The Tragedy of the Commons
by Garrett
Hardin
From Science, Science 13
Dec 1968:
Vol. 162, Issue 3859,
pp. 1243-1248
DOI: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243
Abstract:
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a
fundamental extension in morality.
At the end of a thoughtful
article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York (1) 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.”
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 drug him; 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 steadily 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 still 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 exorcize 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 (6) in 1833 by
a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). 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 decision-making 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; 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 agreed-upon 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 the reasonable possibilities. They 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 10
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
10,000 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 essense 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 smog-control, by law we delegate the details to bureaus.
The result is administrative law, which is rightly feared for an ancient
reason--Quis custodiet 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, overbreeding brought its own “punishment”
to the germ line--thenthere 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 overbreeding 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 30 nations agreed to the following (14): 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.
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 17th 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
difference 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 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: (i) (intended
communication) “If you don’t do as we ask, we will openly condemn you for not
acting like a responsible citizen”; (ii) (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.”
Everyman 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 mechanism 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 responsibility
in this context? Is it not merely a synonym for 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), worshippers 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:
(i) that the status quo is perfect; or (ii) 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 is paying out billions of dollars to create supersonic transport
which will disturb 50,000 people for every one person who is 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.
