module 2
Contents:
- Introduction
- Hardin's Tragedy of the commons.
- The population explosion.
- Sustainable development.
- New water management ideas (some are
funky).
- Reading
- Assignment A2
1. Introduction
Pedagogic note: Why would thinking animals
like humans deliberately poison their environment with pollutants? They do it endlessly,
despite the obvious warnings and consequences. I take it as essential that for a start on
water pollution control planning, we should understand why people choose to do that.
Learning objectives for this module include an understanding of the complex sociological
and psychological issues surrounding pollution. This module comprises quite a lot of
reading of opinions and official government positions posted on the web. It may be
difficult for engineers because the exercise is more philosophically thought-provoking
than the conventional engineering application of mathematics. Notice that we will probably
return to this theme at the end of the course.
There are some big ideas in this module. I
certainly do not expect you to read all the material linked here, but will be disappointed
if you do not find some of it convincing and compulsive reading. We ask you to critically
review Hardin's Tragedy of the commons, consider world human population growth,
and assess current ideas about sustainable development. Instructors in the course are
interested in whether their students do think about these issues - what do their students
think about how ecosystems and sustainability concerns in their area relate to these
issues? In this module we ask you to think over these soft issues, write down
your thoughts cogently, and then present them on the web for your colleagues' evaluation.
To a large extent you will be learning under your own steam, and exploiting web skills.
Before you begin, read my pages on how
to assess the value of information on the web.
2. Hardin's Tragedy of
the commons.
Garrett Hardin's famous essay was entitled the Tragedy
of the commons. In it, he says, I think, that in a market-driven economy
facilities (like urban drains) which are owned by the community as a whole, will be
exploited for personal gain by individuals. A developer will build the cheapest possible
BMP in order to maximize profits, perhaps even cheating the public. Hardin says that this
is a consequence of our nature and that of private enterprise. Sometimes politicians and
officials seem to aid and abet it. You should at least spend time intelligently reading
the essay, and then write a brief summary of your impressions (from the perspective of a
water pollution control planner in your especial area).
For your convenience, the following has been cut and pasted from the above link:
The
Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett Hardin (1968)
contents
What shall we maximize?
Tragedy of
freedom in a commons
Pollution
How to legislate
temperance?
Freedom to breed
is intolerable
Conscience is
self-eliminating
Pathogenic
effects of conscience
Mutual
coercion mutually agreed upon
Recognition of
necessity
Notes
"The Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett Hardin, Science,
162(1968):1243-1248.
At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war,
J.B. Wiesner and H.F. York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race
are…confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily
decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this
dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions
in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.'' [1]
I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the
article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached,
namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. An implicit and almost
universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific
journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. 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.
In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are
always welcome. Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes courage to assert that
a desired technical solution is not possible. Wiesner and York exhibited this courage;
publishing in a science journal, they insisted that the solution to the problem was not to
be found in the natural sciences. They cautiously qualified their statement with the
phrase, "It is our considered professional judgment...." Whether they were right
or not is not the concern of the present article. Rather, the concern here is with the
important concept of a class of human problems which can be called "no technical
solution problems," and more specifically, with the identification and discussion of
one of these.
It is easy to show that the class is not a null class. Recall the
game of tick-tack-toe. Consider the problem, "How can I win the game of
tick-tack-toe?" It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the
conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another
way, there is no "technical solution" to the problem. I can win only by giving a
radical meaning to the word "win." I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can
falsify the records. Every way in which I "win" involves, in some sense, an
abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly
abandon the game -- refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.)
The class of "no technical solution problems" has
members. My thesis is that the "population problem," as conventionally
conceived, is a member of this class. How it is conventionally conceived needs some
comment. It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are
trying to find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing any of the
privileges they now enjoy. They think that farming the seas or developing new strains of
wheat will solve the problem -- technologically. I try to show here that the solution they
seek cannot be found. The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more
than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe.
