Now, in response to questions and criticisms of the article, Ian Angus has followed up with a supplementary article, portions of which appear below:
quote:
So the point is not whether ecological destruction is real. Of course it is. The point is, did Hardin’s essay correctly explain why that destruction is taking place? Is there something about human nature that is inimical to shared resources? Hardin said yes, and I say that’s a myth....So Hardin’s later claim that historical facts don’t matter was an attempt to rewrite his own history. He only claimed the story was “just a model” after it had been thoroughly disproved....
There’s no evidence that Hardin meant the “tragedy” to be seen as “only a metaphor” — but if he did, it was a very poor metaphor indeed....
Hardin, like the economists Wall describes, looked at the world with capitalist blinders on. As a result, he couldn’t recognize a community-managed non-tragic commons when it was right before his eyes.