Living on a Lifeboat

8/14/2019 Living on a Lifeboat

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F a l l 2 0 0 1 T H E S O C I A L C O N T R A C T

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Garrett Hardin, Ph.D., isProfessor Emeritus of Human

Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at theUniversity of California,Santa Barbara. His latest book is The Ostrich Factor:Our Population Myopia

published by the Oxford University Press.

L iv i n g o n a L i f e b o a tA r ep r in t f r o m B i o S c i e n c e , O c t o b er 1 9 7 4

b y G a r r e t t H a r d i n

S usanne Langer (1942) hasshown that it is probablyimpossible to approach anunsolved problem save through thedoor of metaphor. Later, attemptingto meet the demands of rigor, wemay achieve some success incleansing theory of metaphor,though our success is limited if weare unable to avoid using commonlanguage, which is shot through andthrough with fossil metaphors. (Icount no less than five in thepreceding two sentences.)

Since metaphorical thinking isinescapable it is pointless merely toweep about our human limitations.We must learn to live with them, tounderstand them, and to controlthem. All of us, said George Eliotin Middlemarch , get our thoughtsentangled in metaphors, and actfatally on the strength of them. Toavoid unconscious suicide we arewell advised to pit one metaphor

against another. From the interplayof competi t ive metaphors,thoroughly developed, we maycome closer to metaphor-freesolutions to our problems.

No generation has viewed theproblem of the survival of thehuman species as seriously as we

have. Inevitably, we have enteredthis world of concern through thed o o r o f m e t a p h o r .Environmentalists have emphasizedthe image of the earth as aspaceship Spaceship Earth.Kenneth Boulding (1966) is theprincipal architect of this metaphor.It is time, he says, that we replacethe wasteful cowboy economy of the past with the frugal spaceshipeconomy required for continuedsurvival in the limited world we nowsee ours to be. The metaphor isnotably useful in justifying pollutioncontrol measures.

Unfortunately, the image of aspaceship is also used to promotemeasures that are suicidal. One of these is a generous immigrationpolicy, which is only a particularinstance of a class of policies thatare in error because they lead to

the tragedy of the commons(Hardin 1968). These suicidalpolicies are attractive because theymesh with what we unthinkinglytake to be the ideals of the bestpeople. What is missing in theidealistic view is an insistence thatrights and responsibilities must go

together. The generous attitudeof all too many people results inasserting inalienable rights whileignoring or denying matchingresponsibilities.

For the metaphor of a spaceshipto be correct, the aggregate of people on board would have to be

under unitary sovereign control(Ophuls 1974). A true ship alwayshas a captain. It is conceivable thata ship could be run by a committee.But it could not possibly survive if its course were determined bybickering tribes that claimed rightswithout responsibilities.

What about Spaceship Earth? Itcertainly has no captain, and noexecutive committee. The UnitedNations is a toothless tiger, becausethe signatories of its charter wantedit that way. The spaceshipmetaphor is used only to justifyspaceship demands on commonresources without acknowledgingc o r r e s p o n d i n g s p a c e s h i presponsibilities.

An understandable fear of decisive action leads people toembrace incrementalism moving toward reform by tiny

stages. As we shall see, thisstrategy is counterproductive in thearea discussed here if it meansa c c e p t i n g r i g h t s b e f o r eresponsibilities. Where humansurvival is at stake, the acceptanceof responsibilities is a preconditionto the acceptance of rights, if the


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t h e e n e r g y c r u n c h

is c o n v i n c in g m o r e

p e o p le e v er y d a y t h a t

w e h a v e a lr e a d y

e x c e ed e d t h e

c a r r y in g c a p a c i t y o f

t h e la n d .

two cannot be introducedsimultaneously.

L if e b o a t Et h i c sBefore taking up certain

substantive issues let us look atan alternative metaphor, that of alifeboat. In developing somerelevant examples the followingnumerical values are assumed.Approximately two-thirds of theworld is desperately poor, andonly one-third is comparativelyrich. The people in poor countrieshave an average per capita GNP(Gross National Product) of about$200 per year, the rich, of about$3,000. (For the United States it isnearly $5,000 per year.)Metaphorically, each rich nationamounts to a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. The poorof the world are in other, muchmore c rowded , l i f eboa t s .Continuously, so to speak, the poorfall out of their lifeboats and swimfor a while in the water outside,hoping to be admitted to a rich

lifeboat, or in some other way tobenefit from the goodies onboard. What should the passengerson a rich lifeboat do? This is thecentral problem of the ethics of alifeboat.

First we must acknowledge thateach lifeboat is effectively limited incapacity. The land of every nationhas a limited carrying capacity. Theexact limit is a matter for argument,

but the energy crunch is convincingmore people every day that wehave already exceeded the carryingcapacity of the land. We have beenliving on capital storedpetroleum and coal and soon wemust live on income alone.

