IPFS Frosty Wooldridge

CONNECTING THE DOTS

More About: Environment

Part 4--EXAMINATION OF THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: MUTUAL COERCION

Part 4: Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon

The late Garrett Hardin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara presented "The Tragedy of the Commons" as an address to the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He copyrighted it by the AAAS, Science, 13 December 1968, vol. 162, pp. 1243-48. (www.thesocialcontract.com, fall 2001, Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin)

As social observers, we read and watch on TV the constant symptoms of our tragedy expressed daily in a variety of ways across the American landscape. Water shortages face California, but that state adds 1,700 people daily on its way to adding 20 million people in 30 years!  A pharmacist in a small town shoots a robber with five added bullets.  A 29 year old man fathers 21 children by 11 women.  One woman, in Detroit, Michigan, birthed 24 children with countless men, but enjoyed Aid to Dependent Children checks for each added child.  Three of her girls, upon reaching 15 years of age, birthed children of their own.  AIDs victims in Washington, DC equals per capital AIDS in Africa.

As you can see, it’s all more than a little bit crazy, so much so, a rational thinking person cannot grasp the realities in all their facets of Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons.”

“The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort,” Hardin said. “Consider bank-robbing. The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility! Rather than rely on propaganda we follow Frankel's lead and insist that a bank is not a commons.

“The morality of bank-robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say, "Thou shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions. But temperance also can be created by coercion. Taxing is a good coercive device. To keep downtown shoppers temperate in their use of parking space we introduce parking meters for short periods, and traffic fines for longer ones. We need not actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants to; we need merely to make it increasingly expensive for him to do so. Not prohibition, but carefully biased options are what we offer him. A Madison Avenue man might call this persuasion; I prefer the greater candor of the word coercion.

“Coercion is a dirty word to most liberals now, but it need not forever be so. As with the four-letter words, its dirtiness can be cleansed away by exposure to the light, by saying it over and over without apology or embarrassment. The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.

“To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it. Who enjoys taxes? We all grumble about them. But we accept compulsory taxes because we recognize that voluntary taxes would favor the conscienceless. We institute support taxes and other coercive devices to escape the horrors of the commons.

“An alternative to the commons need not be perfectly just to be preferable. With real estate and other material goods, the alternative we have chosen is the institution of private property coupled with legal inheritance. Is this system perfectly just? As a genetically trained biologist I deny that it is. It seems to me that, if there are to be differences in individual inheritance, legal possession should be perfectly correlated with biological inheritance - that those who are biologically more fit to be the custodians of property and power should legally inherit more.

Recognition of Necessity

Hardin said, “Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man's population problems is this ‘the’ commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another.

“First we abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm land and restricting pastures and hunting and fishing areas. These restrictions are still not complete throughout the world.

“Somewhat later we saw that the commons as a place for waste disposal would have to be abandoned. Restrictions on the disposal of domestic sewage are widely accepted in the Western World; we are still struggling to close the commons to pollution by automobiles, factories, insecticide sprayers, fertilizing operations, and atomic energy installations.

“In a still more embryonic state is our recognition of the evils of the commons in matters of pleasure. There is almost no restriction on the propagation of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping public is assaulted with mindless music, without its consent. Our government is paying out billions of dollars to create supersonic transport which will disturb fifty thousand people for every one person who is whisked from coast to coast three hours faster. Advertisers muddy the airwaves of radio and television and pollute the view of travelers. We are a long way from outlawing the commons in matters of pleasure.

“Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody's personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of "rights" and "freedom" fill the air. But what does "freedom" mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became freer, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is the recognition of necessity."

“The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.

“The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" - and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.”

Since Hardin wrote the “Tragedy of the Commons” in 1968, humans added another three billion to the planet. The U.S. added 100 million people.  Projections show an added three billion more added by 2050 and another 100 million to the USA.  Few blink or swallow at our dilemma.  Most Americans dodge, duck or avoid the population equation at every juncture—even as they watch its accelerating ‘symptoms’ in this country and worldwide. Organizations feature Green Revolution, alternative energy, mass transit and conservation—but they won’t touch hyper-population growth. 

You must wonder why a sane man would walk onto a railroad track to discover a train headed in his direction, but he turns around and walks the other way so he won’t see it when that locomotive runs over him.  As intelligent at the United States purports to be, it follows in the same footsteps of China, Mexico, Pakistan and India—horrific population overload.