What Shall We
Maximize?
Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow
"geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this
means that the per-capita share of the world's goods must decrease. Is ours a finite
world?
A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is
infinite or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems
that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear
that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future,
assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite.
"Space" is no escape. [2]
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore,
population growth must eventually equal zero. (The case of perpetual wide fluctuations
above and below zero is a trivial variant that need not be discussed.) When this condition
is met, what will be the situation of mankind? Specifically, can Bentham's goal of
"the greatest good for the greatest number" be realized?
No -- for two reasons, each sufficient by itself. The first is a
theoretical one. It is not mathematically possible to maximize for two (or more) variables
at the same time. This was clearly stated by von Neumann and Morgenstern, [3]
but the principle is implicit in the theory of partial differential equations, dating back
at least to D'Alembert (1717-1783).
The second reason springs directly from biological facts. To
live, any organism must have a source of energy (for example, food). This energy is
utilized for two purposes: mere maintenance and work. For man maintenance of life requires
about 1600 kilocalories a day ("maintenance calories"). Anything that he does
over and above merely staying alive will be defined as work, and is supported by
"work calories" which he takes in. Work calories are used not only for what we
call work in common speech; they are also required for all forms of enjoyment, from
swimming and automobile racing to playing music and writing poetry. If our goal is to
maximize population it is obvious what we must do: We must make the work calories per
person approach as close to zero as possible. No gourmet meals, no vacations, no sports,
no music, no literature, no art…I think that everyone will grant, without argument or
proof, that maximizing population does not maximize goods. Bentham's goal is impossible.
In reaching this conclusion I have made the usual assumption that
it is the acquisition of energy that is the problem. The appearance of atomic energy has
led some to question this assumption. However, given an infinite source of energy,
population growth still produces an inescapable problem. The problem of the acquisition of
energy is replaced by the problem of its dissipation, as J. H. Fremlin has so wittily
shown. [4] The arithmetic signs in the analysis are, as it were,
reversed; but Bentham's goal is unobtainable.
The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum. The
difficulty of defining the optimum is enormous; so far as I know, no one has seriously
tackled this problem. Reaching an acceptable and stable solution will surely require more
than one generation of hard analytical work -- and much persuasion.
We want the maximum good per person; but what is good? To one
person it is wilderness, to another it is ski lodges for thousands. To one it is estuaries
to nourish ducks for hunters to shoot; to another it is factory land. Comparing one good
with another is, we usually say, impossible because goods are incommensurable.
Incommensurables cannot be compared.
Theoretically this may be true; but in real life incommensurables
are commensurable. Only a criterion of judgment and a system of weighting are
needed. In nature the criterion is survival. Is it better for a species to be small and
hideable, or large and powerful? Natural selection commensurates the incommensurables. The
compromise achieved depends on a natural weighting of the values of the variables.
Man must imitate this process. There is no doubt that in fact he
already does, but unconsciously. It is when the hidden decisions are made explicit that
the arguments begin. The problem for the years ahead is to work out an acceptable theory
of weighting. Synergistic effects, nonlinear variation, and difficulties in discounting
the future make the intellectual problem difficult, but not (in principle) insoluble.
Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the
present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that none has: there is
no prosperous population in the world today that has, and has had for some time, a growth
rate of zero. Any people that has intuitively identified its optimum point will soon reach
it, after which its growth rate becomes and remains zero.
Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that
a population is below its optimum. However, by any reasonable standards, the most rapidly
growing populations on earth today are (in general) the most miserable. This association
(which need not be invariable) casts doubt on the optimistic assumption that the positive
growth rate of a population is evidence that it has yet to reach its optimum.
