Article Analysis Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 3

Analysis - Article Example To argue this point Hardin develops the thesis of the tragedy of the commons as being borne out of a system that treats the public domain as something that is self-correcting to stasis, and that man works in accordance with what seems to be selfish interests but are in fact actions that in the end work toward the good of all. The tragedy of the commons is the idea that society and people seem blindsided by an appeal to the commons as something that is to be had by all, even when the commons that is referred to here, whether food, or land, or the ability of the environment to take in pollution and waste, are finite things. Hardin essentially says that in fact the individual cannot be trusted to work for the common good, and that society, hardwired as it is to treat the commons as something that is unlimited in supply, is in effect perpetually in a course to deplete the commons and to wreak havoc on the very same things that sustain it. Hardin essentially says that in a world of explod ing populations there is less and less room for the notion of the commons as something that can be exploited and used without restraint or conditions. This outdated notion worked when the populations were low and the actions of men individually and collectively had little effect on the quality and availability of those common things, in the same way that adding a pinch of salt to a glass of water would not alter the taste of the water substantially, but adding more and more salt would eventually change the character of the water and its taste fundamentally. This is the same with the commons and the way the commons has been conceived and abused by society. This old notion of the inexhaustible nature of the commons must go, according to Hardin. Already he says, there have been curbs set in place with regard to the land and the tilling and grazing of the land; in the disposal of