June 16, 2009
In his famous 1968 essay "The Tragedy
of the Commons," ecologist Garrett Hardin declared that "the
freedom to breed is intolerable" and warned that our laissez faire
attitudes toward human reproduction were leading to global ruin.
Hardin and his intellectual confreres urgently called for the
imposition of population control measures. But as Science
Correspondent Ronald Bailey shows, there is an inverse relationship
between economic freedom and total fertility rates. More freedom
means fewer children. There may be an invisible hand of population
control.
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