We can make little progress in working toward optimum population
size until we explicitly exorcise the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of practical
demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth of Nations (1776) popularized the
"invisible hand," the idea that an individual who "intends only his own
gain," is, as it were, "led by an invisible hand to promote…the public
interest." [5] Adam Smith did not assert that this was
invariably true, and perhaps neither did any of his followers. But he contributed to a
dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on
rational analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions reached individually
will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society. If this assumption is correct
it justifies the continuance of our present policy of laissez faire in
reproduction. If it is correct we can assume that men will control their individual
fecundity so as to produce the optimum population. If the assumption is not correct, we
need to reexamine our individual freedoms to see which ones are defensible.
Tragedy
of Freedom in a Commons
The rebuttal to the invisible hand in population control is to be
found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known Pamphlet in 1833 by a mathematical
amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). [6] We may well call
it "the tragedy of the commons," using the word "tragedy" as the
philosopher Whitehead used it [7]: "The essence of dramatic
tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of
things." He then goes on to say, "This inevitableness of destiny can only be
illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it
is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama."
The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a
pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many
cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily
for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and
beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of
reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a
reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain.
Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to
me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one
positive component.
1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one
animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional
animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.
2. The negative component is a function of the additional
overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are
shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decisionmaking
herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational
herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another
animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every
rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a
system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited.
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. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to
all.
Some would say that this is a platitude. Would that it were! In a
sense, it was learned thousands of years ago, but natural selection favors the forces of
psychological denial. [8] The individual benefits as an individual
from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part,
suffers. 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.
A simple incident that occurred a few years ago in Leominster,
Massachusetts shows how perishable the knowledge is. During the Christmas shopping season
the parking meters downtown were covered with plastic bags that bore tags reading:
"Do not open until after Christmas. Free parking courtesy of the mayor and city
council." In other words, facing the prospect of an increased demand for already
scarce space, the city fathers reinstituted the system of the commons. (Cynically, we
suspect that they gained more votes than they lost by this retrogressive act.)
In an approximate way, the logic of the commons has been
understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of
private property in real estate. But it is understood mostly only in special cases which
are not sufficiently generalized. Even at this late date, cattlemen leasing national land
on the Western ranges demonstrate no more than an ambivalent understanding, in constantly
pressuring federal authorities to increase the head count to the point where overgrazing
produces erosion and weed-dominance. Likewise, the oceans of the world continue to suffer
from the survival of the philosophy of the commons. Maritime nations still respond
automatically to the shibboleth of the "freedom of the seas." Professing to
believe in the "inexhaustible resources of the oceans," they bring species after
species of fish and whales closer to extinction. [9]
The National Parks present another instance of the working out of
the tragedy of the commons. At present, they are open to all, without limit. The parks
themselves are limited in extent -- there is only one Yosemite Valley -- whereas
population seems to grow without limit. The values that visitors seek in the parks are
steadily eroded. Plainly, we must soon cease to treat the parks as commons or they will be
of no value to anyone.
What shall we do? We have several options. We might sell them off
as private property. We might keep them as public property, but allocate the right to
enter them. The allocation might be on the basis of wealth, by the use of an auction
system. It might be on the basis of merit, as defined by some agreedupon standards. It
might be by lottery. Or it might be on a first-come, first-served basis, administered to
long queues. These, I think, are all objectionable. But we must choose -- or acquiesce in
the destruction of the commons that we call our National Parks.
Pollution
In a reverse way, the tragedy of the commons reappears in
problems of pollution. Here it is not a question of taking something out of the commons,
but of putting something in -- sewage, or chemical, radioactive, and heat wastes into
water; noxious and dangerous fumes into the air; and distracting and unpleasant
advertising signs into the line of sight. The calculations of utility are much the same as
before. The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into
the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since
this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of "fouling our own
nest," so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free enterprisers.
The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private
property, or something formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us cannot
readily be fenced, and so the tragedy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by
different means, by coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter
to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated. We have not progressed as far
with the solution of this problem as we have with the first. Indeed, our particular
concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the
earth, favors pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream -- whose property
extends to the middle of the stream -- often has difficulty seeing why it is not his
natural right to muddy the waters flowing past his door. The law, always behind the times,
requires elaborate stitching and fitting to adapt it to this newly perceived aspect of the
commons.
