Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C - PDF document

Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 36 Garrett Hardin, Ph.D., isProfessor Emeritus of HumanEcology in the Department ofBiological Sciences at theUniversity of California,Santa Barbara. His latestbook is The Ostrich Factor:Our Population Myopiapublished by the OxfordUniversity Press. Living on a LifeboatA reprint from BioScience, October1974by Garrett HardinS Langer (1942) has that it is probably to approach annsolved problem save through thedoor of metaphor. Later, attemptingto meet the demands of rigor, wem achieve some success incleansing theory of metaphor, 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.)S metaphorical thinking isinescapable it is pointless merely toweep about our human limitations.We must learn to live with them, to them, and to control “All of us,” said George Eliot Middlem “get our thoughts in metaphors, and actfatally on the strength of them.” Toavoid unconscious suicide we arewell advised to pit one metaphoragainst another. From the interplayof competitive metaphors,thoroughly deve we may closer to metaphor-freesolutions to our problems.No generation has viewed theproblem of the survival of thehuman species as seriously as we Inevitably, we have entereds world of concern through thedoor of metaphor.Environmentalists have emphasizedthe image of the earth as a — Spaceship Earth. Boulding (1966) is theprincipal architect of this metaphor. is time, he says, that we replacethe wasteful “cowboy economy” ofthe 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 a is also used to promote that are suicidal. One ofthese is a generous immigrationpolicy, which is only a particular of a class of policies thatare in error because they lead to tra of the commons 1968). These suicidalpolicies are attractive because theymesh with what we unthinkingly to be the ideals of “the bestpeople.” What is missing in the view is an insistence thatrights and responsibilities must got The “generous” attitud all too many p results in inalienable rights whileing or denying matchingresponsibilities.For the metaphor of a spaceshipto be correct, the aggregate ofpeople on board would have to beunder unitary sovereign control 1974). A true ship always a cap It is conceivable thata ship could be run by a committee.But it could not possibly survive ifits course were determined byb tribes that claimed rightwithout responsibilities. What about Spaceship Earth? Itcertainly has no captain, and no committee. The Unite is a toothless tiger, becausethe signatories of its charter wantedit that way. The spaceshipmetaphor is used only to justifyspaceship demands on common without acknowledgingcorresponding spaceshipresponsibilities. understandable fear of action leads people toembrace “incrementalism” — toward r by tiny As we shall see, thisstrategy is counterproductive in th discussed here if it meansaccepting rights beforeresponsibilities. Where humansurvival is at stake, the acceptanceof responsibilities is a preconditionto the acceptance of rights, if the Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 37 “…the energy crunchis convincing morepeople every day thatwe have alreadyexceeded thecarrying capacity ofthe land.” two cannot be introducedsimultaneously.Lifeboat EthicsBefore taking up certai issues let us look atan alternative metaphor, that of a In developing somerelevant examples the fol values are assumed. two-thirds of the is desperately poor, and one-third is comparatively 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 ofcomparatively rich people. The poorof the world are in other, muchmore crowded, lifeboats.Continuously, so to speak, the poor out of their lifeboats and swimfor a while in the water outside to be admitted to a richlifeboat, 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.” we must acknowledge thateach lifeboat is effectively limited incapacity. The land of every nationhas a limited carrying capacity. The 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 been on “capital” — stored 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 f people in a To be generous, let us our boat has a capacity ofn more, making sixty. (This,however, is to violate theengineering principle of the “safety A new plant disease or a change in the weather maydecimate our population if we don’t some excess capacity asa safety factor.)The fifty of us in the lifeboat seea hundred others swimming in thewater outside, asking for admission the boat, or for handouts. Howshall we respond to their calls?There are several possibilities.One We may be tem to tryto live by the Christian ideal ofbeing “our brother’s keeper,” or bye Marxian ideal (Marx 1875) of“from each according to hisabilities, to each according to his Since the needs of all arethe same, we take all the needy intou boat, making a total of one and fifty in a boat with acapacity of sixty. The boat is and everyone drowns.Complete justice, completecatastrophe. Since the boat has anunused excess