Garret Hardins Tragedy of the Commons and Plato and Marx...

Garrett Hardin developed the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons. The basic concept is a giant pasture that is for everyone to have a piece of land and for the herdsman to have as many cattle a possible to sustain the land. This land should be able to maintain itself for quite a long time because of cattle dying as well as the population staying relatively stable. But at some point the population will begin growing and the herdsman will want to maximize their profits by having more cattle, which in return the land cannot sustain. The herdsman receives all the profit from adding one more animal to the pasture so the herdsman will eventually begin adding more cattle, but the overgrazing caused by that added animal will destroy the land†¦show more content†¦Marx says that private property is the product of alienated labor and the means by which labor alienates itself. Marx believed that the idea of communal property could not be achieved in a capitalistic society. But that the abolition of private property was essential for the ideal society. Marx says, Communism is the positive transcendence of private property, or human self-estrangement, and therefore is the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man. It is a complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being. The transcendence of private property is the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes.(Communist Manifesto) Plato, in his Republic, outlined a society with communal holding of property; his concept of a hierarchical social system including slavery. In The Republic, Socrates describes the abolition of private families and limitation on private property in the two guardian classes. Plato proposed the communal ownership of property by an intellectual ruling class, to put the welfare of the state above personal desire and moderate the greed of the producing classes. He also describes the living conditions of the guardian classes in the ideal city. He shows the strict limitation on private property as well as all the regualtions the rulers