The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not
much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste. "Flowing water
purifies itself every ten miles," my grandfather used to say, and the myth was near
enough to the truth when he was a boy, for there were not too many people. But as
population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became
overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
How to
Legislate Temperance?
Analysis of the pollution problem as a function of population
density uncovers a not generally recognized principle of morality, namely: the morality
of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed. [10] 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. A hundred and fifty years ago a plainsman could kill an American bison, cut
out only the tongue for his dinner, and discard the rest of the animal. He was not in any
important sense being wasteful. Today, with only a few thousand bison left, we would be
appalled at such behavior.
In passing, it is worth noting that the morality of an act cannot
be determined from a photograph. One does not know whether a man killing an elephant or
setting fire to the grassland is harming others until one knows the total system in which
his act appears. "One picture is worth a thousand words," said an ancient
Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it. It is as tempting to
ecologists as it is to reformers in general to try to persuade others by way of the
photographic shortcut. But the essence of an argument cannot be photographed: it must be
presented rationally -- in words.
That morality is system-sensitive escaped the attention of most
codifiers of ethics in the past. "Thou shalt not…" is the form of
traditional ethical directives which make no allowance for particular circumstances. The
laws of our society follow the pattern of ancient ethics, and therefore are poorly suited
to governing a complex, crowded, changeable world. Our epicyclic solution is to augment
statutory law with administrative law. Since it is practically impossible to spell out all
the conditions under which it is safe to burn trash in the back yard or to run an
automobile without smogcontrol, by law we delegate the details to bureaus. The result is
administrative law, which is rightly feared for an ancient reason -- Quis custodies
ipsos custodes? --Who shall watch the watchers themselves? John Adams said that we
must have a "government of laws and not men." Bureau administrators, trying to
evaluate the morality of acts in the total system, are singularly liable to corruption,
producing a government by men, not laws.
Prohibition is easy to legislate (though not necessarily to
enforce); but how do we legislate temperance? Experience indicates that it can be
accomplished best through the mediation of administrative law. We limit possibilities
unnecessarily if we suppose that the sentiment of Quis custodiet denies us the use
of administrative law. We should rather retain the phrase as a perpetual reminder of
fearful dangers we cannot avoid. The great challenge facing us now is to invent the
corrective feedbacks that are needed to keep custodians honest. We must find ways to
legitimate the needed authority of both the custodians and the corrective feedbacks.
Freedom
to Breed Is Intolerable
The tragedy of the commons is involved in population problems in
another way. In a world governed solely by the principle of "dog eat dog" --if
indeed there ever was such a world--how many children a family had would not be a matter
of public concern. Parents who bred too exuberantly would leave fewer descendants, not
more, because they would be unable to care adequately for their children. David Lack and
others have found that such a negative feedback demonstrably controls the fecundity of
birds. [11] But men are not birds, and have not acted like them for
millenniums, at least.
If each human family were dependent only on its own
resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if thus,
over breeding brought its own "punishment" to the germ line -- then there
would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families. But our society is
deeply committed to the welfare state, [12] and hence is confronted
with another aspect of the tragedy of the commons.
In a welfare state, how shall we deal with the family, the
religion, the race, or the class (or indeed any distinguishable and cohesive group) that
adopts over breeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandizement? [13]
To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal
right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.
Unfortunately this is just the course of action that is being
pursued by the United Nations. In late 1967, some thirty nations agreed to the following:
"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and
fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the
size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by
anyone else.'' [14]
It is painful to have to deny categorically the validity of this
right; denying it, one feels as uncomfortable as a resident of Salem, Massachusetts, who
denied the reality of witches in the seventeenth century. At the present time, in liberal
quarters, something like a taboo acts to inhibit criticism of the United Nations. There is
a feeling that the United Nations is "our last and best hope," that we shouldn't
find fault with it; we shouldn't play into the hands of the archconservatives. However,
let us not forget what Robert Louis Stevenson said: "The truth that is suppressed by
friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy." If we love the truth we must openly
deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even though it is promoted
by the United Nations. We should also join with Kingsley Davis [15]
in attempting to get Planned Parenthood-World Population to see the error of its ways in
embracing the same tragic ideal.