capacity of ten,we admit just ten more to it. This the disadvantage of gettingrid of the safety factor, for whichaction we will sooner or later paydearly. Moreover, which ten do let in? “First come, firstserved?” The best ten? Theneediest ten? How do we And what do we to the ninety who areexcluded? Three Admit no more to theat and preserve the small safetyfactor. Survival of the people in the is then possible (though we have to be on our guardagainst boarding parties).The last solution is abhorrent tomany people. It is unj 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 to others. Such a selfless might satisfy the conscienceof those who are addicted to guiltbut it would not change the ethics the lifeboat. The needy person to a guilt addict yields his place not himself feel guilty about hisudden good luck. (If he did hewould not climb aboard.) The netresult of conscience-stricken peoplerelinquishing their unjustly held is the elimination of theirkind of conscience from the The lifeboat, as it were,purifies itself of guilt. The ethics of lifeboat persist, unchanged bysuch momentary aberrations. This then is the basic metwithin which we must work out oursolutions. Let us enrich the image by step with substadditions from the real world. Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 38 harsh characteristics of 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 e years, on the average.And the relative difference inprosperity is becoming greater.Let us, for a while, thinkprimarily of the U.S. lifeboat. As of1973, the United States had a of 210 million peoplewho 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 poorp reproducing at a qui rate. If we imagine theseto be the combined populations ofColombia, Venezuela, Eccco, Thailand, Pakistan, andthe Phi the average rate of of the people “outside” isa 3.3 percent per year. Thedoubling time of this population istwenty-one years.Suppose that all these countries,d the United States, agreed tolive by the Marxian ideal, “to eachaccording to his needs,” the ideal ofmost Christians as well. Needs, ofcourse, are determined bypopulation size, which is affected by Every nation regardsits rate of reproduction as a right. If our lifeboat were enough in the beginning it mightbe possible to live for a while byChristian-Marxian ideals. Might. 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 year would have swollen to 3,540 million.Each American would have mor eight people to share with.How could the lifeboat pkeep afloat?A this involves extrapolation ofcurrent trends into the future and is suspect. Trends maychange. Granted, but the changewill not necessarily be favorable. If,as seems likely, the rate of increase falls faster inthe ethnic group presently inside thelifeboat than it does among thosenow outside, the future will turn outto be even worse than mathematics and sharing will be evenmore suicidal.Ruin in the CommonsThe fundamental error of thesharing ethics is that it leads to thetragedy of the commons. Under asystem of private property the man(or group of men) who ownproperty recognize theirresponsib to care for it, for if don’t they will eventuallysuffer. A farmer, for instance, if heis intellig will allow no more 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 aons open to all, the right ofeach to use it is not matched by an responsibility to take of it. It is no use askingindependent herdsmen in a to act responsibly, for dare not. The considerate who refrains fromoverloading the commons suffers than a selfish one who sayshis needs are gr (As Leo says, “Nice guys finish Christian- idealism is That it sounds is no excuse. With distributionsystems, as with individual morality,good intentions are no substitute forgood performance.A social system is stable only ifit is insensi to errors. To the idealist a selfish is a sort of “error.”Prosperity in the sy of the cannot survive errors. Ifeveryone would only restrainhimself, all would be well; but it only one less than eve ruin a system of voluntaryrestraint. In a crowded world ofless than perfect human beings —and we will never know any other mutual ruin is i in the This is the core of thetragedy of the commons.One of the major tasks ofeducation today is to create such an 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 trea as Further growth ofpopulation and growth in the per conversion of naturalresources into pollutants require the system of the commons be or abandoned in thedisposal of “externalities.” Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 39 fish populations of theoceans are exploited as commons,and ruin lies ahead. Notechnological invention can prevent 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 western, though nominallyrational, is in fact (under the steadypressure of cattle ranchers) often a government-sanctioned of the commons, driftingtoward ultimate ruin for both therangelands and the residualenterprisers. World Food BanksIn the international arena wehave recently heard a proposal tocreate a new commons, namely aninternational d of food to which nations will according to theirabilities, and fr which nations draw according to their needs.Nobel laureate No Borlaug lent the prestige of his name tothis proposal. A world food bank appealspowerfully to our humanitarian We remember Jhn celebrated line, “Anyn’s death diminishes me.” Butbefore we rush out to see for whomthe bell tolls let us re where greatest political pu fornternational granaries comes from,lest we be disillusioned later. Ourexperience with Public Law 480clearly reveals the answer. Thiswas the law that moved billions ofdollars worth of U.S. grain to food- population-long coun the past two decades. When 480 first came into being, ahe in the business magazine (Paddock and Padd reve the power behind it:ing the World’s 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 Peace” as P.L. 480 was called.During the years 1948 to 1970 anadditional $49.9 billion wereextracted from American taxpayersto pay for other economic aidprograms, some of which went forfood and food-producingmachinery. (This figure does n 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 India concerned when the Uni “forgave” India’s $3.2 billondebt (Anonymous 1974). Public of the ca the debt was delayed for twomonths; one wonders why.“ — 1974 (Padand 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. the direct benefit there was indirect effect of increasing and thus raising prices off products generally. Themanufacturers of farm machinery,ilizers, and pesticides benefitedby the farmers’ extra efforts togrow more food. Grain el from storing the grain forvarying lengths of time. Rai money hauling it to port, andshipping lines by carryig it Mo once they for P.L. 480 wasestablished, an immensebureaucracy had a vested interest its continuance regardless of itsmerits. little was ever heard oft selfish interests when P. was defended in public. The was always on itshumanitarian effects. Thecombination of multiple andrelatively silent selfish interests withhighly vocal humanitarian apologistsconstitutes a powerful lobby forextracting money from taxpayers. aid has become a habit thatcan apparently survive in theabsence of any known justification. news commentator in a weekly (r 1974) after going over all theconventional arguments for foreign self-interest, social justice,political advantage, and charity, andconcluding that none of the knownarguments really held water,concluded: “So the search continuesfor some logically compereasons for giving aid…” In otherwords, Act now, Justify later n if (Apparently a quarter of a is too short a time to find justification for expeseveral billion dollars yearly.)The search for a rationaljustification can be short-circuitedby interjecting the word“emergency.” Borlaug uses this Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 40 word. We need to look sharply at it.What is an “emergency?” It isrely 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, includig accidents emergencies. It budget fort It saves for them. It expect — and mature decisi do not waste timecomplaining about acci whenthey occur. What happens if someorganizations budget foremergencies and other do not? Ifeach organization is solelyresponsible for its o well-being, managed ones will suffer.But they should be able to learnfrom experience. They have a to mend their ways andlearn to budget for infrequent butcertain emergencies. The we instance, always varies andperiodic crop failures are certain. A and competent government out of the production of the years in anti of bad that are sure to come. This isnot a new idea. The Bible tells usthat Joseph taught this policy toh in Egypt more than twothousand years ago. Yet it isi true that the vast majority the governments of the world have no such policy. They either the wisdom or the or both. Far more than the transfer of wealthfrom one country to another is thetransfer of wisdom betweensovereign powers or betwgenerations. “But it isn’t their fault! How canwe blame the poor people who arecaught in an emergency? Why must punish them?” The concepts ofblame and punishment areirrelevant. The question is, what are operational consequences ofestablishing a world food bank? If itis open to every country every time need develops, slovenly rulers willnot be motivated to take Joseph’s. Why should they? Otherswill bail them out whenever theyare in trouble.Some countries wil make in the world food bank and will withdraw from it: There be almost no overlap. Ca a depository-transfer unit a is stretching the metaphorof bank beyond its elastic limits.The proposers, of course, never callattention to the metaphorical natureof the word they use.The Ratchet EffectAn “international food bank” is then, not a true bank but adisguised one-way transfer device moving wealth from rcountries to poor. In the absence ofsuch a bank, in a world inhabited byind responsible sovereign the population of eachn would repeatedly go througha cycle of the sort shown in Figure P i greater than P1 either in