Let us look at only one lifeboat

ours. The ethical problem is thesame for all, and is as follows.Here we sit, say fifty people in a

lifeboat. To be generous, let usassume our boat has a capacity of ten more, making sixty. (This,however, is to violate theengineering principle of the safetyfactor. A new plant disease or abad change in the weather maydecimate our population if we dontpreserve some excess capacity asa safety factor.)

The fifty of us in the lifeboat see

a hundred others swimming in thewater outside, asking for admissionto the boat, or for handouts. Howshall we respond to their calls?There are several possibilities.

One . We may be tempted to tryto live by the Christian ideal of being our brothers keeper, or bythe Marxian ideal (Marx 1875) of from each according to hisabilities, to each according to hisneeds. Since the needs of all arethe same, we take all the needy intoour boat, making a total of onehundred and fifty in a boat with acapacity of sixty. The boat isswamped, and everyone drowns.Complete justice, completecatastrophe.

Two. Since the boat has an

unused excess capacity of ten,we admit just ten more to it. Thishas the disadvantage of gettingrid of the safety factor, for whichaction we will sooner or later paydearly. Moreover, which ten dowe let in? First come, firstserved? The best ten? Theneediest ten? How do wediscriminate ? And what do wesay to the ninety who areexcluded?

Three . Admit no more to theboat and preserve the small safetyfactor. Survival of the people in thelifeboat is then possible (though we

shall have to be on our guardagainst boarding parties).

The last solution is abhorrent tomany people. It is unjust, they say.Let us grant that it is.

I feel guilty about my goodluck, say some. The reply to this issimple: Get out and yield your

place to others. Such a selflessaction might satisfy the conscienceof those who are addicted to guilt

but it would not change the ethicsof the lifeboat. The needy person towhom a guilt addict yields his placewill not himself feel guilty about hissudden good luck. (If he did hewould not climb aboard.) The netresult of conscience-stricken peoplerelinquishing their unjustly heldpositions is the elimination of theirkind of conscience from thelifeboat. The lifeboat, as it were,purifies itself of guilt. The ethics of the lifeboat persist, unchanged bysuch momentary aberrations.

This then is the basic metaphorwithin which we must work out oursolutions. Let us enrich the imagestep by step with substantiveadditions from the real world.


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R e p r o d u c t i o nThe harsh characteristics of

lifeboat ethics are heightened byreproduction, particularly byreproductive differences. Thepeople inside the lifeboats of thewealthy nations are doubling innumbers every eighty-seven years;those outside are doubling everythirty-five years, on the average.And the relative difference inprosperity is becoming greater.

Let us, for a while, think primarily of the U.S. lifeboat. As of 1973, the United States had apopulation of 210 million people

who were increasing by 0.8 percentper year, that is, doubling in numberevery eighty-seven years.

Although the citizens of richnations are outnumbered two to oneby the poor, let us imagine an equalnumber of poor people outside ourlifeboat a mere 210 million poorpeople reproducing at a quitedifferent rate. If we imagine theseto be the combined populations of

Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador,Morocco, Thailand, Pakistan, andthe Philippines, the average rate of increase of the people outside isa 3.3 percent per year. Thedoubling time of this population istwenty-one years.

Suppose that all these countries,and the United States, agreed tolive by the Marxian ideal, to eachaccording to his needs, the ideal of most Christians as well. Needs, of course, are determined bypopulation size, which is affected byreproduction. Every nation regardsits rate of reproduction as asovereign right. If our lifeboat werebig enough in the beginning it mightbe possible to live for a while byChristian-Marxian ideals. Might.

Initially, in the model given, theratio of non-Americans toAmericans would be one to one.But consider what the ratio wouldbe eighty-seven years later. By thistime Americans would havedoubled to a population of 420million. The other group (doublingevery twenty-one years) wouldnow have swollen to 3,540 million.Each American would have morethan eight people to share with.How could the lifeboat possiblykeep afloat?

All this involves extrapolation of current trends into the future and is

consequently suspect. Trends maychange. Granted, but the changewill not necessarily be favorable. If,as seems likely, the rate of population increase falls faster inthe ethnic group presently inside thelifeboat than it does among thosenow outside, the future will turn outto be even worse than mathematicspredicts, and sharing will be evenmore suicidal.

Ru i n in t h e C o m m o n sThe fundamental error of the

sharing ethics is that it leads to thetragedy of the commons. Under asystem of private property the man(or group of men) who ownp r o p e r t y r e c o g n i z e t h e i rresponsibility to care for it, for if they dont they will eventuallysuffer. A farmer, for instance, if heis intelligent, will allow no more

cattle in a pasture than its carryingcapacity justifies. If he overloadsthe pasture, weeds take over,erosion sets in, and the owner losesin the long run.

