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The immigration dilemma: Avoiding the tragedy of the commons
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS ELSEVIER
Ecological Economics 16 (1996) 175-178
Book Reviews The immigration dilemma
The Immigration Dilemma: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons. Garrett Hardin. Federation for American Immigration Reform, Washington, DC, 1995. US $5, ISBN 0-935778-15-X. Garrett Hardin has shaped several earlier essays into The Immigration Dilemma, a book prepared for the Federation of American Immigration Reform. FAIR is a 50000-member organization urging an immigration moratorium and a national reconsideration of the purposes of immigration. This collection of essays "deals with the fundamentals of biological and political theory that have a bearing on immigration," and is "explicitly focused on the United States of America and its inhabitants" (p. v). The book's subtitle, Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons, places The Immigration Dilemma within Hardin's carefully crafted self-image as a toughminded scientist. An Italian tour guide who has read The Tragedy of the Commons complains to Hardin that nothing is said about immigration. Hardin retorts, "Read between the lines and you will see that it is a serious analysis of immigration." Guide: " W h y didn't the author say so, openly?" Hardin: " Y o u forget when the essay was written: a quarter century ago .... Americans weren't ready for a frank discussion of immigration." (p. 12) With skillful choice of what the American public is ready to consider, Karl Marx is set up as a straw man to show that altruism may fail to serve human purposes, and Hardin quotes Adam Smith favorably. His advice to be wary of Smith is, therefore, important. Smith contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis--namely, the ten-
dency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society (p. 17). The success of the didactical metaphor, The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), led Hardin to title a paper on immigration (presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1974) as another metaphor, Living on a Lifeboat. The paper was well received by the assembled scientists and the editor of Psychology Today sought it for publication. Accordingly Hardin shortened the paper and modified the title to Lifeboat Ethics. When the journal's editor added a subtitle in type twice the size of Hardin's chosen title announcing The Case Against Helping the Poor, Hardin felt he had been used to increase circulation. Within a decade after publishing his essay on population, Malthus complained of the distress he felt " f r o m the imputation of hardness of heart" made by his critics. Likewise Hardin has suffered accusations of meanness. And like Malthus in the ensuing public debates, Hardin's plain language is contributing to minor and major changes in the "dominant tendency of thought." In this book, Hardin is trapped into a defense of the nation-state as the paramount human institution as a necessary background for his subject, immigration. Without nations, the subject should be the movement of peoples. Hardin's defense of nationhood is an elaborate and repeated attack on weaknesses or evils of universalism, one-worldism, and spaceship earth. Unfortunately for this defense, each attack on the desirability or the possibility of universalism may be applied with equal force against nationalism. The advocacy of worldwide pro-nationalist policies by official representatives of nations with bor-
0921-8009/96/$15.00 © 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All fights reserved SSDI 0921-8009(95)00075-5
176
Book Reviews
ders tightly sealed against immigration (such as the Vatican) is found to be uncharitable if not dishonest (p. 10). Nonetheless, Hardin recommends that the U.S. "should, as rapidly as possible, reduce net immigration into the United States (immigration minus emigration) to zero" (p. 121). His argument is Lifeboat Ethics--wealthy nations in the lifeboats. "[T]he process of moving from poor [countries] to rich will continue until wealth is equalized everywhere . . . . [With] no group limitation on individual freedom to breed it is not so much wealth that will be equalized as it is poverty, thus plunging everyone into the Malthusian depths," (p. 112) The weak case for the pre-eminence of nations need not dismiss the major thrust of The Immigration Dilemma. Rather it should inspire re-examination of its foundation, the population-resources dilemma--The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin offers several clues. Look at the opposites. Professional and semi-scientific journals presume a technical solution, " o n e that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values" (p. 13). Hardin directs us to another clue. Although he does not speak of throughput nor does he cite Herman Daly, he does tell us, "Wealth comes in only three forms: matter, energy, and information" (p. 83). He then emphasizes that sharing improves the value and quantity of information. Among the many resources available to humans in a finite earth system, energy and matter are limited, and information endless. Within the worldwide population dilemma, The Immigration Dilemma does not avoid the Tragedy of the Commons. Like Hardin's other books on ecology, biology and ethics--Living Within Limits, Fil-