numbers or because adeterioration of the food supply has the safety factor andproduced a dangerously low ratio ofresources to population. P may be to represent a state o which becomes upon the appearance of an“accident,” e.g., a crop failure. If “emergency is not met byoutside help, the population dropsback to the “nor level — therying capacity” of theenvironment — or even below. Inthe absence of population control bya sovereign, sooner or later the grows to P2 again and cycle repeats. The long- 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 is normal to any independentcountry with inadequate populationcontrol. The third centurytheologian Tertullian (Hardin 1969a) what must have been the of many wi men he wrote: “The scourges ofpestilence, famine, wars, andeart have come to begarded as a blessing toovercrowded nations, since they to prune a the luxuriantgrowth of the human race.” Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 41 under a strong andfarsighted sovereign — whi could be the peoplethemselves, democraticallyorganized — can a popula at some set point below carrying capacity, thus avoidingthe pains normally cau by and unavoidable disasters. this happy state to be achievedit is necessary that those in power able to contemplate w the “waste” of surplusfood in times of bountiful harvests.It is essential that those in powerresist the temptation to c food into extra babies. On thepublic relations level it is necessarythat the phrase “surplus food” bereplaced by “safety factor.”But wise sovereigns seem not to in the poor world today. The anguishing problems ared by poor countries that aregoverned by rulers insufficientlywise and powerful. If suchcountries can draw on a world foodbank in times of “emergency,” thepopulation cycle of Figure 1 will beaced by the populationescalator of Figure 2. The input offood from a food bank acts as thepawl of a ratchet, preventing thepopulation from retracing its stepsto a lower level. Res the population upward,inputs from the World Bank preventits moving downward. Populationsize escalates, as does the absolutemagnitude of “accidents” and“emergencies.” The process isbrought to an end only by the totalcollapse of the whole systeproducing a catastrophe of scarcelyimaginable proportions. Such are the implications of thewell-meant sharing of food in aworld of irresponsible reproduction.I think we need a new word for like this. The adjective is applied to systthat produce continualimprovement; the English word isderived fr the Latin meliorare become or make better. Parawith this it would be useful to bringin the word “pejoristic” (from the Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 42 pejorare, to become or makeworse.) This word can be applied toth systems which, by their very can be relied upon to makematters worse. A world food bankcoupled with sovereign stateirresponsibility in reproduction is anexample of a pejoristic system.This pejoristic system creates anunackn commons. People more motivation to draw from to add to the common store.The license to make suchwith diminishes whatever poor countries might have to control their Under the guidance of ratchet, wealth can be steadilymoved in one direction only, fromthe slowly breeding rich to therapidly breeding poor, the process coming to a halt only when countries are eq andmiserably poor.All this is terribly obvious oncewe are acutely aware of thepervasiveness and danger of the But many people still this awareness and theeuphoria of the “benigndemographic transition” (Hardin interferes with the r of pejoristic mechanisms.As concerns public policy, the drawn from the benigndemographic transition are these: 1. If the per capita GNP rises thebirth rate will fall; hence, the rate ofp increase will fall,ultima 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 isunnecessary; all we need to do is economic “development” —note the metaphor — andp problems will solvethemselves. Those who believe in the benign transition dismiss the mechanism of Figure 2 in belief that each input of foodfrom the world outside fosters within a poor countrythus resulting in a drop in the rate ofpopulation increase. Foreign aid hasproceeded on this assumption formore than two decades.Unfortunately, it has produced noindubitable instance of the asserted It has, however, produced a of excuses. The air is filled plaintive calls for moremassive foreign aid appropriations that the hypothetical melioristicprocess can get started. The doctrine of demographiclaissez-faire implicit in thehypothesis of the benigndemographic transition is immensely Unfortunately there ismore evidence against themelioristic system than there is forit (Davis 1963). On the historicalside there are many counter The rise in per capitaGNP in France and Ireland duringthe past century has beenaccompanied by a rise in population In the twenty y the Second World Warthe same positive corre was almost everywhere in the Never in world history 1950 did the worldwidepopulation growth reach onepercent per annum. Now