the system, will have catastrophic consequences; in particular, he objects to the
United Nations’ claim, as restated in the Declaration on Social Progress and
Development (1969) (http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/s1dspd.htm) that
‘parents have the exclusive right to determine freely and responsibly the number
and spacing of their children’ (Article 4):
If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children
of improvident parents starved to death; if, thus, overbreeding brought its own
‘punishment’ to the germ line – then there would be no public interest in controlling
the breeding of families. But our society is deeply committed to the welfare state,
and hence is confronted with another aspect of the tragedy of the commons.
(Hardin, 1994: 334–5)
Hardin’s comment makes reference to ‘our society’ – meaning the United States- and its commitment to the welfare state. The tragedy of the commons is, of course,
a metaphor for the world’s resources, and not every society has a welfare state.
However, Hardin’s audience is his own people, and the question of population
growth is, for Hardin, closely linked to that of immigration. Since population
growth is much higher in the developing world than in the developed world,
migration from the former to the latter is a consequence of population growth. And
Hardin has three fairly straightforward policy proposals: end the despoliation of
the ‘commons’ insofar as this is within the power of the United States and other
developed countries to do; stop food aid to the developing world; and severely
restrict migration to the developed world.
We will say something about these proposals shortly, but we need to consider
Hardin’s underlying philosophical position. Hardin is not a philosopher, and so we
have to engage in some speculation to capture his basic position, but it seems to
amount to this: human beings are naturally selfish, or, at least, they are
overwhelmingly concerned with their own survival. That some people are lucky to
live in relatively wealthy societies and others in poor societies may be cause for a
bad conscience, but it does not change the ethical situation. That most Americans
are descended from people who ‘stole’ from Native Americans does not mean that
they have an obligation to help the less fortunate:
We are all the descendants of thieves, and the world’s resources are inequitably
distributed. But we must begin the journey to tomorrow from the point where
we are today. We cannot remake the past. We cannot safely divide the wealth
equitably among all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates. To
do so would guarantee that our grandchildren and everyone else’s grandchildren,
would have only a ruined world to inhabit.
(Hardin, 1974: 567)
Hardin employs the analogy of a lifeboat to illustrate his argument. Two-thirds
of the world are desperately poor, while a third is relatively wealthy. Each of the
wealthy nations can be likened to a lifeboat; in the ocean outside the lifeboat swim
the poor of the world, who would like to clamber on board. If there are 50 people
on a boat designed for 60, and 100 swimming in the water around the boat, what
are we – where ‘we’ means those in the boat – to do? We could respond to the
Christian call to be ‘our brother’s keeper’ or the Marxist injunction to give to each
‘according to his needs’, but since all 100 are our brothers (and sisters) and all are
368 Part 3 Contemporary ideologies