shared resources (the commons) are only justified when there are very few people. As the population grows, the commons must be abandoned in one area after another.
• Historical progression:
  • Key Term: "Enclosure and privatization": Historically, land that was once shared by a community (the "commons") was often divided up and assigned to individual owners (enclosed) or turned into private property (privatization). This process converted open-access resources into fenced, individually owned parcels. Hardin suggests this is a necessary step for many resources as populations grow, moving from shared grazing lands to restricted pastures or controlled hunting/fishing areas, to prevent their destruction by overuse.
  • Waste disposal cannot remain a free-for-all forever; rules about pollution are becoming more accepted.
  • New problems: Things like pleasure, noise, and advertising are becoming new kinds of shared resource problems. The idea of restricting these is not yet fully accepted.
• Making things private and regulating them means we lose some personal freedom. However, when people agree to mutual control, it actually increases overall freedom by preventing the complete collapse of shared resources.
• The main ethical change: We must give up the freedom to have unlimited children to avoid the total breakdown of society. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity." Education should clearly show everyone why this is necessary.

Bringing It All Together and What It Means for Action

• The tragedy of the commons is not just an abstract idea; it's a real warning about how we manage shared resources.
• There's no single perfect solution. The way forward involves:
  • Realizing that science and technology alone have limits, and that moral and system-wide changes are essential.
  • Using "mutual coercion" through agreed-upon policies (like taxes or rules about who can use a resource) to make sure what's good for each person also helps the whole community.
  • Replacing or adding to Adam Smith's "invisible hand" in decisions about population, by creating government structures that make people responsible for the hidden costs of their actions.
  • Changing how we think about "rights" (like the freedom to have children) in light of keeping things sustainable for a long time and being fair to future generations.

Examples and Background (some important points)

• Main idea source: Von Neumann and Morgenstern showed that you generally can't maximize many different goals at the same time with a single simple objective.
• Energy for life: Each person needs about m=1600\ \text{kcal/day} to survive. Limits on our energy budget mean there's a limit to how many people can live, given by P_{\max}=\dfrac{E}{m}.
• The classic commons example and the "tragedy" idea first came from Forster Lloyd (1833) and later became well-known through Hardin. The "Mutual Coercion" strategy connects to modern tools like taxes and regulations.
• Ethical and philosophical connections: Ideas from Adam Smith (invisible hand), Bateson (double bind), Darwin (evolutionary arguments about conscience), Frankel (responsibility comes from social arrangements), and discussions about human rights and population ethics.

Quick Important Points

• There's no easy technical fix for population problems; morality and how we design our rules are crucial.
• The tragedy of the commons shows why unregulated shared resources fail without agreed-upon limits.
• Coercive, mutually agreed-upon social arrangements (taxes, regulations, property regimes) can prevent disaster and protect bigger freedoms.
• Giving up the unlimited freedom to have children is presented as a necessary step to avert a system-wide collapse. Education is key to showing why this is needed.
• Changes need to be carefully looked at, without expecting a perfect system. Taking action, based on what's best for the whole system, is better than doing nothing.

Equations and Key Formulas

• How fast population grows naturally: P(t) \approx P_0 e^{rt} \quad (r>0) This means population tends to grow like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger faster over time.
• Energy a person needs to survive daily: m \approx 1600\ \text{kcal/day}. This is the basic amount of food-energy a human needs to stay alive and function.
• The most people a world can support with a fixed energy supply: P_{\max} = \dfrac{E}{m}. This formula tells us the absolute maximum number of people that can exist if we only give them enough energy to survive, based on the total available energy (E) and the maintenance energy per person (m).
• The extra benefit a herdsman gets from adding one more animal to a shared pasture (with H herdsmen): \Delta U_i = +1 - \frac{1}{H}. This formula explains why each individual herdsman, acting in their self-interest, will keep adding animals because their private gain (+1) is always more than their shared small cost (1/H), as long as there's more than one herdsman.

Final Thought

• To avoid the tragedy of the commons, we must realize that giving up the unlimited freedom to have children is necessary. We need to build systems that enforce "mutual coercion" rather