"It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience"
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Hardin’s line lands like a cold slap because it refuses the comforting fantasy that moral suasion can do the heavy lifting of policy. He’s not arguing that conscience is worthless; he’s arguing that it’s structurally outmatched. When reproduction is framed as a private good (more heirs, more labor, more security) and its costs are socialized (crowded schools, depleted aquifers, stressed ecosystems), “appeal to conscience” becomes a polite request for people to volunteer into disadvantage. The subtext is brutal: the conscientious are selected against.
Context matters. Hardin wrote in the shadow of mid-century population panic and alongside his famous “Tragedy of the Commons” framework, where rational individual choices aggregate into collective ruin. In that model, sermons don’t change the incentives; rules do. His “mistake” is aimed at liberal optimism: the idea that education and ethical awakening can harmonize private desire with public survival. He thinks that’s wishful thinking, not because humans are uniquely depraved, but because systems reward the wrong behaviors.
The rhetorical trick is the phrase “in the long run.” It concedes that guilt, religion, or social pressure might work briefly, for some. Over time, though, the people who ignore the appeal keep reproducing, and the conscientious shrink as a share of the population. That’s a Darwinian edge hidden inside a moral argument.
The unease is the point. Hardin is clearing space for coercion-by-policy: laws, penalties, and institutional constraints. The line also foreshadows the ethical landmines of that move: once conscience is dismissed, who gets to design the controls, and whose bodies get controlled first?
Context matters. Hardin wrote in the shadow of mid-century population panic and alongside his famous “Tragedy of the Commons” framework, where rational individual choices aggregate into collective ruin. In that model, sermons don’t change the incentives; rules do. His “mistake” is aimed at liberal optimism: the idea that education and ethical awakening can harmonize private desire with public survival. He thinks that’s wishful thinking, not because humans are uniquely depraved, but because systems reward the wrong behaviors.
The rhetorical trick is the phrase “in the long run.” It concedes that guilt, religion, or social pressure might work briefly, for some. Over time, though, the people who ignore the appeal keep reproducing, and the conscientious shrink as a share of the population. That’s a Darwinian edge hidden inside a moral argument.
The unease is the point. Hardin is clearing space for coercion-by-policy: laws, penalties, and institutional constraints. The line also foreshadows the ethical landmines of that move: once conscience is dismissed, who gets to design the controls, and whose bodies get controlled first?
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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