Conscience
Is Self-Eliminating
It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of
mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience. Charles Galton Darwin made this point
when he spoke on the centennial of the publication of his grandfather's great book. The
argument is straightforward and Darwinian.
People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some
people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children
will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible
consciences. The differences will be accentuated, generation by generation.
In C. G. Darwin's words: "It may well be that it would take
hundreds of generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in this way, but if it
should do so, nature would have taken her revenge, and the variety Homo contracipiens
would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenitivus. [16]
The argument assumes that conscience or the desire for children
(no matter which) is hereditary-but hereditary only in the most general formal sense. The
result will be the same whether the attitude is transmitted through germ cells, or
exosomatically, to use A. J. Lotka's term. (If one denies the latter possibility as well
as the former, then what's the point of education?) The argument has here been stated in
the context of the population problem, but it applies equally well to any instance in
which society appeals to an individual exploiting a commons to restrain himself for the
general good -- by means of his conscience. To make such an appeal is to set up a
selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience from the race.
Pathogenic
Effects of Conscience
The long-term disadvantage of an appeal to conscience should be
enough to condemn it; but it has serious short-term disadvantages as well. If we ask a man
who is exploiting a commons to desist "in the name of conscience," what are we
saying to him? What does he hear? -- not only at the moment but also in the wee small
hours of the night when, half asleep, he remembers not merely the words we used but also
the nonverbal communication cues we gave him unawares? Sooner or later, consciously or
subconsciously, he senses that he has received two communications, and that they are
contradictory: 1. (intended communication) "If you don't do as we ask, we will openly
condemn you for not acting like a responsible citizen"; 2. (the unintended
communication) "If you do behave as we ask, we will secretly condemn you for a
simpleton who can be shamed into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the
commons."
Every man then is caught in what Bateson has called a
"double bind." Bateson and his co-workers have made a plausible case for viewing
the double bind as an important causative factor in the genesis of schizophrenia. [17] The double bind may not always be so damaging, but it always
endangers the mental health of anyone to whom it is applied. "A bad conscience,"
said Nietzsche, "is a kind of illness."
To conjure up a conscience in others is tempting to anyone who
wishes to extend his control beyond the legal limits. Leaders at the highest level succumb
to this temptation. Has any president during the past generation failed to call on labor
unions to moderate voluntarily their demands for higher wages, or to steel companies to
honor voluntary guidelines on prices? I can recall none. The rhetoric used on such
occasions is designed to produce feelings of guilt in noncooperators.
For centuries it was assumed without proof that guilt was a
valuable, perhaps even an indispensable, ingredient of the civilized life. Now, in this
post-Freudian world, we doubt it.
Paul Goodman speaks from the modern point of view when he says:
"No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor
compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not
even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.'' [18]
One does not have to be a professional psychiatrist to see the
consequences of anxiety. We in the Western world are just emerging from a dreadful two
centuries-long Dark Ages of Eros that was sustained partly by prohibition laws, but
perhaps more effectively by the anxiety-generating mechanisms of education. Alex Comfort
has told the story well in The Anxiety Makers; [19] it is not
a pretty one.
Since proof is difficult, we may even concede that the results of
anxiety may sometimes, from certain points of view, be desirable. The larger question we
should ask is whether, as a matter of policy, we should ever encourage the use of a
technique the tendency (if not the intention) of which is psychologically pathogenic. We
hear much talk these days of responsible parenthood; the coupled words are incorporated
into the titles of some organizations devoted to birth control. Some people have proposed
massive propaganda campaigns to instill responsibility into the nation's (or the world's)
breeders. But what is the meaning of the word conscience? When we use the word
responsibility in the absence of substantial sanctions are we not trying to browbeat a
free man in a commons into acting against his own interest? Responsibility is a verbal
counterfeit for a substantial quid pro quo. It is an attempt to get something for nothing.
