When many individuals use up a shared resource out of self-interest, that demand overwhelms the supply and the resource begins to decrease. This situation can be avoided either by making an appeal to conscience or by instituting regulations using mutually agreed upon coercion. An appeal to conscience would be to inform people of how their self-interested decisions negatively affect others in the grand scheme of things. After this, enough people would have to change their behavior to lower the overall costs just enough to lower the resource usage. The coercion would be a punishment such as a law or a fine to the people who do not follow the rules that limit resource consumption. Hardin claims that in seeking to solve the population problem, …show more content…
In these cases the people that are morally “good” are not wronged, they actually benefit. An example of this social case would be in combating obesity and the overconsumption of unhealthy foods. People who tend to be unhealthy also tend to have a less nutritious diet than healthy people. If there is a greater number of unhealthy people in the population due to poor food choices, the cost of health insurance will go up to pay for all of the health issues that come with the unhealthy population. A solution would be to educate people on the health risks of eating unhealthy food and how that in turn increases health insurance for the entire population. On the food corporation side, the solution would be to inform food corporations about the same health issues and how corporations should feel inclined to make healthy food cheaper and to either stop making unhealthy food, decrease the amount that is being produced or change the ingredients in the …show more content…
For the population control case, morally “good” individuals will have less children and will therefore be more unhappy than the individuals that are not restraining themselves from having more children. In the obesity case on the population’s side, the people who do feel morally obligated to change will be rewarded by a healthier lifestyle and cheaper health costs if enough people decide to change their ways. On the other hand, the “good” corporations in the obesity scenario will be wronged just as the “good” people in the population case would be
In the present case there are two possible prosecutions to discuss. Jerome may be guilty of ‘controlling or coercive behaviour’ under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. While Talia may be guilty of assault under section 20 or section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) 1861.
Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” is an article that identifies the nation’s current problems and predicaments that can’t be resolved through the use of technical solutions. Hardin’s work heavily focuses on overpopulation, a prominent and unceasing issue that significantly distorts and affects the stability of the Earth and the abundance of the planet’s resources. In his article, he mentioned some reasonable and important solutions to overpopulation, but he also explained its downside and how the said solutions may not be ideal and practical. “Tragedy of the Commons” revealed that the human population will continue to flourish and how it will be greatly detrimental to our society unless individuals get the education that they need and
In order for the insistence that equity and impartiality to hold true to Mill's Utility, we must find a foundation from within his argumentation that will support it. Thus we turn to Mill's sanctions, or incentives that he proposes to drive one towards the path of Utility. Mill's first sanction, the internal sanction, leads one to act ethically because of the fear of displeasure that might arise from other people if one does not act in this manner. Mill justifies that individuals desire the warmness of others as an incentive to acting unselfishly in the attempt to acquire the greatest good, and fear the dissatisfaction of others. Mill's second sanction, the internal sanction, is in essence an individual's inner conscience. With the assumption that the conscience is pure and free from corruption, Mill implies that satisfaction is brought forth to the conscience when one successfully and ethically commits to one's duties, the duty of Utility. What is undesired is the feeling of dissatisfaction that spawns when one does not act dutifully. In order for this rationale to make sense, one must do what is almost unavoid...
Hardin states that throughout most of history there's been no need for concern about population control. Nature would come along with epidemic diseases and take care of the matter for us. Disease has been the primary population controller in the past. Because widespread disease and famine no longer exist, we have to find other means to stop population increases (Spencer 1992, pp.61-2).