But if a pasture is run as acommons open to all, the right of each to use it is not matched by an

operational responsibility to takecare of it. It is no use askingindependent herdsmen in acommons to act responsibly, forthey dare not. The considerateherdsman who refrains fromoverloading the commons suffersmore than a selfish one who sayshis needs are greater. (As LeoDurocher says, Nice guys finishlast.) Christian-Marxian idealism iscounterproductive. That it soundsnice is no excuse. With distributionsystems, as with individual morality,good intentions are no substitute forgood performance.

A social system is stable only if it is insensitive to errors. To theChristian-Marxian idealist a selfishperson is a sort of error.Prosperity in the system of thecommons cannot survive errors. If everyone would only restrainhimself, all would be well; but ittakes only one less than everyoneto ruin a system of voluntaryrestraint. In a crowded world of

less than perfect human beings and we will never know any other mutual ruin is inevitable in thecommons. This is the core of thetragedy of the commons.

One of the major tasks of education today is to create such anawareness of the dangers of thecommons that people will be able torecognize its many varieties,however disguised. There ispollution of the air and waterbecause these media are treated ascommons. Further growth of population and growth in the percapita conversion of naturalresources into pollutants requirethat the system of the commons bemodified or abandoned in thedisposal of externalities.


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The fish populations of theoceans are exploited as commons,and ruin lies ahead. Notechnological invention can preventthis fate; in fact, all improvementsin the art of fishing merely hastenthe day of complete ruin. Only thereplacement of the system of thecommons with a responsible systemcan save oceanic fisheries.

The management of westernrangelands, though nominallyrational, is in fact (under the steadypressure of cattle ranchers) oftenmerely a government-sanctionedsystem of the commons, drifting

toward ultimate ruin for both therangelands and the residualenterprisers.

W o r ld F o o d B a n k sIn the international arena we

have recently heard a proposal tocreate a new commons, namely aninternational depository of foodreserves to which nations willcontribute according to theirabilities, and from which nations

may draw according to their needs.Nobel laureate Norman Borlaughas lent the prestige of his name tothis proposal.

A world food bank appealspowerfully to our humanitarianimpulses. We remember JohnDonnes celebrated line, Anymans death diminishes me. Butbefore we rush out to see for whomthe bell tolls let us recognize where

the greatest political push forinternational granaries comes from,lest we be disillusioned later. Ourexperience with Public Law 480clearly reveals the answer. Thiswas the law that moved billions of dollars worth of U.S. grain to food-short, population-long countries

during the past two decades. WhenP.L. 480 first came into being, aheadline in the business magazineForbes (Paddock and Paddock 1970) revealed the power behind it:Feeding the Worlds HungryMillions: How It Will Mean Billionsfor U.S. Business.

And indeed it did. In the years1960 to 1970 a total of $7.9 billionwas spent on the Food for Peaceprogram, as P.L. 480 was called.During the years 1948 to 1970 anadditional $49.9 billion wereextracted from American taxpayersto pay for other economic aid

programs, some of which went forf o o d a n d f o o d - p r o d u c i n gmachinery. (This figure does not include military aid.) That P.L. 480was a give-away program wasconcealed. Recipient countrieswent through the motions of payingfor P.L. 480 food with IOUs. InDecember 1973 the charade wasbrought to an end as far as Indiaw as concerned when the United

States forgave Indias $3.2 billondebt (Anonymous 1974). Publicannouncement of the cancellationof the debt was delayed for twomonths; one wonders why.

Famine 1974 (Paddock and Paddock 1970) is one of thefew publications that points out thecommercial roots of thishumanitarian attempt. Though allU.S. taxpayers lost by P.L. 480,special interest groups gainedhandsomely. Farmers benefitedbecause they were not asked tocontribute the grain it wasbought from them by the taxpayers.Besides the direct benefit there wasthe indirect effect of increasingdemand and thus raising prices of farm products generally. The

manufacturers of farm machinery,fertilizers, and pesticides benefitedby the farmers extra efforts togrow more food. Grain elevatorsprofited from storing the grain forvarying lengths of time. Railroadsmade money hauling it to port, andshipping lines by carrying itoverseas. Moreover, once themachinery for P.L. 480 wase s t a b l i s h e d , a n i m m e n s ebureaucracy had a vested interestin its continuance regardless of itsmerits.

Very little was ever heard of these selfish interests when P.L.

480 was defended in public. Theemphasis was always on itshumani tar ian effec ts . Thecombination of multiple andrelatively silent selfish interests withhighly vocal humanitarian apologistsconstitutes a powerful lobby forextracting money from taxpayers.Foreign aid has become a habit thatcan apparently survive in theabsence of any known justification.

