Garrett Hardin

Garrett Hardin, "Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity", , ed. Garrett Hardin and John Baden, Managing the Commons, San Fransisco, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1977.

The theory of discounting, using commercially realistic rates of interest, virtually writes off the future. The consequences have been well described by Fife and Clark. Devotion to economic discounting in its present form is suicidal. How soon is it so? 'In the long run', an economist would say, since disaster is more than five years off. 'In the short run', according to biologists, since disaster occurs in much less than the million or so years that is the normal life expectancy of a species. [113]

The foundation of situational ethics is this: The morality of an act is determined by the state of the system at the time the act is performed. Ecology, a system-based view of the world, demands situational ethics. ...
The legislative process is a slow one. Situational ethics seems almost to demand an administrative approach; by statute, administrators can be given the power to make instant, detailed decisions within a legally defined framework. Rules promulgated by an administrative agency are called administrative law.
On paper, the system may look fine, but the general public is understandably afraid of it. Administrative law gives power to administrators, who are human and hence fallible. Their decisions may be self-serving. John Adams called for 'a government of laws, and not of men'. We rightly esteem this as a desirable ideal. The practical question we must face is how far can we safely depart from the ideal undert he pressure of ecological necessity? This is the harrowing Quis custodiet problem; it has not easy solutions. [114]

We may speculate - we can hardly know - that the long avoidance of the commons problem was due to a subconscious awareness of the intractable Quis custodiet problem, which would have been activated by any attempt to depart from the system of the commons. [115]