Critical Analysis Of Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy Of The Commons

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Recommended: Neo-malthusian theory

‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ written by Garrett Hardin is an article that is highly pessimistic in its approach. It mainly talks about the problems of the “commons” because of overpopulation, keeping the Malthusian theory as the central argument. Malthus had concluded after observing the continuous growth in the population of the northern states of America that, if unchecked, the population had the tendency to double itself in every twenty-five year period. He proposed that the population would increase in a geometrical fashion (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 …) and on the other hand, the food supply could increase in an arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…). For Malthus, the main reason for this was that since the supply of food is fixed, in accordance with the law …show more content…

However, this addition leads to a negative effect of overgrazing, which is borne by the society at large. The individual herder keeps increasing his herd for his own gain. Hardin provides a criticism of this individual rational behaviour as the net negative effect is borne all, which in this case was overgrazing. He gives another example of national parks, where they get eroded due to the pressure of too many visitors. Hence, for him, the main population related problem for mankind is the ‘commons’. The necessity of the commons needs to be recognized and its breeding needs to be abandoned. The commons have already been abandoned in food gathering, enclosing farm land, restricting pastures, hunting areas and fishing areas. It also needs to be abandoned in cases of waste disposal. According to Hardin, the only solution to this problem is that the mutual coercion is mutually agreed upon. The social arrangements are made in ways that they are mutually coercive, that is, majority of the people are affected by them and are therefore, learn to accept and live with them. For example, taxes are imposed, due to which majority of people are affected yet they pay taxes to “escape the horror of the

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