A news commentator in a weeklymagazine ( Lansner 1974), afterexhaustively going over all theconventional arguments for foreignaid, self-interest, social justice,political advantage, and charity, andconcluding that none of the knownarguments really held water,concluded: So the search continuesfor some logically compellingreasons for giving aid In otherwords, Act now, Justify later n if ever. (Apparently a quarter of acentury is too short a time to findthe justification for expendingseveral billion dollars yearly.)

The search for a rational justification can be short-circuitedby in ter jec t ing the wordemergency. Borlaug uses this


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word. We need to look sharply at it.What is an emergency? It issurely something like an accident,which is correctly defined as anevent that is certain to happen,though with a low frequency(Hardin 1972a). A well-runorganization prepares for everythingthat is certain, including accidentsand emergencies. It budget forthem. It saves for them. It expectsthem and mature decision-makers do not waste timecomplaining about accidents whenthey occur.

What happens if some

o rg a n i z a t i o n s b u d g e t f o remergencies and other do not? If each organization is solelyresponsible for its ow n well-being,poorly managed ones will suffer.But they should be able to learnfrom experience. They have achance to mend their ways andlearn to budget for infrequent butcertain emergencies. The weather,for instance, always varies and

periodic crop failures are certain. Awise and competent governmentsaves out of the production of thegood years in anticipation of badyears that are sure to come. This isnot a new idea. The Bible tells usthat Joseph taught this policy toPharaoh in Egypt more than twothousand years ago. Yet it isliterally true that the vast majorityof the governments of the worldtoday have no such policy. Theylack either the wisdom or thecompetence, or both. Far moredifficult than the transfer of wealthfrom one country to another is thetransfer of wisdom betweensovereign powers or betweengenerations.

But it isnt their fault! How canwe blame the poor people who arecaught in an emergency? Why mustwe punish them? The concepts of blame and punishment areirrelevant. The question is, what arethe operational consequences of establishing a world food bank? If itis open to every country every timea need develops, slovenly rulers willnot be motivated to take Josephsadvice. Why should they? Otherswill bail them out whenever theyare in trouble.

Some countries will makedeposits in the world food bank andothers will withdraw from it: Therewill be almost no overlap. Callingsuch a depository-transfer unit abank is stretching the metaphorof bank beyond its elastic limits.The proposers, of course, never callattention to the metaphorical natureof the word they use.

T h e R at c h e t E f f e c t

An international food bank isreally, then, not a true bank but adisguised one-way transfer devicefor moving wealth from richcountries to poor. In the absence of such a bank, in a world inhabited byindividually responsible sovereignnations, the population of eachnation would repeatedly go througha cycle of the sort shown in Figurel. P 2 is greater than P 1, either inabsolute numbers or because adeterioration of the food supply hasremoved the safety factor andproduced a dangerously low ratio of resources to population. P 2 may besaid to represent a state of overpopulation, which becomesobvious upon the appearance of anaccident, e.g., a crop failure. If

the emergency is not met byoutside help, the population dropsback to the normal level thecarrying capacity of theenvironment or even below. Inthe absence of population control bya sovereign, sooner or later thepopulation grows to P 2 again andthe cycle repeats. The long-termpopulation curve (Hardin 1966) isan irregularly fluctuating one,equilibrating more or less about thecarrying capacity.

A demographic cycle of this sortobviously involves great suffering inthe restrictive phase, but such a

cycle is normal to any independentcountry with inadequate populationcontrol. The third centurytheologian Tertullian (Hardin 1969a)expressed what must have been therecognition of many wise menwhen he wrote: The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, andearthquakes have come to beregarded as a blessing toovercrowded nations, since they

serve to prune aw ay the luxuriantgrowth of the human race.


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Only under a strong andfarsighted sovereign whichtheoretically could be the peoplethemselves , democra t ica l lyorganized can a populationequilibrate at some set point belowthe carrying capacity, thus avoidingthe pains normally caused byperiodic and unavoidable disasters.For this happy state to be achievedit is necessary that those in powerbe able to contemplate withequanimity the waste of surplusfood in times of bountiful harvests.It is essential that those in powerresist the temptation to convert

extra food into extra babies. On thepublic relations level it is necessarythat the phrase surplus food bereplaced by safety factor.

But wise sovereigns seem not toexist in the poor world today. Themost anguishing problems arecreated by poor countries that aregoverned by rulers insufficientlywise and powerful. If suchcountries can draw on a world food

bank in times of emergency, thepopulation cycle of Figure 1 will bereplaced by the populationescalator of Figure 2. The input of

food from a food bank acts as thepawl of a ratchet, preventing thepopulation from retracing its stepsto a lower level. Reproductionpushes the population upward,inputs from the World Bank preventits moving downward. Populationsize escalates, as does the absolutemagnitude of accidents andemergencies. The process isbrought to an end only by the total

collapse of the whole system,producing a catastrophe of scarcelyimaginable proportions.

