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The first problem with Hardin's tragedy is that it's not true. The second problem, which helps explain the first, is that Hardin was a racist ecofascist who hated nonwhite people, blamed them for ruining the planet, and advocated strongly for their exclusion from western countries, what he called "lifeboat ethics." There simply weren't enough resources for everyone, he argued, so he wanted to prioritize white westerners. "Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all" is a line from his essay that people don't like to teach when they push the myth of the tragedy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center maintains a profile on Hardin, who advocated for, among other things, segregation, eugenic forced sterilization, and ethnic cleansing. He likened nonwhite people having many children to a "passive" genocide of white people. He was, in short, a monster. We should understand his evidence-free arguments for a tragedy of the commons through this lens: Hardin was a racist and eugenicist who believed most people were too stupid not to over-exploit resources and had to be violently contained to ensure enough would be left over for the "right" people. This is not a work of ecological science or even economics, but rather white supremacist propaganda.

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