The Tragedy Of The Commons, By Garrett Hardin's Response

The Tragedy of the Commons Response Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons raises awareness on and suggests solutions for overpopulation, and Beryl Crowe’s The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited is a refutation of Hardin’s work. While Hardin attempts at discussing every aspect of the population problem, he has ignored the population trend that has begun from his era and has taken individual freedoms too lightly. The following essay includes a discussion of main points of Hardin’s and Crowe’s works and a personal reflection on their works.
Summary
The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin In The Tragedy of the Commons, Hardin (1968) argues that over-population is a “no technical solution problem.” A technical solution, according to Hardin
For example, each herdsman gets to decide how many cattle to keep when a pasture is open to everyone. Since the herdsman receives all the benefits from the sale of each additional animal yet does not bear the full penalty of overgrazing (the herdsman can just move to another pasture), the herdsman adds as many animal as possible to his herd. Understandably, all rational herdsmen reach the same conclusion and let their herds of cattle graze, leaving the pasture barren. Oceans, public parks, air, water, and anything common are subject to the same phenomenon, in part due to the exponentially growing population that decreases the per-capita share of the world’s resources. Because technical solutions for these tragedies do not exist, they have been resolved by establishing property rights, implementing coercive laws, or taxing. Hardin (1968) argues that the population problem, a cause of the tragedy of the commons and another tragedy itself, should be tackled likewise by implementing administrative
While Hardin believes that an unjust system of mutual coercion is better than a world destroyed by overpopulation, Aldous Huxley’s book the Brave New World suggests otherwise. In Huxley’s futuristic society, the state regulates everything from birth, relationship, aging, to death. The citizens are devoid of individuality and freedom because there is no opportunity to develop them in this society. Although Hardin is not asking for coercion as extreme as that in Huxley’s book, once the state begins to regulate the freedom to breed, there is a high possibility that it would infringe upon the citizens’ other rights and freedoms in the name of achieving stability as the World State did in the Brave New World (Huxley, 1932). When people are deprived of individuality and freedom, the society would operate just in order to keep the society operating. Hence, whether the results of injustice and coercion are preferable to total ruin is dubious (Hardin,