If the word responsibility is to be used at all, I suggest that
it be in the sense Charles Frankel uses it. [20]
"Responsibility," says this philosopher, "is the product of definite social
arrangements." Notice that Frankel calls for social arrangements -- not propaganda.
Mutual
Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon
The social arrangements that produce responsibility are
arrangements that create coercion, of some sort. Consider bank robbing. The man who takes
money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action?
Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of
responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we follow Frankel's lead and insist that a
bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from
becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither
deny nor regret.
The morality of bank robbing is particularly easy to understand
because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say "Thou
shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions. But temperance also can be
created by coercion. Taxing is a good coercive device. To keep downtown shoppers temperate
in their use of parking space we introduce parking meters for short periods, and traffic
fines for longer ones. We need not actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants
to; we need merely make it increasingly expensive for him to do so. Not prohibition, but
carefully biased options are what we offer him. A Madison Avenue man might call this
persuasion; I prefer the greater candor of the word coercion.
Coercion is a dirty word to most liberals now, but it need not
forever be so. As with the four-letter words, its dirtiness can be cleansed away by
exposure to the light, by saying it over and over without apology or embarrassment. To
many, the word coercion implies arbitrary decisions of distant and irresponsible
bureaucrats; but this is not a necessary part of its meaning. The only kind of coercion I
recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
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. Who enjoys taxes? We all grumble
about them. But we accept compulsory taxes because we recognize that voluntary taxes would
favor the conscienceless. We institute and (grumblingly) support taxes and other coercive
devices to escape the horror of the commons.
An alternative to the commons need not be perfectly just to be
preferable. With real estate and other material goods, the alternative we have chosen is
the institution of private property coupled with legal inheritance. Is this system
perfectly just? As a genetically trained biologist I deny that it is. It seems to me that,
if there are to be differences in individual inheritance, legal possession should be
perfectly correlated with biological inheritance-that those who are biologically more fit
to be the custodians of property and power should legally inherit more. But genetic
recombination continually makes a mockery of the doctrine of "like father, like
son" implicit in our laws of legal inheritance. An idiot can inherit millions, and a
trust fund can keep his estate intact. We must admit that our legal system of private
property plus inheritance is unjust -- but we put up with it because we are not convinced,
at the moment, that anyone has invented a better system. The alternative of the commons is
too horrifying to contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin.
It is one of the peculiarities of the warfare between reform and
the status quo that it is thoughtlessly governed by a double standard. Whenever a reform
measure is proposed it is often defeated when its opponents triumphantly discover a flaw
in it. As Kingsley Davis has pointed out, [21] worshipers of the
status quo sometimes imply that no reform is possible without unanimous agreement, an
implication contrary to historical fact. As nearly as I can make out, automatic rejection
of proposed reforms is based on one of two unconscious assumptions: (1) that the status
quo is perfect; or (2) that the choice we face is between reform and no action; if the
proposed reform is imperfect, we presumably should take no action at all, while we wait
for a perfect proposal.
But we can never do nothing. That which we have done for
thousands of years is also action. It also produces evils. Once we are aware that the
status quo is action, we can then compare its discoverable advantages and disadvantages
with the predicted advantages and disadvantages of the proposed reform, discounting as
best we can for our lack of experience. On the basis of such a comparison, we can make a
rational decision which will not involve the unworkable assumption that only perfect
systems are tolerable.
Recognition
of Necessity
Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man's population
problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions
of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to
be abandoned in one aspect after another.
First we abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm
land and restricting pastures and hunting and fishing areas. These restrictions are still
not complete throughout the world.
