tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post1560803731257774771..comments2024-01-10T11:19:56.456-08:00Comments on What Is Sustainable: Living Within LimitsWhat Is Sustainablehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-50292011729256046382013-08-17T11:30:25.553-07:002013-08-17T11:30:25.553-07:00Riversong, right. Our brains did not evolve to en...Riversong, right. Our brains did not evolve to endure life in a world of endless strangers. The celebration of diversity is politically correct, but diversity is often the father of conflict - Egypt and Syria, for example. Hardin was born in 1915. Maybe he had kids before the population issue moved to the center stage. What Is Sustainablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-25935625866429647772013-08-17T11:22:36.044-07:002013-08-17T11:22:36.044-07:00Gary, in this book, he advocated the competant man...Gary, in this book, he advocated the competant management of the commons. The book is a bit of a mixed bag. He repeatedly advocated ZPG (zero pop growth) instead of NPG (negative pop growth). But he once expressed fondness for a pop of a half billion. <br /><br />Similarly, he seemed to set a goal of zero economic growth, rather than negative economic growth. The objective was to slow down industrial civilization, not kill it.<br /><br />It was good to see him poke at the logic of Political Correctness. No sacred cow should be off-limits to direct questioning. What Is Sustainablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-5775862784456060322013-08-16T08:08:45.778-07:002013-08-16T08:08:45.778-07:00As to Hardin's overall message, it's essen...As to Hardin's overall message, it's essence, perhaps, is that human empathy, which evolved hard-wired in our brains in order to encourage a strong sense of communal solidarity within tribal society, devolves into social conscience when the tribe expands to the nation-state, in which interpersonal relationships are far too stretched for anything more than conceptual or bureaucratic solidarity.<br /><br />In tribal society, empathy leads to the subordination of personal needs to the good of the group. In nation-state society, empathy leads to the reduction of the unit of society to the nuclear family, to competitive subcultures and cliques, and to counter-productive support for those whom natural selection would otherwise eliminate from the gene pool.<br /><br />While I don't agree with Hardin that national borders are somehow sacred (since they are one of the more destructive human artifacts in the modern age), or that humans aren't as entitled to migrate today as they were when we left Africa 125,000 years ago, there is merit in racial and ethnic segregation as a support for constructive communal empathy, as far as that is yet possible today.<br /><br />It's also telling that Hardin, a strong advocate of population control, had four children.Riversonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05413657075902226702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-16689452503828318802013-08-16T07:53:40.856-07:002013-08-16T07:53:40.856-07:00In regard to Gary G: The confusion (or, perhaps, o...In regard to Gary G: The confusion (or, perhaps, obfuscation) is that the tragedy of the commons results from the collective use of a resource by individuals (the basic unit of "enlightened self-interest), while communal use is subject to the taboos and rules of an intact community, as the basic unit of human society.Riversonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05413657075902226702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-51385246110456611202013-08-15T20:16:24.722-07:002013-08-15T20:16:24.722-07:00Rick: Even if Hardin didn’t mean what he was taken...Rick: Even if Hardin didn’t mean what he was taken by most to mean, his tragedy of the commons speculation has done a lot of mischief in the world. Free market radicals use the argument that communal use of the commons always gets the incentives wrong, and degrades whatever resource it is exploiting. Privatization of the commons, on the other hand (so the argument runs), operates out of enlightened self-interest and gets the stewardship incentives right. This is a pure load of crap, of course, but there is a sucker born every minute who believes it. I wish that an ecologist like Hardin hadn’t lent his reputable name to such disingenuous disinformation.Gary G.noreply@blogger.com