[PLUG-TALK] The Tragedy of the Commons

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at portlandia-it.com
Wed Nov 1 08:55:03 UTC 2023


I've read a lot of this sort of thing over the years.   The article
basically can be boiled down to one paragraph - which is buried in the
article - and says:

"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"

However, even though this gem of wisdom is true the author is completely
ignorant that this applies TO EVERY HUMAN PROBLEM.

We have bicycle riders getting injured on the roads - their answer is to
improve streets - but when anyone suggest let's start charging any adult
riding a bicycle on a city street a small registration fee to pay for these
improvements the bicycle riders go nuclear.  They are trying to find a way
of avoiding the evils of unsafe roads without relinquishing the privilege of
paying NOTHING to use those same roads.

Every single human problem can be boiled down to this. "I'll get mine don't
worry about his"  The key to solve overpopulation is USING this like a sort
of judo to get the outcome you want.

The author wrote this piece when US population was around 200 million and
growing like the dickens because at that time, economics and the political
system ENCOURAGED the production of children.  People who had kids got
EVERYTHING subsidized.  "for the children" was a national pastime.  This
came out of WWII because the US Government needed cannon fodder.

But then the demographics started shifting as older people quit dying young
and the population skewed older and the political power was taken away from
the young people of breeding age and given to the oldsters who said "screw
you I'm voting for Measure 5 and taking most of the money away from the
schools"   We have a teacher strike today which is the result of this
political shift.

And as the politics shifted the economics shifted and it became a LOT more
expensive to raise a kid to adulthood and give them a proper education.

And as a result - US population growth slowed.  It's negative now and the
only reason we have more people is all the illegal immigrants.

And when those illegal immigrants come over and breed anchor babies like
rabbits - fast forward 30 years and those babies are now adults, US citizens
- and they are acting EXACTLY according to the economics - and NOT having a
zillion children like their parents did.

The author claimed overpopulation would not be solved because "it is a
mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run
by an appeal to conscience" then goes on to agree with the postulation that
people with a lot of kids would breed children who would then want to have a
lot of kids themselves.   Except, that it's been pretty well conclusively
shown since this article was written was that this is complete horsecrap.
The vast majority of children from large families don't go on to have large
families because they have as a direct evidence the scarcity of competing
with siblings for money, parental attention and family resources, they see
their friends with expensive nice things they lack because their parents had
no money left and they are like "no effing way am _I_ gonna do that"

What controls human population is economics.  In societies where it's
economically advantageous to have a lot of kids - they have a lot of kids.
Agrarian, primitive societies.  But in societies where it's economically
advantageous to have just a few kids - people have just a few kids.  There
have not been a lot of societies where it was advantageous to only have a
few kids so the author, like most people, falls into the trap of seeing high
population breeding in human history and assuming that this is innate.

Having sex is innate.  People have ALWAYS wanted to have tons of sex.  But
tons of children?  Hell no.  The ancients used a contraceptive called
silphium, it is a plant that was so overused and in such demand that it went
extinct. (and was only recently rediscovered:
https://greekreporter.com/2023/08/13/plant-ancient-greece-rediscovered/

Overpopulation was solved in the US (and in Japan and in China and a number
of others) years ago via economics.  The problem we have today is
immigration, because other countries have not adjusted their economic
systems so that it's advantageous to not have a lot of kids.  In some cases
it's due to a broken political system and poverty (Mexico) in some cases
it's because they need cannon fodder (Israel)  But there's still too many
countries with economic systems that are broken like this and the young
people from those countries are coming to countries where overpopulation is
fixed.

Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG-talk <plug-talk-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Rich
Shepard
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 11:34 AM
To: plug-talk at pdxlinux.org
Subject: [PLUG-TALK] The Tragedy of the Commons

With all the natural, economic, social, and political turmoil we daily read
in our news sources it's easy to wonder what, if anything, can be done. This
morning I thought, again, of Garrett Hardin's 1968 article in the journal
Science, titled "The Tragedy of the Commons." 55 years later it seems as
relevant to current conditions as it did back then, if not more so.

In my opinion, Garrett Hardin and E.O. Wilson were the two most important
ecological philosophers of the 20th century.

I presented a couple of lectures on this subject to my classes when I taught
at the Idaho State University and the State University of New
York/Plattsburg. I was trying to get students to think more generally about
everything.

The article will be available for 7 days at <https://tinyurl.com/365nedyx>.
I strongly encourage you to download and read it because, as attributed to
Einstein but never proven he said it, "doing the same thing over and
expecting different results is the definition of insanity."

Read, ponder, enjoy,

Rich
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