The Tragedy Of The Commons (Hardin)

The Tragedy of the Commons Author(s): Garrett Hardin Source: Science, New Series, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (Dec. 13, 1968), pp. 1243-1248 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1724745 Accessed: 25/01/2010 19:29
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What Shall We Maximize? Population,as Malthus said,naturally tends to grow "geometrically," as we or, 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 fewgenerations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediatefuture, assume that the world available to the terrestrialhuman population is finite. "Space" is no escape (2). A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventuallyequal zero. (The case of perpetual wide fluctuations above andbelow 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 wasclearly stated by von Neumann and Morgenstern(3), but the principleis implicit in the theory of partial differential equations, dating back at least to D'Alembert (17171783). 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 liferequires about 1600 kilocalories a day ("maintenancecalories"). 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,

The Tragedy of the Commons
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Garrett Hardin

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of...