Response #2

Although it was written 40 years ago, Garrett Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ still delivers great ideas of the tragedy of the commons (so great that it's even on Econ textbooks which makes people think that he's actually an economist).

I will, however, have to raise a question, which might be fatal to his argument. When asserting that conscience will fail to control people's breeding, he makes an important assumtion : "Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The differences will be accentuated, generation by generation."

Well, I am not necessarilly agreeing with this. Statistically speaking, the size of family is surely decreasing; what makes the whole population increase is the number of families rather than the size of families. Surely one might say it is due to the development of society system, which makes it more desirable to have small size familes. Yet, even in a developing countries, and, as a matter of fact, even in nations far from to be even called to be developing countries, same phenomenon is being observed.

So, if this statistics prove that Hardin's assumption is empirically incorrect, that can possibly mean that there is some space that conscience can play a huge role.

By no means, I am saying it does. I, too, believe the control of breeding of mankind will become more and more difficult, partially because of the reason that Hardin mentions. However, his assumption does not quite seem correct. Whether or not his parents bred many children, in fact, has little to do with the size of his own family. If a family keeps being large, it is likely due to the culture, rather than family customs, however we name it. And even such cultures have already started recognizing that having as many children as possible might not be the best idea.