John Locke and Garrett Hardin, two men with boundless ideas that took society by storm. Locke’s ideas on property and Hardin’s tragedy of the limits of shared resources had people thinking: “Can we trust other human beings to engage in productive economic life without depriving each other of these very opportunities and harming the Earth?” Well to answer this question in short, sure! Hardin mentions “the commons” multiple times in his famous 1968 analysis. If you really think about it, the implications of a commons is that since no one owns it, anyone can use it, exploit it, and pollute it at no charge. So who owns the air we breathe? The sunshine? The oceans? The birds in the air? That’s where we get a little complicated. Locke and Hardin
…show more content…
The source of this duty, he says, is natural law. To tie this into the property portion of Locke’s points, he’s saying people have the right to goods by adding their labour to that good, thus claiming ownership (Locke, 28). This right goes for all sorts of things according to Locke, including land itself. A prime example of this was the Homestead Act of 1862, where the Western migration was encouraged to settle in the lands outside of the original 13 colonies. In exchange, you must live on the plot of land you decided on for 5 consecutive years before claiming ownership (Potter, 359). The Homestead Act wasn’t a very successful story either, corruption and land speculation ran rampant as people claimed free land with no intention of living on it, but rather intending to turn it around for a profit: thus pure selfishness. Going back to Locke, this right is bounded by a consequence where people do not have the right to take more than they can use (Locke, 37). Money, backed by the labour, became the basis for expansion beyond the rational level of property (Locke, 46).
Hardin, on the other hand, wrote the “Tragedy of the Commons” in 1968. The "commons" refers to the common resources that can be used by everyone. The "tragedy" occurs as the result of everyone having the fatal freedom to exploit the commons (Hardin,
The source of this duty, he says, is natural law. To tie this into the property portion of Locke’s points, he’s saying people have the right to goods by adding their labour to that good, thus claiming ownership (Locke, 28). This right goes for all sorts of things according to Locke, including land itself. A prime example of this was the Homestead Act of 1862, where the Western migration was encouraged to settle in the lands outside of the original 13 colonies. In exchange, you must live on the plot of land you decided on for 5 consecutive years before claiming ownership (Potter, 359). The Homestead Act wasn’t a very successful story either, corruption and land speculation ran rampant as people claimed free land with no intention of living on it, but rather intending to turn it around for a profit: thus pure selfishness. Going back to Locke, this right is bounded by a consequence where people do not have the right to take more than they can use (Locke, 37). Money, backed by the labour, became the basis for expansion beyond the rational level of property (Locke, 46).
Hardin, on the other hand, wrote the “Tragedy of the Commons” in 1968. The "commons" refers to the common resources that can be used by everyone. The "tragedy" occurs as the result of everyone having the fatal freedom to exploit the commons (Hardin,