Such are the implications of the

well-meant sharing of food in aworld of irresponsible reproduction.

I think we need a new word forsystems like this. The adjectivemelioristic is applied to systemst h a t p r o d u c e c o n t i n u a limprovement; the English word isderived from the Latin meliorare ,to become or make better. Parallelwith this it would be useful to bringin the word pejoristic (from the


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Latin pejorare , to become or makeworse.) This word can be applied tothose systems which, by their verynature, can be relied upon to makematters worse. A world food bank coupled with sovereign stateirresponsibility in reproduction is anexample of a pejoristic system.

This pejoristic system creates anunacknowledged commons. Peoplehave more motivation to draw fromthan to add to the common store.The license to make suchwithdrawals diminishes whatevermotivation poor countries mightotherwise have to control their

populations. Under the guidance of this ratchet, wealth can be steadilymoved in one direction only, fromthe slowly breeding rich to therapidly breeding poor, the processfinally coming to a halt only whenall countries are equally andmiserably poor.

All this is terribly obvious oncewe are acutely aware of thepervasiveness and danger of the

commons. But many people stilllack this awareness and theeuphor i a o f t he ben igndemographic transition (Hardin1973) interferes with the realisticappraisal of pejoristic mechanisms.As concerns public policy, thedeductions drawn from the benigndemographic transition are these:1. If the per capita GNP rises thebirth rate will fall; hence, the rate of population increase will fall,ultimately producing ZPG (ZeroPopulation Growth).2. The long-term trend all over theworld (including the poor countries)is of a rising per capita GNP (forwhich no limit is seen).3. Therefore, all politicalinterference in population matters is

unnecessary; all we need to do isfoster economic development note the metaphor andpopulation problems will solvethemselves.

Those who believe in the benigndemographic transition dismiss thepejoristic mechanism of Figure 2 inthe belief that each input of foodfrom the world outside fostersdevelopment within a poor countrythus resulting in a drop in the rate of population increase. Foreign aid hasproceeded on this assumption formore than two decades .Unfortunately, it has produced no

indubitable instance of the assertedeffect. It has, however, produced alibrary of excuses. The air is filledwith plaintive calls for moremassive foreign aid appropriationsso that the hypothetical melioristicprocess can get started.

The doctrine of demographiclaissez-faire implicit in thehypothesis of the benigndemographic transition is immensely

attractive. Unfortunately there ismore evidence against themelioristic system than there is forit (Davis 1963). On the historicalside there are many counterexamples. The rise in per capitaGNP in France and Ireland duringthe past century has beenaccompanied by a rise in populationgrowth. In the twenty yearsfollowing the Second World Warthe same positive correlation wasnoted almost everywhere in theworld. Never in world historybefore 1950 did the worldwidepopulation growth reach onepercent per annum. Now theaverage population growth is overtwo percent and shows no signs of slackening.

On the theoretical side, thedenial of the pejoristic scheme of Figure 2 probably springs from thehidden acceptance of the cowboyeconomy that Boulding castigated.Those who recognize the limitationsof a spaceship, if they are unable toachieve population control at a safeand comfortable level, accept thenecessity of the correctivefeedback of the population cycleshown in Figure 1. No one whoknew in his bones that he was livingon a true spaceship wouldcountenance political support of thepopulation escalator shown in

Figure 2.E c o - D e s t r u c t i o nVi a t h e G r e e nR e v o l u t i o n

The demoralizing effect of charity on the recipient has longbeen known. Give a man a fishand he will eat for a day; teach himhow to fish and he will eat for therest of his days. So runs an ancientChinese proverb. Acting on this

advice the Rockefeller and FordFoundations have financed amultipronged program for improvingagriculture in the hungry nations.The result, known as the GreenRevolution, has been quiteremarkable. Miracle wheat andmiracle rice are splendidtechnological achievements in therealm of plant genetics.


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O b s e r v a n t c r i t i c s h a v e

s h o w n h o w m u c h h ar m

w e w e alt h y n a t io n s

h a v e a lr e ad y d o n e t o

p o o r n a t i o n s t h r o u g h

o u r w e ll- in t e n t io n e d b u t

m is g u id e d a t t e m p t s t o

h e lp t h e m .

Whether or not the GreenRevolution can increase foodproduction is doubtful (Harris 1972,Paddock 1970, Wilkes 1972), but inany event not particularly important.What is missing in this great andwell-meaning humanitarian effort isa firm grasp of fundamentals.Considering the importance of theRockefeller Foundation in this effort

it is ironic that the late Alan Gregg,

a much-respected vice-president of the Foundation, strongly expressedhis doubts of the wisdom of allattempts to increase foodproduction some two decades ago.(This was before Bourlaugs work supported by Rockefeller hadresulted in the development of miracle wheat.) Gregg (1955)likened the growth and spreading of humanity over the surface of theearth to the metastasis of cancer inthe human body, wryly remarkingthat Cancerous growths demandfood; but, as far as I know, theyhave never been cured by gettingit.