theaverage population growth is ove percent and shows no signs of the theoretical side, thedenial of the pejoristic scheme ofFigure 2 probably springs from thehidden acceptance of the “cowboy that Boulding castigated.Those who recognize the limitationsof a spaceship, if they are unable to population con at a safe comfortable level, accept thenecessity of the correctivef of the population cycle in Figure 1. No one whoknew in his bones that he was livingon a true spaceship wouldcountenance political support of thepopulation escalator sh inFigure 2. Eco-DestructionVia the GreenRevolution demoralizing effect of on the recipient has longbeen known. “Give a man a fishand he will eat for a day; teach him to fish and he will eat for therest of his days.” So runs an ancientChinese proverb. Acting on thisadvice the Rockefeller and FordFoundations have financed a program for improvingture in the hungry nations.The result, known as the “GreenRevolution,” has been quiteremarkable. “Miracle wheat” and“miracle rice” are splendidt achievements in therealm of plant genetics. Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 43 “Observant critics haveshown how much harmwe wealthy nationshave already done topoor nations throughour well-intentioned butmisguided attempts tohelp them.” Whether or no the GreenRevolution can increase foodproduction is doubtful (Harris 1972,Paddock 1970, Wilkes 1972), but inany event not particularly important.W is missing in this great andwell-meaning humanitarian effort isa firm grasp of fundamentals.Considering the im of theRockefeller Foundation in this effortit is ironic that the late Alan Gregg, much-respected vice-president ofthe Foundation, strongly exp doubts of the wisdom of allattempts to increase foodproduction some two decades ago.(This was be Bourlaug’s work supported by Rockefeller — haded in the development of“miracle wheat.”) Gregg (1955)likened the growth and spreading ofhumanity over the surface of the to the metastasis of cancer inthe human body, wryly remarking “Cancerous growths demand but, as far as I know, theyhave never been cured by gettingit.” does not live by br — the scriptural statement a rich meaning even in thematerial realm. Every human bein constitutes a draft on allaspects of the environment — food,air, water, unspoiled scenery,occasional and optional solitude,beaches, contact with wild animals, and hunting; the list is longand incompletely known. Food can, be significantly increa what about clean beaches,unspoiled forests, andsolitude? If we satisfy theneed for food in a growingpopulation we necessarily the supply of othergoods, and thereby increasethe difficulty of equitablyallocating scarce goods(Hardin 1969b, 1972b).The present population ofIndia is 600 million, and it is by 15 million per The envload of this population isalready great. The forests of are only a small of what they were three ago. Soil erosion, floods,d the psychological costs ofcrowding are serious. Every one of net 15 million lives added eachyear stresses the Indianenvironment more severely. E saved this year in a poor diminishes the quality oflife 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). reprehensible is our to carry out post-audits oft attempts (Farvar and Milto Thus have we shielded ourtender consciences from knowledgeof the harm we have done. Mustwe Americans continue to fail tomonitor the consequences of ourexternal “do-gooding?” If, for we thoughtlessly make itpossible for the present 600 millionIndians to swell to 1,200 million by year 2001, as their presentgrowth rate promises, will posterityin India thank us for facilitating aneven greater destruction of t Are good intentions a sufficient excuse for badImmigration CreatesA CommonsI come now to the final example a commons in action, one forwhich the public is least pre rational discussion. The topic is present enveloped by a great which reminds me of acomment made by SherlockHolmes in A. Co Doyle’s story Blaze.” Inspector Gregory asked, “Is there any point towhich you would wish to draw myattention?” To this Holmesresponded: “To the curious incident of thedog in the nighttime.”“The dog did nothing in thenighttime,” said the In was the curiousincident,” remar Sherlock asking himself what wouldrepress the no barking instinctof a watchdog, Holmes realized thatit must be the dog’s recognition ofhis master as the criminaltrespasser. In a similar way weshould ask ourselves whatrepression keeps us from discussingsomething as important as Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 44 “It cannot be thatimmigration isnumerically of noconsequence. Ourgovernmentacknowledges a net inflow of 400,000 ayear. …A notimplausible figure is600,000 a year.” immigration.It cannot be that immigration isn of no consequence. government acknowledges a 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 natural of the resident population 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 thateducational campaigns like that ofZero Population Growth, Inc., with adverse