Dr. Garrett Hardin: Overpopulation, Survival and Morality

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At any rate, my dissatisfaction with the algal studies had reawakened my interest in population problems, and it wasn't long before I was actively writing and lecturing about the hazards of overpopulation.

PLOWBOY: Did this work lead to the creation of your course in human ecology at the University here in Santa Barbara?

HARDIN: Not directly, no. I joined the staff of this college in 1946 and spent the next 10 years, more or less, establishing the university's first course in general biology and writing a textbook for the class. Eventually, that biology course developed some population problems of its own—we were swamped with more students than we could handle—so we began offering the class over closed-circuit television.

I learned a good bit from that experience, and when I did establish the human ecology coursein the early 1960's—I limited the number of students to between 50 and 100 per term.

PLOWBOY: While you were limiting enrollments in your classes though, your writings were beginning to reach a great many people.

HARDIN: Yes, in 1968 I finished "The Tragedy of the Commons", which wasn't my first publication but has certainly turned out to be among my most important works. It was one of those lucky situations ... I happened to be saying the right thing at We right time.

PLOWBOY: Could you summarize the theory of the Commons as it was developed in that article?

HARDIN: Let me describe the thesis as I've refined it with the passage of time. First of all, there are three basic politico-economic systems used by mankind to distribute the earth's resources. We have, first of all, privatism—or private enterprise—in which a person or group owns the resource and harvests it ... just as a farmer owns, tills, and profits from his or her piece of land. The other obvious system is socialism ... where the community holds joint ownership of the resources and harvests them jointly, but appoints a manager to handle the distribution.

Now, either of these two systems—privatism or socialism— will work. Each has its faults, and both have intrinsic advantages ... but either form of government can function without destroying it's resources.

However, there is a third system of distribution that cannot work in a crowded world, and that's the system of the Commons ... in which the resource is jointly owned but harvested by individuals. The classic example of this politico-economic system is a pasture area-such as the Commons of preindustrial England—that is open to, say, 10 different families. Let us assume that the field is large enough to support 100 cows ... 10 per household Now, as long as there are fewer than that number of cattle grazing the pasture, no harm is done. But as soon as the area holds its full ''quota" of 100 cows, the problems begin. If—at that point—another animal is added to the Commons, there will not be enough forage to adequately feed any of the cattle. When one individual ignores the field's capacity and does add an eleventh cow to his or her herd, however, the loss in meat growth and milk productivity per animal -caused by the shortage of food—is shared by everyone who uses that common field ... while the transgressor reaps all the profits in the form of an extra—though slightly underfed—-beast. In a short time all of the farmers will have to move in and take as big a share as possible of the rapidly diminishing forage—by adding additional cattle of their ownin self defense.

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