Man does not live by breadalone the scriptural statementhas a rich meaning even in the

material realm. Every human beingborn constitutes a draft on allaspects of the environment food,air, water, unspoiled scenery,occasional and optional solitude,beaches, contact with wild animals,fishing and hunting; the list is longand incompletely known. Food can,perhaps, be significantly increased,but what about clean beaches,

unspoiled forests, andsolitude? If we satisfy theneed for food in a growingpopulation we necessarilydecrease the supply of othergoods, and thereby increase

the difficulty of equitablyallocating scarce goods(Hardin 1969b, 1972b).

The present population of India is 600 million, and it isincreas ing by 15 million peryear. The environmentalload of this population isalready great. The forests of India are only a small

fraction of what they were three

centuries ago. Soil erosion, floods,and the psychological costs of crowding are serious. Every one of the net 15 million lives added eachyear s t resses the Indianenvironment more severely. Everylife saved this year in a poor country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations.

Observant critics have shownhow much harm we wealthynations have already done to poornations through our well-intentionedbut misguided attempts to help them(Paddock and Paddock 1973).Particularly reprehensible is ourfailure to carry out post-audits of these attempts (Farvar and Milton1972). Thus have we shielded ourtender consciences from knowledge

of the harm we have done. Mustwe Americans continue to fail tomonitor the consequences of ourexternal do-gooding? If, forinstance, we thoughtlessly make itpossible for the present 600 millionIndians to swell to 1,200 million bythe year 2001, as their presentgrowth rate promises, will posterityin India thank us for facilitating aneven greater destruction of their environment? Are good intentionsever a sufficient excuse for badconsequences?

Im m i g r a t io n C re a t esA C o m m o n s

I come now to the final exampleof a commons in action, one forwhich the public is least preparedfor rational discussion. The topic isat present enveloped by a greatsilence which reminds me of acomment made by Sherlock Holmes in A. Conan Doyles storySilver Blaze. Inspector Gregoryhad asked, Is there any point towhich you would wish to draw my

attention? To this Holmesresponded:

To the curious incident of thedog in the nighttime.

The dog did nothing in thenighttime, said the Inspector.

That was the curiousincident, remarked Sherlock

Holmes.

By asking himself what would

repress the normal barking instinctof a watchdog, Holmes realized thatit must be the dogs recognition of his master as the criminaltrespasser. In a similar way weshould ask ourselves whatrepression keeps us from discussingsomething as important as


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It c a n n o t b e t h a t

im m ig r a t i o n i s

n u m e r ic a lly o f n o

c o n s eq u e n c e . O u r

g o v e r n m e n t

a c k n o w le d g e s a n e t

in f lo w o f 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 a

y e a r . A n o t

im p la u s i b l e f i g u r e is

6 0 0 , 0 0 0 a y ea r .

immigration.It cannot be that immigration is

numerically of no consequence.Our government acknowledges anet inflow of 400,000 a year. Harddata are understandably lacking onthe extent of illegal entries, but anot implausible figure is 600,000 peryear (Buchanan 1973). The naturalincrease of the resident populationis now about 1.7 million per year.This means that the yearly gainfrom immigration is at leastnineteen percent, and may be thirty-seven percent, of the total increase.It is quite conceivable that

educational campaigns like that of Zero Population Growth, Inc.,coupled with adverse social andeconomic factors inflation,housing shortage, depression, andloss of confidence in nationalleaders may lower the fertility of American women to a point atwhich all of the yearly increase inpopulation would be accounted forby immigration. Should we not at

least ask if that is what we want?How curious it is that we so seldomdiscuss immigration these days!

Curious, but understandable, asone finds out the moment hepublicly questions the wisdom of thestatus quo in immigration. He whodoes so is promptly charged withisolationism, bigotry, prejudice,ethnocentrism, chauvinism, and selfishness. These are hardaccusations to bear. It is pleasanterto talk about other matters, leavingimmigration policy to wallow in thecrosscurrents of special intereststhat take no account of the good of the whole, or of the interests of

posterity.We Americans have a bad

conscience because of things we

said in the past about immigrants.Two generations ago the popularpress was rife with references to

Dagos, Wops, Polacks, Japs,Chinks, and Krauts , all pejorativeterms which failed to acknowledgeour indebtedness to Goya,Leonardo, Copernicus, Hiroshige,Confucius, and Bach. Because theimplied inferiority of foreigners was then the

justification for keeping themout, it is now thoughtlesslyassumed that restrictivepolic ies can only be basedon the assumption of

immigrant inferiority. This isnot so.