social and factors — infla shortage, depression, and of confidence in national — may lower the fertility ofAmerican women to a point atwhich all of the yearly increase inpopulation would be accounted fory immigration. Should we not at 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 who so is promp charged with bigotry, prejudice,m, chauvinism, andselfis These are harda to bear. It is pleasanter talk about other matters, leavingimmigration policy to wallow in the of special intereststhat take no account of the good ofthe whole, or of the interests ofposterity. Americans have a badconscience because of things wesaid in the past about immigrants. generations ago the popularpress was rife with references toDagos, Wops, Polacks, Japs,Chinks, and Krauts all pejorativeterms which failed to aour indebtedness to Goya,Leonardo, Copernicus, Hiroshige,Confucius, and Bach. Because theimplied inferiority offoreigners was then thejustification for keeping them it is now thoughtlessly that r can only be basedon the assumption ofimmigrant inferiority. This isnot so.Existing immigration lawsexclude idiots and knowncriminals; future laws willalmost certainly continue this But should we alsoconsi the quality of theaverage immigrant, ascompared with the quality ofthe average resident?Perhaps we shou perhaps weldn’t. (What is “quality”anyway?) But the quality issue isnot our concern here. From this point on, it will beassumed that immigrants andnative-born citizens are ofexactly equal qualit howeverality may be defined. The focusis only on quantity. The conclusionsreached depend on nothing else, soall charges of ethnocentrism are food banks move food to people, thus facilitating theexhaustion of the environment ofthe poor. By contrast, unrestrictedimmigration moves people to the thus speeding up thede of the environment inich countries. Why poor peopleshould want to make this transfer is mystery; but why should richhosts encourage it? This tlike the reverse one, is supported byboth selfish interests andhumanitarian impulses.The principal selfi interest in immigration is easy to It is the interest of theemployers of cheap labor,particularly that needed fordegrading jobs. We have been about the forces of historyby the lines of Emma Laz [inside the entrance to]the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, yourpoorYour huddled massesyearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of yourteeming shore,Send these, the homeless,tempest-tossed, to me:I lift my lamp beside thegolden door.The image is one of an infinitely Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 45 ear mother, passively her arms to hordes ofimmigrants who come here on theirown initiative. Such an ima may been adequate for the earlydays of colonization, but by the timet lines were written (1886) theforce for immigration was largelym inside our ownborders by factory and mineowners who sought cheap labor not be found among laborers already One group of foreigners after was thus enticed into theUnited States to work at wrjobs for wretched wages.At present, it is largely theMexicans who are being soexploited. It is particularly to theadvantage of certain employers thatre be many illegal immigrants.Illegal immigrant workers dare notcomplain about their workingconditions for fear of beingrepatriated. Their presence reduces bargaining power of allM laborers. Cesar has repeatedly pleaded with committees to closethe doors to more Mexicans so thatthose here can negotiate effectivelyfor higher wages and decentworking conditions. Chavezunderstands the ethics of a lifeboat. interests of the employersof cheap labor are well served bythe silence of the intel of country. WASPS — WhiteAnglo-Saxon Protestants — areparticularly reluctant to call for a 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 betterby a non-WASP, speaking to othernon-WASPS. It was in Hawaii, and of the pe 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 morets to the islands. (ToHawaiians, immigrants from ther 49 states are as much of athreat as those from other nations. is only so much room in theislands, and the islanders know it.Sophistical arguments that implyotherwise do not impress them.)Y the Japanese-Americans ofHawaii have active ties with theland of their origin. This point wasraised by a Japanese-Am of the audience who askede Japanese-American speaker:“But how can we shut the doorsnow? We have many friends andrelations in Japan that we’d like to to Hawaii so day so thatthey can enjoy this land.”The speaker smiledsympathetically and respondedslowly: “Yes, but we have childrennow and someday we’ll 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 one’s ownossessions is one thing; to begenerous w posterity’s is quite This, I think, is the p must be gotten across to thoseo would, from a commendablelove of distributive justice, institute ruinous system of the commons,either in the form of a world food or that of unrestrict Since every speaker isa member of some ethnic group it isalways pos to charge