Talk:Garrett Hardin

Descriptions of Hardin's work censored?
Wow that was fast. Just hours! Perhaps Plumbago can inform us why he removed mine and another's descriptions of Hardin's work in the Books section? He wrote in History: "'6 December 2010 Plumbago (10,470 bytes) (Partial revert to remove excessive commentary; moved some material from Books to other sections)'"

No, Plumbago utterly removed them, then swiped one of my citations with reference and created an Awards section with that info, seemingly tossing the referenced he didn't like, including a ref/link to the entire Chapter 8 text.

Ideas, concepts, and arguments, in the form of books are Hardin's production. It's what he is. Without descriptions of them the article appears little different than a stub, dry and boring, if not misleading (as it appears to me). Furthermore, quotes and descriptions paint, in my opinion, a more accurate, full, and more three-dimensional picture than the gross oversimplifications otherwise presented here (as I had suggested). Obviously "excessive commentary" is not Dr. Plumbago's problem since he did not see fit to likewise butcher his buddy's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein.

Perhaps Plumbago can give a better description of his problem, or an actual constructive criticism so that we will be able to get Hardin's to more closely resemble Einstein's, to everybody's satisfaction? Or perhaps the actual problem is that Einstein's and others need mountains and mountains of excessive commentary likewise removed so as to be dry, concise, and equally boring?

I will wait a bit before undoing this vandalism, in hopes of finding mutual consensus. No response required.

Doug Bashford--68.127.84.53 (talk) 20:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Doug. Sorry if my edit seemed like vandalism to you, that obviously wasn't my intent.  I removed some material because it was not written an in encyclopaedic style and read more like advocacy (which, for Hardin, I'm cool with; just not here).  For example "He argues powerfully", "To imply that Hardin is 'that overpopulation guy,' is a gross oversimplification to the point of mis-representation".  As it happens, I did not remove everything that was added, and retained the material regarding the award Living Within Limits received (to which I added a link to the Award page).  Also, I moved other material from the books section to the main biographical section as it seemed out of place to me (and actually said as much in my edit summary).  As to the links I removed, they were in support of the text that I judged out of place.


 * Anyhow, all that said, I was overzealous in purging text I thought didn't fit for style reasons. To this end, later today I will try to work in the material that you added in a more neutral way, most probably to the biography section.  Cheers, --P LUMBAGO  09:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Done. I hope that fits the bill.  I've tried to keep the sense of the material you added while tweaking the style to be more neutral.  It's been a long, long time since I read Living Within Limits, so I may have garbled the argument while trying to rephrase it, so please edit away as you see fit.  It sounds like you've read it more recently.  Cheers, --P LUMBAGO  17:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

"... Hardin himself had five children"
This is correct (I believe), but appears in the article to simply undermine the preceding text. Logically it does of course, but I've definitely read something (somewhere) by Hardin that picks up this particular thread, since he was certainly aware that it made his body of work smack of "do what I say, not what I do". The source I'm half-remembering has him explicitly stating that he only came around to his views on overpopulation long after he and his wife had children. The thing is, I can't remember where I read it. I've got about 8 of his books here, but I don't think it's in any of them. Can anyone help? Cheers, --P LUMBAGO 11:00, 9 December 2010 (UTC)


 * But Hardin didn’t think EVERYBODY should have fewer children, just that the “unworthy” (poor, low IQ, nonwhite etc.) should. So it wasn’t necessarily hypocritical of him to have a large family. 63.231.140.53 (talk) 03:24, 8 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Hardin as racist!?  That unsupported and false trope originated from his war with with environmentalist Barry Commoner, a war he shared with Paul Ehrlich and other population scientists. Commoner had the anti-scientific infinite-Earth faith in technology and innovation to save the world, similar to growthmaniac orthodox economist Julian Simon.  Faith in technology and innovation to solve scarcity and shortages is seen by natural scientists as faith in "creating something out of nothing."


 * That hate-on pile-on is supported (to the biased) because Hardin was gleefully RW & politically incorrect, an unrepentant isolationist, and so forth because he was against ALL population growth, but as he wrote, road potholes may occur globally, but their repair is 100% a local (national) issue. He was not compassionate, because of the numbers he used he was in utter self-defense mode.  That pisses a lot of people off, people who do not recognize that every single major environmental problem and our current economic stratification can be explained in terms of (taboo and the self-censored thought crimes of) overpopulation symptoms.