Existing immigration lawsexclude idiots and knowncriminals; future laws willalmost certainly continue thispolicy. But should we alsoconsider the quality of theaverage immigrant, ascompared with the quality of the average resident?

Perhaps we should, perhaps weshouldnt. (What is qualityanyway?) But the quality issue isnot our concern here.

From this point on, it will beassumed that immigrants and native-born citizens are of exactly equal quality, howeverquality may be defined. The focusis only on quantity. The conclusionsreached depend on nothing else, soall charges of ethnocentrism areirrelevant.

World food banks move food tothe people, thus facilitating theexhaustion of the environment of the poor. By contrast, unrestrictedimmigration moves people to thefood, thus speeding up thedestruction of the environment in

rich countries. Why poor peopleshould want to make this transfer isno mystery; but why should richhosts encourage it? This transfer,like the reverse one, is supported byboth selfish interests andhumanitarian impulses.

The principal selfish interest inunimpeded immigration is easy to

identify: It is the interest of theemployers of cheap labor,particularly that needed fordegrading jobs. We have beendeceived about the forces of historyby the lines of Emma Lazarusinscribed [inside the entrance to]the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless,tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside thegolden door.

The image is one of an infinitely


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generous earth mother, passivelyopening her arms to hordes of immigrants who come here on theirown initiative. Such an image mayhave been adequate for the earlydays of colonization, but by the timethese lines were written (1886) theforce for immigration was largelymanufactured inside our ownborders by factory and mineowners who sought cheap labor notto be found among laborers alreadyhere. One group of foreigners afteranother was thus enticed into theUnited States to work at wretched

jobs for wretched wages.

At present, it is largely theMexicans who are being soexploited. It is particularly to theadvantage of certain employers thatthere be many illegal immigrants.Illegal immigrant workers dare notcomplain about their workingconditions for fear of beingrepatriated. Their presence reducesthe bargaining power of allMexican-American laborers. Cesar

Chavez has repeatedly pleaded withcongressional committees to closethe doors to more Mexicans so thatthose here can negotiate effectivelyfor higher wages and decentworking conditions. Chavezunderstands the ethics of a lifeboat.

The interests of the employersof cheap labor are well served bythe silence of the intelligentsia of the country. WASPS WhiteAnglo-Saxon Protestants areparticularly reluctant to call for aclosing of the doors to immigrationfor fear of being called ethnocentricbigots. It was, therefore, anoccasion of pure delight for thisparticular WASP to be present at ameeting when the points he wouldlike to have made were made better

by a non-WASP, speaking to othernon-WASPS. It was in Hawaii, andmost of the people in the roomwere second-level Hawaiianofficials of Japanese ancestry. AllHawaiians are keenly aware of thelimits of their environment, and thespeaker had asked how it might bepractically and constitutionallypossible to close the doors to moreimmigrants to the islands. (ToHawaiians, immigrants from theother 49 states are as much of athreat as those from other nations.There is only so much room in theislands, and the islanders know it.

Sophistical arguments that implyotherwise do not impress them.)

Yet the Japanese-Americans of Hawaii have active ties with theland of their origin. This point wasraised by a Japanese-Americanmember of the audience who askedthe Japanese-American speaker:But how can we shut the doorsnow? We have many friends andrelations in Japan that wed like to

bring to Hawaii some day so thatthey can enjoy this land.T h e s p e a k e r s m i l e d

sympathetically and respondedslowly: Yes, but we have childrennow and someday well havegrandchildren. We can bring morepeople here from Japan only bygiving away some of the land thatwe hope to pass on to ourgrandchildren some day. What rightdo we have to do that?

To be generous with ones ownpossessions is one thing; to begenerous with posteritys is quiteanother. This, I think, is the pointthat must be gotten across to thosewho would, from a commendablelove of distributive justice, institutea ruinous system of the commons,

either in the form of a world foodbank or that of unrestrictedimmigration. Since every speaker isa member of some ethnic group it isalways possible to charge him withethnocentrism. But even afterpu rg ing an a rgumen t o f ethnocentrism the rejection of thecommons is still valid and necessaryif we are to save at least someparts of the world fromenvironmental ruin. Is it notdesirable that at least some of thegrandchildren of people now livingshould have a decent place in whichto live?

T h e A s ym m e t ryo f D o o r -S h u t t i n g

We must now answer this tellingpoint: How can you justifyslamming the door once youreinside? You say that immigrantsshould be kept out. But arent weall immigrants, or the descendantsof immigrants? Since we refuse toleave, must we not, as a matter of

justice and symmetry, admit all

others?It is literally true that we

Americans of non-Indian ancestryare the descendants of thieves.Should we not, then, give backthe land to the Indians; that is, giveit to the now-living Americans of Indian ancestry? As an exercise inpure logic I see no way to rejectthis proposal. Yet I am unwilling tolive by it, and I know no one who is.

