Hardin’s Tragedy
Recently I read an article by Matto Mildenberger, writing in Scientific American, about Tragedy of the Commons. Inspired, I read Hardin’s commentary for myself.
Garrett Hardin in his commentary The Tragedy of the Commons, (1968), argues that because selfish rational actors will by default damage interests that are shared in common spaces and resources — the commons — civil society enacts regulations to restrain or control their use. He extends this argument to populations — saying that Earth, a finite space, is a commons, which Darwinian and genetic logic tell us will be filled by those with the least concern for sharing that commons, and that therefore governments are justified to control populations. (China’s one child policy emerged around 1980; Wikipedia).
In some ways Tragedy of the Commons is a snap shot of modern political thought, a freeze frame of the philosophical logic of its time. Having grown up in the 1960s, I recognize much of its thought, having been assaulted with it and suffered the accusation of being selfish. That logic assumes the validity of the rational actor model of human beings, and with the rational actor in mind, projects the consequences for humanity, life and Earth, which are dire, if population levels are not controlled. The irony of his analysis is that he would be correct, if the rational actor were a correct model of human nature. But he is wrong about the rational actor as a necessary standard of human behavior, and wrong about the need for governments to set limits on populations.
Tragedy of the Commons is a strange mix, to me in our times, of progressive thinking, neo-liberal thinking, fascist thinking and communitarian thinking. He worries about environmental pollution and the infringement of private noise on public spaces, hence communitarian. He uses that logic to defend population control, hence fascism. He defends regulation for the common good, hence progressive. Since his premise is and remains, throughout his logic, the rational actor, we hear a neo-liberal. But because of the cross-category thinking, the logic of this piece can’t be placed in a box that we would recognize today. Garrett Hardin himself is accused of being a fascist, eugenicist, and Islamaphobe, and I won’t defend him. But we do hear him arguing for preserving the health of the environment and the right of governments to regulate the market place. He also does not defend the right of individuals to do whatever they want to — he just expects them to. Maybe he believes that is right. Significantly, he wants to protect the commons.
But the flaw in his logic leads to a flawed conclusion. People do not act and think in the manner of the rational actor, unless they are trained to, as in American economics education classes, and on the battlefield of American capitalism. And government programs that seek to directly reduce population, in a tragedy of the commons mind set, are not necessary. The Earth is finite, and as the number of humans increases, conditions for us collectively grow worse. But population isn’t the only cause or the only problem that needs to be addressed. The mal-distribution of wealth and global warming are also existential issues for humanity, and hunger, poverty, wild habitat loss, and disease are compelling needs for us to address. The best solution for all of these problems is education, access to resources, and the freedom to demand change from national and international leaders.
But the progressive logic of how to live together fails if we slip back into the rational-actor mode of thinking. The rational actor does not care about the impacts of their own behavior on others, and if we cannot count on people to care about each other, all bets are off. Our communities and our lives only succeed if it is an embedded assumption that we are all members of communities, where we all matter, where we will all get our needs met, where we must protect others to protect ourselves, and when we share, we do not lose.
This logic is as inevitable to me as Hardin’s logic was to him. By removing the premise of the rational-actor we are able to deploy the community-human model, and if we do this, we might be able to build a world in which human freedom is properly balanced with conscience and the health of the commons. Those who deride this model are those who learned their lessons in economics classes, learned the lessons of survival in the hyper-competitive American capitalist state, and stand to gain in their short term thinking. There is nothing we can do to change them, but we have an essential fact on our side: the rational actor model is a fabrication, but the community-human model is real and the subject of sociological study. People around the globe are conscious, care about each other, and when they are presented with a need, will help each other. Communities which assume this construct can succeed anywhere. Be careful not to put a label on it, many who call themselves conservative are community minded too.