 * And of course, the RW whacko bigots loved his scientific (respectable) sealed-borders desires. For THAT he will be branded as one of them!?  Being a RW nationalist does NOT imply white nationalism!  Show some intellectual discipline.  --2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:A8F7:4723:C3CB:9A4B (talk) 00:05, 10 March 2020 (UTC)Just Saying

Attempt to peer review
I tried to peer review this article but no edits have been made thus far. Alix11 (talk) 00:22, 28 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing the taboo nature mentioned above that made "overpopulation" itself taboo may have been a factor. Before that taboo, overpopulation was a common dinner table topic. Hardin was point-man in that war.  --2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:A8F7:4723:C3CB:9A4B (talk) 00:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC) Just Saying

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Deleting a Section
Unless good arguments are made, I intend to delete the following poorly supported defamatory section. It implies racism, a relic of an old personal feud followed by pro-overpopulation forces. I was actually just at Southern Poverty Street Journal's Hardin section. It's about like this, all guilt by association and guilty of having an offensive personality or stance.

Even the topic header says almost exactly that! True he was proudly politically incorrect in a dozen ways, almost fanatically anti-overpopulation, thus openly an anti-immigrant, sealed-borders advocate. He was STRONGLY against ALL population increase, and he had the exponential numbers and logic to prove it. True Hardin was not compassionate to other overpopulated nations, and he coldly defended that, arguing existential self-defense. Yet his critics presuming guilt, list his extreme fear of overpopulation as obvious proof he's faking it so he can openly do his evil deeds.

It's true that actual despicable bigots loved his respectable non-racist scientific reasons for sealing the borders and such, but that is THEM, not Hardin's doing.

Below he's accused of having "served to lobby Congress for nativist and isolationist policies." Huh!? That makes one a racist? What's the problem? That says more about the accuser than the accused. POV. It's all about the same.

"In 1994, he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence"". Look who else signed. He was in pretty good company, expert scientists on the topic. True that whole book became a taboo scandal, and the bigots prolly loved it, and used it for evil, but none of those studies appeared to be motivated by racism.

The last paragraph effectively argues that Hardin is a Big Meanie, —with probable Republican Tendencies. That sounds like the Barry Commoner feud, as explained in a comment above. ""EEK!! He's NOT one of us!!! KILL IT!!"

Because Hardin did not think like a Millennial, instead he thought like one born over a hundred years ago, that does not make one a "white nationalist."

Association with white nationalism
Hardin caused controversy for his support of anti-immigrant causes during his lifetime and possible connections to the white nationalist movement. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Hardin served on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Social Contract Press and co-founded the anti-immigration Californians for Population Stabilization and The Environmental Fund, which according to the SPLC "served to lobby Congress for nativist and isolationist policies".

In 1994, he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to race and intelligence following the publication of the book The Bell Curve.

Hardin's last book The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia (1999), a warning about the threat of overpopulation to the Earth's sustainable economic future, called for coercive constraints on "unqualified reproductive rights" and argued that affirmative action is a form of racism.

I see nothing here worthy of defaming a man's reputation.  --2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:4875:D93B:AC65:D49A (talk) 03:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC) Just Saying


 * I changed my mind, I deleted it.  --2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:4875:D93B:AC65:D49A (talk) 03:32, 10 March 2020 (UTC) Just Saying


 * Well that was quick! Another user riding high on her swift and trusty cop-bot undid my deletion minutes later, at 03:30, before I could even finish the above. SHe left this thoughtful and considered message:"Discussion needed before revert; leaving a message on a talk page isn't enough, seek consensus (TW)"  She/it/they (what does one call part human, part cop-bot?) acts like that's in the guidelines.  Have they changed the rules recently?