What do you consider to be cruel and unusual punishment? Most people when asked this question think of medieval torture devices, burning people alive, and hard slave labor. However, cruel and unusual punishment, which is a protected against right by the eighth amendment, stretches far beyond these cliches and is still occurring in modern society. The case Miller v. Alabama and a parallel case, Jackson v. Hobbs deals with such punishments and brings up the questions of what, in current times, is to be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Miller v. Alabama addresses with the debate that arose surrounding the mandatory sentence of life without parole for a juvenile when two boys, fourteen-year-old Evan Miller and sixteen-year-old Colby Smith,
It was the research of Dobash and Dobash, a husband and wife team from Wales, that first posited that “intimate partner violence is the result of male oppression of women within a patriarchal system in which men are the primary perpetrators and women the primary victims” (McPhail, B. A., Busch, N. B., Kulkarni, S., & Rice, G., 2007). According to Lawson (2012), feminist theories treat the problem of intimate partner violence as fundamentally related to the patriarchal domination of men over women. Historically, patriarchy was the dominant social structure from early Greek and Roman civilizations where women were considered to be the property of their father, if unmarried, and their husband if married. As such, women were often beaten, burned, and killed for not being obedient to a man’s
U T I L I T A R I A N I S M. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2014, from http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/Utilitarianism: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/Utilitarianism%20notes.htm
Engler, Yves. “Obesity: much of the Responsibility Lies with Corporations.” They Say I Say. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York. W.W. Norton, 2009. 172-181. Print.
According to Hardin, freedom is the cause of tragedy of commons. There is no technical solution to solve it. The only solution is to alter human’s principles. The article by Hardin focused on the population growth. Overpopulation is an example of tragedy of commons. Because the world is finite, one is unable to maximize goods and population at the same time. Hardin then propose that the only solution is to limit breeding. “Common system from breeding must be abandoned”
Coercion, and subsequently the right to use violence, is the state’s sole method for functioning and existing. Without it, the state is powerless to exist credibly. Thus, at the core of political theory is the argument to justify the state’s use of coercion; without this, the state cannot be ethically justifiable. However, can a violent, or otherwise morally dubious act such as coercion, ever be truly justified? If enough good comes of it, surely it could be mitigated, but how much ‘good’ is enough? And can we really ever justify the indefinite use of coercion based solely upon favorable outcomes that have occurred in the past? If we cannot, then the only option that may be justified could be anarchy.
Population control is a practice of altering the growth rate of a human population. In the excerpt, Hardin explains that only the rich have food reserved because they can afford it, and that the poor are the ones who eat it all. Because of the world food bank, where anyone can take from, the poor countries’ populations will continue to grow, going unchecked. This is harmful because there are overpopulated countries that cannot sustain themselves. Hardin says, “Without some system of worldwide food sharing, the proportion of people in the rich and poor nations might eventually stabilize. The overpopulated poor countries would decrease in numbers” (Hardin 588). The poor countries have no way of adding any food to the food bank and are just taking from it. This makes it hard for other countries to rationalize why they should support any poor country that is over populated and that is using up unnecessary resources because it does not benefit them in any economic or agricultural way.
As human beings, we often have desires that are not always consistent with yielding the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Utilitarianism would argue that putting one’s own desires first and pursuing one’s own interests is wrong and immoral behavior. While some moral theories acknowledge that pursuing one’s own interests can be morally optional, in Utilitarianism, it is always forbidden (Moral Theory, p. 135). This makes the theory overly demanding because one is constantly forced to consider others. Utilitarians can respond to this objection by challenging the claim that pursuing one’s own desires cannot ever be consistent with the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Certainly there can be times when pursuing one’s own desires is also consistent with producing the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Utilitarians might also point out that moral theories are meant to be demanding because they are teaching individuals how to act morally and acting morally is not always the desirable course of
...s man has caused, but when all is said and done the world will go on, but the humankind inhabiting it may not. We will die off long before nature does. I also believe that Hardin looked at the adding of more cattle to the field as being unavoidable in human nature to want to profit more at other's expenses. I do not see this to be true. Uneducated people maybe, but as people began to be educated they would no longer do it. We have implemented many different pollution clean up plans in the United States and it continues to be a big issue that people take seriously. I also believe that people are able to find other resources once one is depleted through either developping replacements for those resources or using renewable resources and in the end it balances out. The only way to really prevent people from taking more than their share is to remove the incentive to.
“6. INDUSTRY Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
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