him with But even afterpurging an argument ofethnocentrism the rejection of thecommons is still valid and necessaryif we are to save at least someparts of the world fromenvironmental ruin. Is it not that at least some of thegr of people now livingshould have a decent place in whichto live?The Asymmetryof Door-ShuttingWe must now answer this tellingp “How can you justify the door once you’re You say that immigrantsshould be kept out. But aren’t weall immigrants, or the descendants immigrants? Since we refuse to must we not, as a matter ofjustice ad symmetry, admit allothers?” It is literally true that weAmericans of non-Indian ancestry the descendants of thieves.S we not, then, “give back land to the Indians; that is, givet to the now-living Americans ofIndian ancestry? As an exercise inp logic I see no way to reject proposal. Yet I am unwilling to by it, and I know no one who is.Our reluctance to emb pure may spr from pure On the other hand, itmay arise from an unspoken of consequences that not yet been clearly spelledout. becoming intoxicated Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 46 pure justice, we “A decide to turn our land overt 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 do? Where 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 putativelyjustice-loving, non-Indian,Americans go? Most of them — inthe persons of their ancestors —came from Europe, but th be welcomed back there. 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 produces an infinite regress. law long ago invented statutesof limitations to justify the rejection pure justice, in the interest ofenting massive disorder. Thelaw zealously defends property — but only recent property. It is as though the physicalp of exponential decay to property rights. Drawinga line in time may be unjust, but anyother action is practically worse. We are all the descendants of and the world’s 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 r to the “original” owners —who are dead anyway. We cannot safely divide thewealth equitably among all presentpeoples, so long as peoplereproduce at different rates,because to do so would guaranteethat our grandchildren —ne’s grandchildren — wouldhave only a ruined world to inhabit.Must Exclusion BeAbsolute? show the logical structure ofthe immigration problem I have many factors that would into real decisions made in areal world. No matter howconvincing the logic may be it isprobable that we would want, from to time, to admit a few peoplefrom the outside to our lifeboat. refugees in particular are to cause us to makeexceptions. We remember the refugees from German 1933, and t Hungarian after 1956. Moreover, theinterests of national defense,broadly conceived, could justifyadmitting many men and women of talents, whether refor not. (This raises the quality issue,which is not the subject of this exceptions threaten tocreate runaway population growthinside the lifeboat, i.e., the receivingcountry. However, the threat canbe neutralized by a population policythat includes immigration. Aneffective poli is one of flexible for example, that thenation has achieved a stablecondition of ZPG, which (say)permits 1.5 million births yearly. We suppose that an acceptabsystem of allocating birthrights topotential parents is in effect. Nowsuppose that an inhumane regime in other part of the wor a horde of refugees, andthat there is a widespread desire toadmit some to our country. At the time, we do not want to our population control Clearly, the rational path to is the following: If wedecide to admit 100,000 refugeesthis year we should compensate for by reducing the allocation of rights in the following year bya similar amount, that is, downwardto a total of 1.4 million. In that waywe could achieve both humanitarian population control goals. (Andt refugees would have to accept population controls of thesociety that admits them. It is notinconceivable that they might begiven prop fewer rightsthan the native population.)In a democracy, the admission immigrants should properly bevoted on. But by whom? It is notobvious. The usual rule of a is votes for all. But itcan be questioned whether a 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 ofthe influx of immigrants. The doublequestion Who benefits? Whopays suggests that a restriction ofthe usual democratic franchisewould be appropriate and just in thiscase. W our particular quasi-cratic form of government beflexible enough to institute such anovelty? If not, the majority might, Fall 2001THE SOCIAL C 47 of humanitarian motives, imposean unacceptable burden (theforegoing of parenthood) on a thus producing political many new problems willarise when we consciously face the question and seekrational answers. No workableanswers can be found if we ignorepopulation problems. And — if theargument of this essay is correct —so long as there is no t world to control reproduction it is impossible to in dignity if we are to beguided by Spaceship ethics. 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