Somewhat later we saw that the commons as a place for waste
disposal would also have to be abandoned. Restrictions on the disposal of domestic sewage
are widely accepted in the Western world; we are still struggling to close the commons to
pollution by automobiles, factories, insecticide sprayers, fertilizing operations, and
atomic energy installations.
In a still more embryonic state is our recognition of the evils
of the commons in matters of pleasure. There is almost no restriction on the propagation
of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping public is assaulted with mindless music,
without its consent. Our government has paid out billions of dollars to create a
supersonic transport which would disturb 50,000 people for every one person whisked from
coast to coast 3 hours faster. Advertisers muddy the airwaves of radio and television and
pollute the view of travelers. We are a long way from outlawing the commons in matters of
pleasure. Is this because our Puritan inheritance makes us view pleasure as something of a
sin, and pain (that is, the pollution of advertising) as the sign of virtue?
Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of
somebody's personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because
no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements that we
vigorously oppose; cries of "rights" and "freedom" fill the air. But
what does "freedom" mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing,
mankind became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons
are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion,
they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is
the recognition of necessity."
The most important aspect of necessity that we must now
recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution
can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.
At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for
conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal
to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the
long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.
The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious
freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is
the recognition of necessity" -- and it is the role of education to reveal to all the
necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of
the tragedy of the commons.
Notes
1. J. B. Wiesner and H. F. York, Scientific American 211 (No. 4), 27 (1964).
2. G. Hardin, Journal of Heredity 50, 68 (1959), S. von Hoernor, Science 137, 18,
(1962).
3. J. von Neumann and O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1947), p. 11.
4. J. H. Fremlin, New Scientist, No. 415 (1964), p. 285.
5. A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library, New York, 1937), p. 423.
6. W. F. Lloyd, Two Lectures on the Checks to Population (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, England, 1833).
7. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Mentor, New York, 1948), p. 17.
8. G. Hardin, Ed., Population, Evolution, and Birth Control (Freeman, San
Francisco, 1964), p. 56.
9. S. McVay, Scientific American 216 (No. 8), 13 (1966).
10. J. Fletcher, Situation Ethics (Westminster, Philadelphia, 1966).
11. D. Lack, The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
England, 1954).
12. H. Girvetz, From Wealth to Welfare (Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif,
1950).
13. G. Hardin, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 6, 366 (1963).
14. U Thant, International Planned Parenthood News, No. 168 (February 1968), p. 3.
15. K. Davis, Science 158, 730 (1967).
16. S. Tax, Ed., Evolution After Darwin (University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1960), vol. 2, p. 469.
17. G. Bateson, D. D. Jackson, J. Haley, J. Weakland, Behavioral Science 1, 251
(1956).
18. P. Goodman, New York Review of Books 10 (8), 22 (23 May 1968).
19. A. Comfort, The Anxiety Makers (Nelson, London, 1967).
20. C. Frankel, The Case for Modern Man (Harper & Row, New York, 1955), p. 203.
21. J. D. Roslansky, Genetics and the Future of Man (Appleton-Century-Crofts, New
York, 1966), p. 177
There are literally 100s of 1000s of web links to Hardin's essay and many erudite
reviews and comments on it can be readily found (use a web search engine to search for the
whole 4-word title). Here are two web sites that provide further insights:
1. Professor Hanson's page on this subject, http://dieoff.org/page79.htm
1. Jay Hanson's links: Jay
Hanson's links
2. Gary W. Harding's page http://members.aol.com/trajcom/private/trajcom.htm
There are many opinions on the matter. For instance, here is what Ken Graham, a Prof.
of English at UoG (who specializes in this period in EngLit) told me about the essay: Thank
you for the essay, "The tragedy of the commons." I can see why it is important.
