New at Reason: Ron Bailey on the Invisible Hand of Population Control

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.

Read all about it here.