That we will be able to support a much larger population than we
could have supported by treating the land as a commons and we won't
degrade it because every individual propriater has an interest in a, as in
insuring that the future flow of product from the land will be high.
Because they pay the full cost of
any investment or self-restraint they have to make.
But they also get the full benefit.
Whereas in the fisheries case that we talked about a minute ago, they
pay the full cost but they only get a small fraction of the benefit.
So by dividing up the common property resource, that's how
Harden is using the word commons. By making it, dividing it up into
private property you can so increase productivity, says Locke.
>> Yes.
>> That we'll all be better off than we were before.
>> So from Locke's perspective we don't need such a strong external authority
because it's in our self interest to preserve our land for the future.
We're seeing into the future, and in this case, seeing into
the future actually helps us be more productive?
>> Yes exactly, that's, I mean of course, prior to Hobbes,
the great philosophers of both the classical Greece and
Rome, of the Arab world, of the Christian Middle
Ages all thought that reason was the key to human harmony.
Because through reason, we could grasp the order of things
and see what our, where our duties lay and so forth.
So Hobbes has the extraordinary originality to turn that on its head and
see reason is actually in some ways the source of our, of our discontent.
>> Yes, and Harden, I guess picks up on that in a way, right?
Its because from Hardin's perspective its
also reason in a kind of, it's almost, I don't know if it's what we'd call it
game theory at that time, but If you
know the rational perspective will lead us to disaster.
>> Exactly.
>> Why did he think, what was he thinking about at that time?
What was the issue?
>> Well, he was specifically thinking about the problem of
population and at that time, there was a lot of concern
that population was growing at unsustainable rates.
>> Right.
>> And the, and he was saying we
should think about population or natality decisions reproductive decisions
as really kind of commons, because if the
world can only support a certain number of people
>> Right.
>> Then whenever you have offspring, you are not simply
effecting just yourself. >> Right.
>> And your immediate household.
You're effecting everybody else in the world.
>> That carrying capacity of the planet, I guess.
Right? >> Exactly.
Yeah, and so he, he thought that the solution would be to adopt some
kind of authoritative limitations, perhaps of the sort you saw
a few years later in China limiting what people could do in terms of birth.
This is a, you know,
characteristic kind of Hobbesian solution. >> Right.
[LAUGH]
>> You pass a law. You enforce the law.
[LAUGH] With the police.
>> Right.
>> And he thought very much along the lines that you were just suggesting that.
We can't preach to people and say, you should be responsible, you should practice
self restraint, because, those people are be,
in effect being being played as chumps.
>> Yeah.
>> Cause they'll practice self restraint.
The other people will go on behaving badly >> Right.
>> And over time the self-restrainers will disappear from the population.
It's kind of an evolutionary.
>> Right, because those other people will be having all thpse children.
>> Exactly.
Of course there's a lot of assumptions being made there.
Like, if I came from a big family I'm going to have a big family.
>> Right.
>> I'm a lip breeder.
My children will be breeder's. But, whatever.
>> But I guess that the, the article was you
know, it's brief, it's it's it seems in some ways delimited.
But it caught on so much, because, perhaps because of this notion that it was
our very rationality, the thing we're so
proud about, that was leading us to disaster.
I mean, I guess in some ways, Horkheimer and Adorno made a,
a, a, a parallel argument, like
it's, enlightenment itself is leading to Fascism.
That rationality leads to disaster.
I mean, there's a, there's a, I guess, in the
post war period, there was almost a critique of rationality with.
Does that seem reasonable?
That
>> Yeah.
I would actually perhaps say it's a critique of instrumental rationality.
If you think about say, a Kantian idea of practical reason
which involves the idea of finding a rational basis for norms,
like the norm of respecting other persons, treating them as ends in themselves.
Hob, Kant saw, rather in a pre-Hobbesian way, so to speak.
Kant saw the development of the human capacity for reason as enabling them
to grasp moral principles and therefor to learn how to live with one another.
>> Yes. And to bring a better situation
ultimately of perpetual peace in the world.
>> So that external authority gets internalized, right?
We have the, we have our norms that we conform to because
the norms are reasonable, and we restrain ourselves rather than needing the cops.
>> [LAUGH] Exactly and in fact, this is Well, we
probably need a little bit of cops in the background.
[LAUGH] Because you don't want to think, I mean, of
course the anarchists, I mean, you think about William Godwin,
they thought we could really do the, do, do the whole
thing and there was no need for any kind of external authority.
For people like Rousseau and Kant and people in that tradition We
need to recognize that we're imperfectly
reasonable and therefore there is slippage.
But the idea, the core idea behind this Kantian, and I,
actually he got it from Rousseau, I mean he only said that
>> Yes.
>> Is the idea of, the question of how
could we be free, and live in society with others.
'because if we're living in society, the society has to have an order.
Otherwise, it's just a deglomeration and if it
has an order, then there are rules or
norms that we're going to have to conform to
in order to bring, to create that order.
But if I have to conform to those rules, then how can I be free?
And their answer
is, well if those rules are rules that,
you, yourself will because you see they're reasonable.
At least that's in Kant's terms.
Then as rational beings, you are conforming to
those rules is conforming to your own decisions.
>> Yes. >> And therefore you are free.
>> So for when Rousseau says oh, freedom or the highest
form of freedom, is obedience to a law that you give yourself,
Harden's saying you'd be irrational, you'd be a chump to give that law to yourself.
Because other people are going to be cheating and you're missing out.
And worse than that, you'll disappear.
>> Exactly.
Unless of course, there's this external authority that's sanctioning things.
The law, yeah.
>> So, so tell us a little bit about critique's of Harding.
because I, pretty, although it caught on, it
was, it, it captured the imagination of people.
It also gave rise
pretty quickly to critique's within economics, within social theory.
>> Yes, absolutely.
the, the I think the There are number of critiques.
And they begin, they move away from Hardin's,
or the Hardin/Hobbes kind of H squared, [LAUGH]...
>> [LAUGH]
>> Position,