29 pages • 58 minutes read
Garrett James HardinThe Tragedy of the Commons
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Population Growth Stresses the Commons
The essay’s main theme is that unchecked growth in the worldwide human population can lead to overuse of natural resources and environmental disaster.
Author Hardin’s argument begins with a prediction made in 1798 by theoretician Thomas Malthus, who asserted that gradual improvements in food production cause populations to rise geometrically until starvation sets in. For Hardin, improvements in supplies lead to a “tragedy” whereby unchecked growth in population leads to overuse of freely available natural resources—the “commons”—until those resources, and their originating environments, collapse catastrophically.
As humanity approaches those limits, severe restrictions may be imposed: “No gourmet meals, no vacations, no sports, no music, no literature, no art” (Section 2, Paragraph 4). Hardin maintains that increasing populations will finally use up the advantages of civilization, causing everyone’s lifestyles to regress by Western standards.
Hardin begins with an example well known to economists: If a commonly used pasture is filled to capacity with sheep, a shepherd may be tempted to add one more sheep, which benefits the shepherd but causes the pasture to deteriorate slightly. That loss is spread over all the shepherds, who don’t notice it right away. As the shepherds add to their flocks, the stress builds up until the pasture no longer can produce grass fast enough to satisfy all those hungry sheep, and suddenly entire flocks are starving.
The tragedy of the commons applies in modern times to many natural resources currently overused or polluted, including air, water, ocean fisheries, public ranch lands, and forests. If these resources collapse, civilizations worldwide will face disaster. This includes widespread deaths from starvation, thirst, pollution, and disease, along with runaway animal and plant extinctions and disfigurement of prized natural beauty. At the very least, huge bottlenecks in home building and commercial development would hurl human civilization into a worldwide economic depression.
Hardin points out that improvements in resources have, indeed, led to increases in human population, as predicted by Malthus. A small increase in the population growth rate, multiplied over many years, leads to a huge increase in total human population. Whereas in the past the Earth’s bounty appeared limitless, it later became clear that unchecked population growth will overrun natural resources, perhaps sooner than expected. There is a limit, beyond which lies catastrophe.
Technological solutions may at first seem to help, but this merely reduces pressure on a given resource, and people will tend once again to overuse it.”The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way” (Section 1, Paragraph 5). For Hardin, the solution isn’t technology but morality: Unchecked freedom to reproduce must be replaced with laws and incentives that reduce family size and, eventually, total world population. Only in this way, Hardin believes, can people save themselves from a massive ecological debacle.
Good Intentions and Bad Results
Sometimes the best intentions go wrong, and some policies meant to do good may cause human population to rise and threaten the planet. Hardin mentions a few such policies he believes fit the bill—unregulated commons, welfare payments, liberalized immigration, universal rights to reproduce, and appeals to conscience—and suggests a more coercive alternative to them all.
An unregulated commons at first seems unlimited, but as more and more people dip into its resources, the strain on those resources multiplies until the commons collapses. The freedom to use those resources, originally a boon to all, soon becomes a detriment as populations increase to take advantage of the opportunity.
Developed nations offer financial safety nets to their citizens who fall on hard times. This admirable intention can have unexpected results, though, on total population levels. Extra money that helps pay for food, medicine, and shelter for children can motivate families to have more offspring. As with unregulated commons, this may benefit individual families but result in a population increase accompanied by strains on environmental resources. Instead, Hardin wants legislation to restrict family size.
A civil society can benefit from immigration, as it brings new energy and extra hands to do the work of that nation. It also relieves population pressure on the states from which those immigrants migrated, which allows those states to reproduce even more, increasing total world population and straining resources and ecosystems. Hardin would limit immigration, in part to force other countries in turn to take steps to limit their own populations. Hardin looks at immigration strictly in terms of its impact on population. The approach neglects immigrants’ actual needs or intentions; such scientific models are usually reductive.
The United Nations’ 1967 amendment to its Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies that families have a fundamental right to reproduce. Hardin argues that, though well-meaning, this policy can lead to unchecked growth of human populations and threaten the environment. Hardin would prefer laws that set overall ceilings on family size.
Hardin’s thesis contends that population control efforts shouldn’t rely on good intentions; they should depend on laws that specifically penalize large families. Only in this way, Hardin believes, does the planet have a chance at salvation from ecological disaster.
Freedom Versus Coercion in Population Control
As the world westernizes and adopts liberal democratic practices, individual freedoms have become important values. It’s therefore hard to pass laws that limit, for example, a family’s number of offspring, yet Hardin maintains it’s important to do so lest world population balloon out of control: “Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all” (Section 10, Paragraph 5).
In a world of steadily advancing technology, resources become cheaper and more available. This leads to families who decide they can afford more children. Over decades and centuries, continuing increases in foodstuffs, inexpensive shelter, and low-cost medicines drives an accompanying increase in the world’s human population. Each family’s decision to add another child may benefit itself, but, in a manner similar to an unregulated commons, the burden shifts onto others. No family will want its choices restricted, yet all families acting on their own account will cause the population to skyrocket.
One solution that sidesteps the problems of passing restrictive laws is to ask citizens to sacrifice their own interests for the good of others. This way, no one’s freedom must be restricted. At first, such a policy may appear to have a positive effect: People of good conscience will agree to restrict their numbers. Others, though, will ignore the appeal and build larger families. The result, Hardin theorizes, is that conscientious people get replaced by more selfish ones, and the net effect, over the decades, is an increase, not a decrease, in total population and a reduction in conscientiousness. Hardin therefore believes that appeals to conscience not only fail but produce effects precisely opposite to those desired.
The real solution, argues Hardin, is laws that restrict uniformly the size of all families. He understands that there will be exceptions, but he asserts that the general principle, if followed, should result in an overall stabilization, or even a decline, in population. This will, in turn, reduce the strain of human activity on the Earth’s ecosystems, which will decrease the chance of an environmental catastrophe that leads to the downfall of human civilization.