ters Against Folly, Naked Emperors, Stalking the Wild Taboo, and Exploring New Ethics for Survival - - t h i s book may motivate researchers and scholars to improve explanations of human behavior for the 21 st Century. William M. Alexander
Pacific Institute of Resource Management P.O. Box 12-125 Wellington New Zealand
Real value for nature
Real Value for Nature: An Overview of Global Efforts to Achieve True Measures of Economic Progress. WWF International, World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland, April 1995, 158 pp., Index and References. ISBN 2-88085-169-6. This slim but important volume, written by Fulai Sheng, an economist with WWF based in Geneva, is in the nature of a critical survey of efforts made worldwide to incorporate environmental change in the (economic) national accounts. These efforts have included reforming the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) which has been used by most countries to guide the estimation of their national income and product. The SNA had ignored environmental deterioration and even counted marketable natural resource sales totally as income, thus assigning a zero value to their natural resource content. It had also treated expenditures incurred for cleaning up the environment as additions to income. In December 1993, after considerable discussions and collaborative efforts by several agencies and individuals over many y e a r s - - m o s t notably under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World B a n k - - t h e United Nations Statistical Division finally issued new guidelines which opened up a window of opportunity (in the shape of Satellite Accounts) for recording environmental change. The opportunity provided by this window is rather limited, and the main body of the national accounts remains separate and unaltered. Besides, a rigorous format for the satellite accounts has not emerged, i Like many others, the author of Real Value for Nature finds the new version of the SNA wanting and advocates (p. 7) " a fundamental reform in the existing UN System of National Accounts." By the "existing system" the author means the 1993 SNA
I United Nations, System of National Accounts 1993, prepared under the auspices of the Inter-Secretariat Group on National Accounts. Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, Statistical Division, New York, 1993. See also Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, Handbook of National Accounting (interim version), Department for Social Information and Policy Analysis, Statistical Division (Series F, No. 61), United Nations, New York, 1993.
Ecological Economics 16 (1996) 175-178
Book Reviews The immigration dilemma
The Immigration Dilemma: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons. Garrett Hardin. Federation for American Immigration Reform, Washington, DC, 1995. US $5, ISBN 0-935778-15-X. Garrett Hardin has shaped several earlier essays into The Immigration Dilemma, a book prepared for the Federation of American Immigration Reform. FAIR is a 50000-member organization urging an immigration moratorium and a national reconsideration of the purposes of immigration. This collection of essays "deals with the fundamentals of biological and political theory that have a bearing on immigration," and is "explicitly focused on the United States of America and its inhabitants" (p. v). The book's subtitle, Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons, places The Immigration Dilemma within Hardin's carefully crafted self-image as a toughminded scientist. An Italian tour guide who has read The Tragedy of the Commons complains to Hardin that nothing is said about immigration. Hardin retorts, "Read between the lines and you will see that it is a serious analysis of immigration." Guide: " W h y didn't the author say so, openly?" Hardin: " Y o u forget when the essay was written: a quarter century ago .... Americans weren't ready for a frank discussion of immigration." (p. 12) With skillful choice of what the American public is ready to consider, Karl Marx is set up as a straw man to show that altruism may fail to serve human purposes, and Hardin quotes Adam Smith favorably. His advice to be wary of Smith is, therefore, important. Smith contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis--namely, the ten-
dency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society (p. 17). The success of the didactical metaphor, The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), led Hardin to title a paper on immigration (presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1974) as another metaphor, Living on a Lifeboat. The paper was well received by the assembled scientists and the editor of Psychology Today sought it for publication. Accordingly Hardin shortened the paper and modified the title to Lifeboat Ethics. When the journal's editor added a subtitle in type twice the size of Hardin's chosen title announcing The Case Against Helping the Poor, Hardin felt he had been used to increase circulation. Within a decade after publishing his essay on population, Malthus complained of the distress he felt " f r o m the imputation of hardness of