Tragedy Of Commons

“Tragedy of the Commons” means is a situation within a shared-resource structure where people act by themself without thinking about the common good used by others by depleting that resource through their action because of their own selfish gain.

Hardin proves this by saying "People will have more motivation to draw from it than to add to any common store. The less provident and less able will multiply at the expense of the abler and more provident, bringing eventual ruin upon all who share in the commons" (177).

The tragedy of the commons is a pretty basic concept. So essentially, this theory states that people will use a shared resource to their own self-interests and ultimately “consume” the resource until its value is diminished (Brander, 2014).

Population is one of the key points that Hardin stresses. Still thinking in terms of the lifeboat example, “The people in the lifeboat are doubling in numbers once every 87 years; those swimming around outside are doubling, on the average, every 35 years…” In the real world, developing countries’ populations are multiplying at an exponential rate, and the world’s resources can only dwindle.Hardin states that in 1970 the US had a population of 210 million people, who were increasing at a rate of .08 percent a year. In terms of the lifeboat example, Hardin says that we should imagine that same number of people outside the boat, only

Reports today show that as the wealth of one rises, they have less children. This is proof that as the wealth of a country rises, the birthrate would then decrease. If this not be the case, for which there is a slight possibility, Hardin’s argument may be valid. Hardin’s observation of the comparatively higher birthrate of the poor compared to the lower birthrate of the rich is in fact correct but only to some extent.

Another problem with public goods is the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons occurs when individual people or parties disregard the well-being of the society in pursuing personal gains. When every country tries to gain the most benefits from abusing the climate, the demand will rapidly consume the supply of the resource, due to the country not

In Hardin’s, The Tragedy of the Commons, he makes two major points that are still widely accepted. He argues that people act in their own self interest which causes them to over use the resources in the commons and that the only way to solve this problem is by utilizing socialism or privatizing free enterprises. This is not always true because there are people who have organized themselves in a way to manager common pool resources that allowed them use a long-term sustainable institution for governing resources. Government ownership and privatization does not always work. In China, Mongolia, and southern Siberia, there are signs of degradation where there is government regulation of the land. China and

Garrett Hardin’s article, “Tragedy of the Commons”, discusses the idea of the exploitation of public resources, or the “commons”. This results in the resources becoming unusable, due to the overuse by the public (Hardin). The 1972 TV Movie, The Lorax, tells the story of a fictional forest being being exploited, resulting in the loss of the public resource due to waste, pollution, and deforestation (Seuss). While the literal story of The Lorax is fictional, Tragedy of the Commons is constantly occurring to public resources. One of the many areas where Tragedy of the Commons is currently being demonstrated is in the overfishing of the red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico (Binns).

Garrett Hardin was a controversial ecologist who believed that overpopulation was going to bring a downfall to a world of limited resources. Each nation was compared to a lifeboat with the rich being inside the boat and the poor in the water, drowning (Hardin, 561). He wrote the “Lifeboat Ethics” in 1974 when Ethiopia was having a starvation problem. Hardin’s opinion about the situation was that sending aid to Ethiopia was only making the problem worse and by feeding the people would aid overpopulation; the root to the problem. Hardin’s thesis developed from the notion that the rich should do nothing to help the poor. He believed that one

The classic essay Tragedy of the Commons describes the dilemma society faces when the interests of a group conflicts with the interests of individuals (Hardin, 1968). The example presented is that of a group of cattle ranchers commingling their cattle in a common pasture. At full capacity, each cattle owner still has an incentive to include additional cattle, since the slight decrease in overall yield per animal is offset by the additional animal. Unfortunately, this overgrazing inevitably leads to failure of the commons. The community goal of maximizing food production can only be achieved by placing controls on the interests of the individual cattle ranchers in favor of those of the community (Hardin, 1968). This paper is

These social dilemmas are related to common-pool resources. The problem of free riding can be an issue. . There has to be governance of common pool resources. If, for example collective action was man’s natural instinct then

In the article “ Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”, Garrett Hardin (1974) argues that wealthy people should not be responsible for the poor and that the consequences of feeding the poor are detrimental to the environment and to the society as a whole. Hardin was a well known philosopher and ecologist. He earned his bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and also earned his doctorate degree in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941 (Garrett Hardin, n.d.). The main issue that he tackled was human overpopulation and one of the books that he wrote that analyzed this issue was called ‘How Global Population Growth Threatens Widespread Social Disorder’(1992). Because the author has a sufficient

From the article of “Reclaiming the Commons” By Naomi Klein, Klein defines The Commons is “the spirit they share is a radical reclaiming of The Commons” (Klein, 2001, p.82). In other words, the common is a public space where people go. People can gather together to talk and have meetings. An example of the commons is “used to see fights as saving a nation, now I see it as saving democracy” (Klein, 2001, p.83). In other words, The Commons has to do with anything like the cultural, social, and natural materials. It is all public and not private to the society. The Commons implication is nothing is private in the society because everything becomes public for the society to know what is going on such as the news and media of other people. The significance

This paper can be an excellent source for anyone researching into how to fight overpopulation. Hardin provides several other viewpoints that show he did not selectively choose evidence or distort it. Hardin proceeds from point to point logically which allowed the reader to comprehend the main idea effortlessly. The author glided to how the people of poor

Few decades ago, clean water was “commons” (Hardin, 1968) to us. It was a natural resource shared by everyone and not owned by anyone. This “commons” was taken for granted to the extent that people exploit clean water without considering its finiteness. Resorts and factories dumped wastewater and ruined nearby rivers and oceans. People carelessly littered garbage and substituted the dirty water with diminishing clean water. They definitely benefited in terms of financial cost and comfort from their negligence. However, those individual interests ended up bringing severe water pollution, attacking our collective interest of public health and well-being. In this vein, water pollution is undeniably the “Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968). Following these dire circumstances, water purification techniques and systems have been further developed and become widespread. Yet, the technical measurements have not quite fundamentally solved the problem. What is needed at this point is people’s will and practical action to improve the environment. However, merely hoping and encouraging people to do so are not enough. In order to have a steady support from people, we need a practical device for a “mutual coercion” (Hardin, 1968) to earn consent to coercion necessary to amend the situation. In this paper, I am going to address the technical and individual effort for water pollution and its limitation, and suggest a way to complement this limitation through a device on an institutional