I am waiting for a rational U.S. Senator or even President Obama to introduce a bill that addresses the future: “US Sustainable Population Policy.”  What does that mean?  First of all, since 1970, the average woman birthed 2.03 children for a stable population. What grew us by 100 million in 40 years? Immigration!  Therefore, we need to reduce all forms of immigration to 100,000 annually.  Why? That’s how many egress the country annually.  That would allow a net zero gain to stabilize America toward a sustainable future.

Without it, that population train along with the Tragedy of the Commons bears down on us with accelerating speed.

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To take action:  First and foremost, join www.numbersusa.com and become one of nearly a million Americans making impact with pre-written faxes and phone calls to change immigration policies toward a stable future. Bi-partisan and highly effective.

www.thesocialcontract.com  ; www.fairus.org ; www.vdare.com ;www.patriotunion.org ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.cairco.org ; www.limitstogrowth.com ; www.capsweb.org ; www.balance.org ; www.carryingcapacity.org ; www.populationmedia.org ; www.worldpopulationbalance.org

Please visit Annie Leonard at www.storyofstuff.com for a compelling and highly interesting 20 minute video concerning our high consumption, highly wasteful and unsustainable society.  She educates and provides avenues for you to make a difference.

Visit this web site by Chris Martenson: http://www.chrismartenson.com/environmental_data 

In Colorado: visit www.soprisfoundation.org for information how you can network with like-minded folks to create a more sustainable future for Colorado and other states. 

View CNN’s “Planet in Peril” with Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/planet.in.peril/

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA:  D.C
Mailing Address
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Phone Numbers
Comments:   202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX:             202-456-2461


Books to read:  “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler

                         “Peak Everything” by Richard Heinberg

                         “Too Many People” by Lindsey Grant

Become a member of “Frosty’s Press Agent Corps” whereby you volunteer a few hours to send out emails to top TV and radio hosts to offer top speakers on America’s overpopulation crisis driven by unending immigration.  Email
frostyw@juno.com and receive two informational letters showing you exactly what to do.

 Roy Beck's "IMMIGRATION BY THE NUMBERS" is the single best educational appreciation of America's future if we allow ourselves to add another 100 million people. Just click on this site for the most sobering experience of your children's future.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=roy+beck&hl=en

Roy Beck gives a graphic presentation of our fate if we continue to allow legal and illegal immigration to swamp this country. If you have children, you will be particular unnerved at their fate. I know Roy Beck personally and his integrity and knowledge stand at the top. Pass this web site 14 minute video far and wide across America to educate everyone you know. We either stop this human tsunami or the future of this country will be much like Rome's. We must, as a nation and a civilization, move to secure our country from this massive, unrelenting population overload from a line that never ends. This will be the most compelling 14 minute video of your life.

Once you see it, go to my web site for action items www.frostywooldridge.com and join www.numbersusa.com to become a weekly faxer of pre written letters and join the phone calling teams.

 Bob Woodruff of ABC asked input from all citizens concerning the future of our planet.  Go to www.earth2100.tv for a sobering reality check as to what we face and to what I have been writing about for the past 20 years.  Our ‘window’ to change to a balanced population and non-polluting energy diminishes every day we listen to irresponsible media and thus ignore the blatant symptoms manifesting all over America and the planet.

From: Frosty Wooldridge 

This three minute interview with Adam Schrager on “Your Show” May 4, 2008, NBC Channel 9 News, addresses the ramifications of adding 120 million people to USA in 35 years and six million people to Colorado as to water shortages, air pollution, loss of farmland, energy costs and degradation of quality of life.  In the interview, Frosty Wooldridge explains the ramifications of adding 120 million people to the USA in 35 years. He advances new concepts such as a “Colorado Carrying Capacity Policy”; “Colorado Environmental Impact Policy”; “Colorado Water Usage Policy”; “Colorado Sustainable Population Policy”.  Nationally, the USA needs a "National Sustainable Population Policy" to determine the carrying capacity of this nation for the short and long term.  Wooldridge is available for interviews on radio and TV having interviewed on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX.

Click the link to view the 3 minute interview with NBC's Adam Schrager:

 Go to:  www.frostywooldridge.com  and click on “Audio/Video” tab

Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border.  In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece.  He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges.  He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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