heart" made by his critics. Likewise Hardin has suffered accusations of meanness. And like Malthus in the ensuing public debates, Hardin's plain language is contributing to minor and major changes in the "dominant tendency of thought." In this book, Hardin is trapped into a defense of the nation-state as the paramount human institution as a necessary background for his subject, immigration. Without nations, the subject should be the movement of peoples. Hardin's defense of nationhood is an elaborate and repeated attack on weaknesses or evils of universalism, one-worldism, and spaceship earth. Unfortunately for this defense, each attack on the desirability or the possibility of universalism may be applied with equal force against nationalism. The advocacy of worldwide pro-nationalist policies by official representatives of nations with bor-
0921-8009/96/$15.00 © 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All fights reserved SSDI 0921-8009(95)00075-5
176
Book Reviews
ders tightly sealed against immigration (such as the Vatican) is found to be uncharitable if not dishonest (p. 10). Nonetheless, Hardin recommends that the U.S. "should, as rapidly as possible, reduce net immigration into the United States (immigration minus emigration) to zero" (p. 121). His argument is Lifeboat Ethics--wealthy nations in the lifeboats. "[T]he process of moving from poor [countries] to rich will continue until wealth is equalized everywhere . . . . [With] no group limitation on individual freedom to breed it is not so much wealth that will be equalized as it is poverty, thus plunging everyone into the Malthusian depths," (p. 112) The weak case for the pre-eminence of nations need not dismiss the major thrust of The Immigration Dilemma. Rather it should inspire re-examination of its foundation, the population-resources dilemma--The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin offers several clues. Look at the opposites. Professional and semi-scientific journals presume a technical solution, " o n e that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values" (p. 13). Hardin directs us to another clue. Although he does not speak of throughput nor does he cite Herman Daly, he does tell us, "Wealth comes in only three forms: matter, energy, and information" (p. 83). He then emphasizes that sharing improves the value and quantity of information. Among the many resources available to humans in a finite earth system, energy and matter are limited, and information endless. Within the worldwide population dilemma, The Immigration Dilemma does not avoid the Tragedy of the Commons. Like Hardin's other books on ecology, biology and ethics--Living Within Limits, Fil-
ters Against Folly, Naked Emperors, Stalking the Wild Taboo, and Exploring New Ethics for Survival - - t h i s book may motivate researchers and scholars to improve explanations of human behavior for the 21 st Century. William M. Alexander
Pacific Institute of Resource Management P.O. Box 12-125 Wellington New Zealand
Real value for nature
Real Value for Nature: An Overview of Global Efforts to Achieve True Measures of Economic Progress. WWF International, World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland, April 1995, 158 pp., Index and References. ISBN 2-88085-169-6. This slim but important volume, written by Fulai Sheng, an economist with WWF based in Geneva, is in the nature of a critical survey of efforts made worldwide to incorporate environmental change in the (economic) national accounts. These efforts have included reforming the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) which has been used by most countries to guide the estimation of their national income and product. The SNA had ignored environmental deterioration and even counted marketable natural resource sales totally as income, thus assigning a zero value to their natural resource content. It had also treated expenditures incurred for cleaning up the environment as additions to income. In December 1993, after considerable discussions and collaborative efforts by several agencies and individuals over many y e a r s - - m o s t notably under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World B a n k - - t h e United Nations Statistical Division finally issued new guidelines which opened up a window of opportunity (in the shape of Satellite Accounts) for recording environmental change. The opportunity provided by this window is rather limited, and the main body of the national accounts remains separate and unaltered. Besides, a rigorous format for the satellite accounts has not emerged, i Like many others, the author of Real Value for Nature finds the new version of the SNA wanting and advocates (p. 7) " a fundamental reform in the existing UN System of National Accounts." By the "existing system" the author means the 1993 SNA
I United Nations, System of National Accounts 1993, prepared under the auspices of the Inter-Secretariat Group on National Accounts. Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, Statistical Division, New York, 1993. See also Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, Handbook of National Accounting (interim version), Department for Social Information and Policy Analysis, Statistical Division (Series F, No. 61), United Nations, New York, 1993.