Garrett Hardin in his famous article “The Tragedy of the Commons” notes that humans are by nature selfish beings. If humans are allowed freedom to do whatsoever, everyone will act on his/her own self interest. This will lead to a tragedy because it is at odds with the long term interest of the group. People will only want to maximize his/her own benefits first and will misuse and overuse the natural resources. Hardin uses the example of the herdsmen on the common land to prove his logic. However, since society has begun, how realistic is Hardin’s analysis in our modern world.
In society, there exist individuals who will often find ways to cooperate with others because they see the advantages of a collaborative effort such as how much faster and easier a job can be accomplished with everyone agreeing to work toward one goal and sharing it. People can’t always behave like how those herdsmen behave unless those circumstances exit, but it does not exist in today society. Hardin is basically suggesting for a regulated society to exist so that communal long term goals are reached and that all resources are allocated properly. Shared resources are not always misused and overused, public parks and libraries are functioning perfectly fine.
Selfish actions haven’t always caused a tragedy of natural resources. People today are beginning to advocate recycling and energy efficient programs. In every corner, there is a recycling bin; stores such as Whole Foods are using recycled paper bags instead of plastic bags. The everyday citizens are taking actions to combat the tragedy even before the worst of the tragedy has even come to us. The selfish natures of human are used more often than not in criminal sectors such as stealing and murders than harms to the environment.
In the end, has society ever reached the tragedy? Is our society really at the point where we can’t save it anymore? Are total regulative actions that beneficial to out society? Does everyone honestly act on behalf of their self interest in everything that relates to our natural resources? Isn’t it more balanced, there are those who overuse and misuse but there definitely are those who conserve too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
While you're probably right that the consequences are not nearly so dreadful as we are often lead to believe, there are many instances in which the tragedy of the commons has played out with bad results. Hence the reason we have to worry about global warming in the first place.
If anything, there is a self-corrective mechanism that comes into play just at the last minute for a lot of potential tragedies...the price to the individual for selfish behavior actually does start to increase dramatically just as devastating results encroach, and at that point people are willing to make sacrifices to prevent the devastation. People are starting to see that global warming could be really, really bad for them, and that's why they demand that Whole Foods offset its carbon emissions.
The reason why Hardin's neo-malthusian ideas of overpopulation will not come to pass is that it is not profitable for the individual to have a lot of children in our society.
It is not a matter of people being ultimately good, but a matter of the economic costs of selfish behavior finally coming back to bite the selfish individual. Fortunately this often happens before tragedy befalls us.
But even then, we often rely on governmental action to pull us through. The reason that things haven't fallen apart is that we are willing to support governmental restrictions on our behavior, knowing that it's ultimately best (Chlorofluorocarbons were causing a hole in the ozone layer and that was mostly corrected by international restrictions on their use). Certainly people all agree that these regulations should be in place, but people are almost never willing to act independently. Many people support legislation to curb carbon emissions, but will not voluntarily give up their cars.
Post a Comment