 * Anyway, I agree, getting consensus is the polite thing to do, so back to Plan A. Merely citing other people's unsupported defamatory innuendo does not meet Wiki specs. Those sites need to be checked, I did. Does anybody here know of proof worthy of ruining a respected dead man's reputation? Is that section worthy of Wikipedia? Thoughts?  --2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:549F:1FB4:5DE1:6CB3 (talk) 18:02, 10 March 2020 (UTC) Just Saying


 * I was hoping to avoid this rabbit hole by presenting the Big Picture. I had always considered the Southern_Poverty_Law_Center often quoted in the news as a reliable source until yesterday.  But Wikipedia is not so sure.  Southern_Poverty_Law_Center (sealed, frozen) section is 7,140 bytes or 1,090 words long!  It starts with: "The SPLC's identification and listings of hate groups and extremists has been the subject of controversy. Critics of the SPLC say that it chooses its causes with funding and donations in mind,[118] and argue[120][121][122] that people and groups designated as "hate groups" are targeted by protests or violence that prevent them from speaking."  Funding?  The uninitiated may not know that "Overpopulation," is a huge debate, and the pro-growth side has highly vested bored billionaires and a Pope, and half of the US Senate.


 * Then: "In 2018, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that while criticism of the SPLC had long existed, the sources of such criticism have expanded recently to include "sympathetic observers and fellow researchers on hate groups" concerned about the organization "mixing its research and activist strains."[17]" ...and much more...


 * Southern_Poverty_Law_Center says:  "In 1994 the Montgomery Advertiser published an eight-part critical report on the SPLC, saying that it exaggerated the threat posed by the Klan and similar groups in order to raise money, discriminated against black employees, and used misleading fundraising tactics.[163]"


 * And their Talk page seems to be largely a debate over credibility. Read it. In any case, I believe this is enough evidence to indicate that the defamation may be barrel- scraping and does not meet Wikipedia's high standards. Because it's unfounded, seemingly biased defamation, —if in doubt, innocent until proven guilty, — and delete.  Agree?  Disagree? Any thoughts?   --2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:549F:1FB4:5DE1:6CB3 (talk) 02:07, 11 March 2020 (UTC) Just Saying


 * This comment section looks like too much of a poorly formatted hot mess to parse, so I'm just going to state my opinion because I was asked on my Talk page. There is a tendency on Wikipedia to label people as "White nationalists", etc. "according to the SPLC", whenever the SPLC has indicated as much.  I'd say I'm generally opposed to this because I don't understand why one advocacy group's opinion should count so heavily in an encyclopedia. It seems fair to call him an ethnonationalist.  My guess is that Hardin would admit to being a "white nationalist" in the sense that he would prefer that America be composed primarily of one major ethnic group (and in this case his ethnic group, White, happens to be the majority), but that he would deny being a "white nationalist" in the sense that it has the connotation of white supremacy.  He doesn't agree that diversity is a strength; that doesn't mean that he thinks one race is inherently inferior to another (though he clearly does think that some cultures are inferior to others). The only example they seem to give of him suggesting some races are better than others is related to African-American IQ, but this view was also accepted by the APA at the time and I don't know enough about Hardin's opinion to say that he was actually saying this was an inherent difference.
 * Anyway, TLDR, I would prefer that all of the SPLC's (and anyone else's) opinions about who is or isn't something were removed from Wikipedia entirely. It's probably fair to call Hardin a "White nationalist" (sensu stricto), although to me it gives the false connotation that he was donning KKK robes in his free time. "Ethnonationalist" seems like it would be more accurate and less inflammatory, but Wikipedia has a history of running with the SPLC opinions, so the White nationalist language should probably stay for consistency, I guess. Bueller 007 (talk) 06:36, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

In response to some continued effort to remove this content, I'm going to add the following references for Hardin's racial politics:

Matto Mildenberger, "The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons", Scientific American (23 April, 2019)

Martin Abegglen, "First as Tragedy, Then as Fascism", The Baffler (26 September, 2019)

Michelle Nijhuis, "The miracle of the commons", Aeon (4 May, 2021)

More sources would not be hard to come by. This appears to be consensus knowledge which it is Wikipedia's mission to represent to our readers. Generalrelative (talk) 03:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note too that the "Controversies" section of this article needs to be substantially expanded, in particular to make clear that his "tragedy of the commons" idea is no longer considered mainstream by population biologists and economists. I will try to get to this work at some point but if anyone else would like to pitch in that would be greatly appreciated. Generalrelative (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
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