Hardin 1968

Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science, 162(1968):1243-1248

The main motivation the author has for writing this paper is to convince his readers on the need for societal restrictions on family size. He discusses the strains of a growing population on the earth's resources. He also rebutts the idea that people will naturally regulate their own family size for the betterment of the community, and disagrees that subliminally coercing people into restricting family size is an adequate solution.

Hardin uses the example of the tragedy of the commons to explain how a rational player will make decisions that will give him the advantage and any losses will be spread out across society. This is fine in a rural community where the environment can absorb the losses. However, in an urban society the sum of the losses caused by each person's gain directly affects many people in a major way.

Also, Hardin argues that at the time of the article a lot of emphasis was placed on creating an environment of shame for people who did not act in the best interests of the community. For example, he says a common phrase of the day is "responsible parenthood" which implies that a large family is irresponsible. This may be an effective way to motivate families to restrict their size, but Hardin believes that guilt and anxiety is never healthy for a society and therefore is a poor method to achieve an end goal. Also, he argues that those individuals who don't listen to the messages of guilt and conscience will survive better since they are thinking of themselves and not the community, and then natural selection will take place and those with a conscience will become extinct. He says this method of population control works but won't be effective in the long run.

As an alternative, Hardin proposes that a second method for population control as the best method. This method involves a set of laws to restrict family size for the good of all of humanity. However, Hardin was missing an important third method in population control, which I discuss next.

Early on in the article, Hardin mentions that "there is no prosperous population in the world today that has, and has had for some time, a growth rate of zero." Perhaps that was true in 1968, but it is definately not true of today. For example, Japan currently has zero native population growth, and Ukraine is at the top of the list for negative population growth. Overall, 20 countries in the world have zero or negative population growth. (http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/zero.htm) If Hardin had been an advocate of population control today, he would see that there's a 3rd option that works in limiting family size and is currently at work in society today. I'm not going to be so confident as to define that 3rd option, I think it has something to do with individuals wanting to advance themselves to the point of not having time to create a family. In geography class I learned that societies tend to have a population explosion as they industrialize, and once they are fully industrialized the population growth levels off to around zero. However, if you look at the list of countries with negative or zero population growth, it doesn't seem that the reasons I've given would play a part in the phenomenon since most of the countries are poorer Eastern European countries. I'd be interested in defining the factors that cause a zero population growth and the methods that are necessary to replicate this as a research project (I know, it's not engineering based but it sure is interesting).

Hardin, if he is still alive, should reevaluate his arguments in light of these new trends in countries with decreasing populations. However, he might reach the conclusion that the most intelligent people are the ones who are limiting their family size, which would cause him to argue against this method since the least intelligent are the ones reproducing in society. I can assume this would be his opinion since Hardin was distinctly darwinian in his thinking and he argued for controlled breeding of the "genetically defective" in his 1966 Biology textbook.

I'm not sure that Hardin would go so far as to advocate family size laws that would discriminate against the unintelligent and favor those with good genes. The definition of good genes is undefinable by society; some would say intelligence is the most important gene to pass on in this world, while others would say artistic genes are just as important or more important. This makes the problem of population control and selective breeding a "wicked" problem in the same sense as other societal problems which we've discussed earlier in this course.