Our reluctance to embrace pure justice may spring from pureselfishness. On the other hand, itmay arise from an unspokenrecognition of consequences thathave not yet been clearly spelledout.

Suppose, becoming intoxicated


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with pure justice, we Anglosshould decide to turn our land overto the Indians. Since all our otherwealth has also been derived fromthe land, we would have to give thatto the Indians, too. Then whatwould we non-Indians do? Wherewould we go? There is no openland in the world on which menwithout capital can make their living(and not much unoccupied land onwhich men with capital can, either).Where would 200 million putatively

jus t ice- loving , non-Indian ,Americans go? Most of them inthe persons of their ancestors

came from Europe, but theywouldnt be welcomed back there.Anyway, Europeans have no bettertitle to their land than we to ours.They also would have to give uptheir homes. (But to whom? Andwhere would they go?)

Clearly, the concept of pure justice produces an infinite regress.The law long ago invented statutesof limitations to justify the rejection

of pure justice, in the interest of preventing massive disorder. Thelaw zealously defends propertyrights but only recent propertyrights. It is as though the physicalprinciple of exponential decayapplies to property rights. Drawinga line in time may be unjust, but anyother action is practically worse.

We are all the descendants of thieves, and the worlds resourcesare inequitably distributed, but wemust begin the journey to tomorrowfrom the point where we are today.We cannot remake the past. Wecannot, without violent disorder andsuffering, give land and resourcesback to the original owners who are dead anyway.

We cannot safely divide the

wealth equitably among all presentpeoples, so long as peoplereproduce at different rates,because to do so would guaranteethat our grandchildren everyones grandchildren wouldhave only a ruined world to inhabit.

M u s t Ex c l u si o n B eA b s o l u t e ?

To show the logical structure of the immigration problem I haveignored many factors that wouldenter into real decisions made in areal world. No matter howconvincing the logic may be it isprobable that we would want, fromtime to time, to admit a few peoplefrom the outside to our lifeboat.Political refugees in particular arelikely to cause us to makeexceptions. We remember theJewish refugees from Germanyafter 1933, and the Hungarianrefugees after 1956. Moreover, theinterests of national defense,broadly conceived, could justifyadmitting many men and women of

unusual talents, whether refugeesor not. (This raises the quality issue,which is not the subject of thisessay.)

Such exceptions threaten tocreate runaway population growthinside the lifeboat, i.e., the receivingcountry. However, the threat canbe neutralized by a population policythat includes immigration. Aneffective policy is one of flexible

control.Suppose, for example, that thenation has achieved a stablecondition of ZPG, which (say)permits 1.5 million births yearly. Wemust suppose that an acceptablesystem of allocating birthrights topotential parents is in effect. Now

suppose that an inhumane regime insome other part of the worldcreates a horde of refugees, andthat there is a widespread desire toadmit some to our country. At thesame time, we do not want tosabotage our population controlsystem. Clearly, the rational path topursue is the following: If wedecide to admit 100,000 refugeesthis year we should compensate forthis by reducing the allocation of birth rights in the following year bya similar amount, that is, downwardto a total of 1.4 million. In that waywe could achieve both humanitarian

and population control goals. (Andthe refugees would have to acceptthe population controls of thesociety that admits them. It is notinconceivable that they might begiven proportionately fewer rightsthan the native population.)

In a democracy, the admissionof immigrants should properly bevoted on. But by whom? It is notobvious. The usual rule of a

democracy is votes for all. But itcan be questioned whether auniversal franchise is the most justone in a case of this sort. Whateverbenefits there are in the admissionof immigrants presumably accrue toeveryone. But the costs would beseen as falling most heavily onpotential parents, some of whowould have to postpone or foregohaving their (next) child because of the influx of immigrants. The doublequestion Who benefits? Who

pays? suggests that a restriction of the usual democratic franchisewould be appropriate and just in thiscase. Would our particular quasi-democratic form of government beflexible enough to institute such anovelty? If not, the majority might,


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out of humanitarian motives, imposean unacceptable burden (theforegoing of parenthood) on aminority, thus producing politicalinstability.

Plainly many new problems willarise when we consciously face theimmigration question and seek rational answers. No workableanswers can be found if we ignorepopulation problems. And if theargument of this essay is correct so long as there is no true worldgovernment to control reproductioneverywhere it is impossible tosurvive in dignity if we are to be

guided by Spaceship ethics. Withouta world government that issovereign in reproductive mattersmankind lives, in fact, on a numberof sovereign lifeboats. For theforeseeable future survivaldemands that we govern ouractions by the ethics of a lifeboat.Posterity will be ill served if we donot.

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Buchanan, W. 1973. Immigration

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Langer, S. K. 1942. Philosophy in a New Key . Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge.

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Marx, K. 1875. Critique of the GothaProgram. Page 388 in R. C.

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