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卌onfronted 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
worlds 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 Benthams 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 DAlembert (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匢 think that everyone will grant, without
argument or proof, that maximizing population does not
maximize goods. Benthams 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 Benthams 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卼he 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 decision璵aking 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
agreed璾pon 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
smog璫ontrol, 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 shouldnt
find fault with it; we shouldnt 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 grandfathers 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. Darwins 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. Lotkas term. (If one denies the
latter possibility as well as the former, then whats 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 dont 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 nations (or the
worlds) 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 Frankels 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 mans
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 somebodys 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.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMON REVISITED
by Beryl Crowe (1969)
reprinted in MANAGING THE COMMONS
by Garrett Hardin and John Baden
W.H. Freeman, 1977; ISBN 0-7167-0476-5
"There has developed in the contemporary natural sciences a
recognition that there is a subset of problems, such as
population, atomic war, and environmental corruption, for
which there are no technical solutions.
"There is also an increasing recognition among contemporary
social scientists that there is a subset of problems, such as
population, atomic war, environmental corruption, and the
recovery of a livable urban environment, for which there are
no current political solutions. The thesis of this article is
that the common area shared by these two subsets contains most
of the critical problems that threaten the very existence of
contemporary man." [p. 53]
ASSUMPTIONS NECESSARY TO AVOID THE TRAGEDY
"In passing the technically insoluble problems over to the
political and social realm for solution, Hardin made three
critical assumptions:
(1) that there exists, or can be developed, a criterion of
judgment and system of weighting . . . that will render the
incommensurables . . . commensurable . . . in real life;
(2) that, possessing this criterion of judgment, coercion can
be mutually agreed upon, and that the application of coercion
to effect a solution to problems will be effective in modern
society; and
(3) that the administrative system, supported by the criterion
of judgment and access to coercion, can and will protect the
commons from further desecration." [p. 55]
ERODING MYTH OF THE COMMON VALUE SYSTEM
"In America there existed, until very recently, a set of
conditions which perhaps made the solution to Hardins subset
possible; we lived with the myth that we were one people,
indivisible. . . . This myth postulated that we were the
great melting pot of the world wherein the diverse cultural
ores of Europe were poured into the crucible of the frontier
experience to produce a new alloy -- an American civilization.
This new civilization was presumably united by a common value
system that was democratic, equalitarian, and existing under
universally enforceable rules contained in the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights.
"In the United States today, however, there is emerging a new
set of behavior patterns which suggest that the myth is either
dead or dying. Instead of believing and behaving in accordance
with the myth, large sectors of the population are developing
life-styles and value hierarchies that give contemporary
Americans an appearance more closely analogous to the
particularistic, primitive forms of tribal organizations in
geographic proximity than to that shining new alloy, the
American civilization." [p. 56]
"Looking at a more recent analysis of the sickness of the core
city, Wallace F. Smith has argued that the productive model of
the city is no longer viable for the purposes of economic
analysis. Instead, he develops a model of the city as a site
for leisure consumption, and then seems to suggest that the
nature of this model is such is such that the city cannot
regain its health because the leisure demands are value-based
and, hence do not admit to compromise and accommodation;
consequently there is no way of deciding among these value-
oriented demands that are being made on the core city.
"In looking for the cause of the erosion of the myth of a
common value system, it seems to me that so long as our
perceptions and knowledge of other groups were formed largely
through the written media of communication, the American myth
that we were a giant melting pot of equalitarians could be
sustained. In such a perceptual field it is tenable, if not
obvious, that men are motivated by interests. Interests can
always be compromised and accommodated without undermining our
very being by sacrificing values. Under the impact of
electronic media, however, this psychological distance has
broken down and now we discover that these people with whom we
could formerly compromise on interests are not, after all,
really motivated by interests but by values. Their behavior in
our very living room betrays a set of values, moreover, that
are incompatible with our own, and consequently the
compromises that we make are not those of contract but of
culture. While the former are acceptable, any form of
compromise on the latter is not a form of rational behavior
but is rather a clear case of either apostasy or heresy. Thus
we have arrived not at an age of accommodation but one of
confrontation. In such an age incommensurables remain
incommensurable in real life." [p. 59]
EROSION OF THE MYTH OF THE MONOPOLY OF COERCIVE FORCE
"In the past, those who no longer subscribed to the values of
the dominant culture were held in check by the myth that the
state possessed a monopoly on coercive force. This myth has
undergone continual erosion since the end of World War II
owing to the success of the strategy of guerrilla warfare, as
first revealed to the French in Indochina, and later
conclusively demonstrated in Algeria. Suffering as we do from
what Senator Fulbright has called the arrogance of power, we
have been extremely slow to learn the lesson in Vietnam,
although we now realize that war is political and cannot be
won by military means. It is apparent that the myth of the
monopoly of coercive force as it was first qualified in the
civil rights conflict in the South, then in our urban ghettos,
next on the streets of Chicago, and now on our college
campuses has lost its hold over the minds of Americans. The
technology of guerrilla warfare has made it evident that,
while the state can win battles, it cannot win wars of values.
Coercive force which is centered in the modern state cannot be
sustained in the face of the active resistance of some 10
percent of the population unless the state is willing to
embark on a deliberate policy of genocide directed against the
value dissident groups. The factor that sustained the myth of
coercive force in the past was the acceptance of a common
value system. Whether the latter exists is questionable in the
modern nation-state." [p.p. 59-60]
EROSION OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS
"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that
one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the
attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is
launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it
generates enough political force to bring about establishment
of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and
rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of
interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the
symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into
operation, developing a period of political quiescence among
the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized
interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has
developed, the highly organized and specifically interested
groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring
sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes
to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of
their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the
regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency
administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [p.p. 60-61]
[Science,?62(1968):1243-1248 ]