The title is unfortunate, however, both for the misuse of [the word] "tragedy"
-he offers a very narrow definition - and for his mistaken notion of the (historical)
commons. Over the generations users of the commons had worked out equitable procedures and
effective regulations. In many instances the commons provide examples of the conditions
[Hardin] advocates--a kind of regulated steady-state. The tragedy lay in generations of
parliaments that permitted great landowners to appropriate and enclose the commons for
their own selfish purposes. It was [these parliaments who were] at the source of arguments
that the commons were being misused. They profited by ignoring evidence that the commons
were not being misused.
3. The population explosion.
The population explosion is a similar hot topic among academics on the web:
1. From Prof. Hanson's page of discussion:http://dieoff.org/page27.htm
2. From the US Census Bureau, past world pop estimates:
http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/ipc/www/worldhis.html
3. Update the latest human population clock: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw
4. From the Zero Population Growth folks, some FAQs: http://www.zpg.org/
4. Sustainable development.
Similarly, sustainable development is another hot topic among academics on the web:
From Prof. Hanson's page of discussion:
http://dieoff.org/page37.htm
Another voice, meteorologist Richard Anthes: http://atm.geo.nsf.gov/unidata/staff/blynds/globtraj/gtpt1.html
From the Canadian Govt., the official position: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/sustain/menu-e.asp
Finally, from the UN, some global connections: http://www3.undp.org/
5. Some new water
management ideas (some are funky).
Check my page on design for sustainability: http://www.eos.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/james/homepage/Teaching/DesignForSustainability.html
Reading:
1. You are required to provide a URL or two
relating to these issues in your own area, and review it/them.
2. For a scholarly work by Bob Pitt on impacts in
receiving waters of polluted stormwater runoff, click
here.
3. For another scholarly work by Bob Pitt on Current
and Future Design Practices, click here.
4. For the diverting fairy tale The water drops
by Charles Dickens, click here, thanks to Bob Pitt..
Assignment A2:
Allow up to 12 h for reading, and up to 6 h for
writing your web page. This means perhaps that you will have to read selectively from the
above links. So spend a few minuites at the outset ranking the assigned reading according
to your own priorities. It's OK if you are not able to complete all the suggested reading.
We expect dour students to focus on different apsects of special interest to themselves as
individuals.
- Subscribe to a few relevant listservers.
A number of
listserver resources are listed under My listservers in my home page, especially
at: http://www.eos.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/james/homepage/Research/ListServers.html#LISTSERVERS
WHICH I OWN
I suggest that you subscribe to:
- SWMM-USERS
- WASP-USERS
- SEWER-LIST
since you may be able to post queries to those lists during the course!
- Critically read Hardin's essay.
Critically reading
the essay may be a little tough for non-english speakers, so here are a few suggestions to
help you write your review for your web page:
- Can you illustrate how Hardin's thoughts apply to urban water systems?
- Can you suggest how we may cure the problem?
- Coercion seems to include taxes and fines - can this work for urban drainage, do
you think?
- What about education? Many activists hope that the community can be educated out
of eroding the commons. Others believe that education cannot fundamentally change future
exploitation. What do you think?
- This course seems to focus on corrective engineering, but the problems are human and
caused by numbers and greed - how can this course include this social issue?
- Critically read material on population growth, sustainable
development and new ideas on urban water usage.
- Can you comment on human population growth and movement into cities, subsequent
relentless pressure to pave the earth's surface, and consequences for receiving waters?
- How can the real cause of urban drainage problems be controlled?
- Are there any options that could be considered in a course like this one?
- Can you define and then comment on sustainable development in the light of human
population growth in cities? Is it achievable, do you think?
- How can the urban drainage problems be controlled using renewable energy?
- Are there any realistic options that truly address sustainable development of urban
drains that could be considered in a course like this one?
- Develop and post your web page.
Write in HTML a short (say 3-page) very simple review of or your reaction to (a)
Garrett Hardin's "The tragedy of the commons" , (b) the human population
explosion, and (c) the plausibility of sustainable development, and (d) new ideas on water
usage.
- Relate your discussion to your own area, and post it on your personal webpage.
- Submit your URL to the class listserver.
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