A Critique of "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor"

In the article “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor”, the author Garrett Hardin raised the question that whether the rich countries should help people suffer from poverty. He claimed that the supporting strategies for the developing countries, including the World Food Bank could result in more severe recourse inadequate issue and other disasters. In addition, a large number of immigrants flood in the US could ruin the natural environment and social balance. In that case, the author argued that regardless of the current situation, privileged nations should not provide aid to people trapped within difficulties of the underdeveloped nations. Even though, his

Garrett Hardin published in Psychology Today in September 1974. This passage is an excerpt from his popular paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” as a warning that overpopulation was dangerous due to how limited Earth’s resources are. This theory is reflected in Hardin’s thesis that the rich should do nothing to help the people of poor nations and turn away those trying to come in. Hardin used the imagery of a lifeboat almost filled in a sea full of drowning people to pose and answer a single question, “what should the lifeboat passengers do?” (290). Hardin's answer was to defend the boat against all trying to board. If anyone felt guilty about this course of action they should feel free to swap places with a drowning man and give them their

It should be obvious that this is a dubious metaphor. To begin with (and this will come up again) not all countries are either rich or poor. Furthermore, it is not as clear as Hardin assumes that we lack the resources to save everyone. And the argument from the safety factor may seem dubious. Couldn't we help some people -- even if we select them in a fairly arbitrary way?

In the essay Lifeboat Ethics by Garrett Hardin and the essay A Challenge to the Eco-Doomsters by Walter Benjamin, there are many things I agree and disagree with. Both essays make very good points with facts to back them up. But I can’t help but side with Hardin on his essay Lifeboat Ethics. In this essay I am going to compare and contrast some of the similarities and differences between Hardin and Benjamin’s essays about the aid the United States provides to poor nations all over the world by reducing pollution, controlling population growth, and the dependency of economical imports and exports.

At first Hardin’s ethics seem rude and selfish, but as you continue reading he makes it clear this may be the only way to save our world and have it become a better place. For instance, "on the average poor countries undergo a 2.5 percent increase in population each year; rich countries, about 0.8 percent. If the poor countries received no food from the out side, the rate of their population growth […]" (Hardin 4). Hardin continues his piece explaining why rich countries should not help poorer countries that are in need. He believes a poor country that needs support needs to learn the hard way, even if that means losing resources or people. His words like "rich countries", "no food" shows the use of a metaphor that Hardin is able to paint a visual illustration of his argument to his audience. This helps influence and persuade his readers because they are able to grasp the whole concept of Hardin’s argument. Hardin also spoke in his essay using the repetition of the words "we" and "us" is a language factor that persuades the audience to accept Hardin’s ideas because it implicates that he and his audience is of equal status. Here, the ethics he reveals in his essay have good reasoning. Helping someone in need has always been a moral in someone’s life. But now, Hardin proposes a new ethic, "lifeboat ethics". Singer, on the other hand, often refers to the fact that nearly one-third of Americans spend their income on luxuries that they “desire” instead of donating the

Hardin's complex dexterity of petrifying diction is brought to a halt when compared to the scientific diction seen in Durning's article. Hardin's nauseating, fear-provoking diction is rendered in the same passage mentioned in the previous paragraph; the unequivocal author uses words such as: "swamps," "drowns," and "catastrophe" (Hardin, 477). All of these words are associated with devastation and misfortune as Hardin tries to point out our suffering as a result of caring for the poor nations. This is an example of the visceral appeal Hardin employs to scare his audience by having them consider the consequences of not abiding into just letting the still developing nations handle themselves.

In Garrett Hardin’s essay, Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor, Hardin describes the wealthy population of the world as being in a single lifeboat that is almost filled until buckling while the poor population of the world treads water below. Hardin’s essay gets his readers to feel the natural instinct to survive. The lifeboat metaphor that Hardin uses relieves the wealthy population of their moral obligations to the less fortunate, but in addition, puts all of the blame and cause of the depletion of earth’s resources on the poor. As much as his argument may make sense,

Samantha Nutt, a medical doctor and co-founder of War Child, narrates her sixteen years of experience traveling in conflict zones struggling to help the most vulnerable targets, women and children. Her book “Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies and Aid” strings that bind Western nations to war torn countries and simultaneously critiques the serve of militarism and misguided aid efforts, which she believes to exacerbate their mission in bringing relief from poverty and conflict. The author analyzes from her multiple trips to war zone nations of Congo, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Van den Haag argues how “There has been no conclusive statistical demonstration that the death penalty is a better deterrent than are alternative punishments" (1665). Even though van den Haag explains that deterrence might not be the best argument for supporting the death penalty, he does discuss how the certitude of the death penalty tends to be more formidable than imprisonment. Van den Haag also explains that even though the death penalty may not deter hundreds of murderers, is still deters some. “Sparing the lives of even a few prospective victims by deterring their murderers is more important than preserving the lives of convicted murderers because of the possibility, or even the probability, that executing them would not deter others” (van den Haag 1666).

Social impacts of violence are detrimental to individuals, communities, and entire nations. Beah’s harrowing ordeal in Sierra Leone’s civil war exposes him to all of these impacts. A sense of community is quickly lost

David Rieff talks about the idea of the “international community which gives both the humanitarian worker and the victims of crisis “false hope” that something will be done (Rieff, 2003). He says that “the moment one taps on to the idea of the international community, it (humanitarianism) falls part like a toy” (Rieff 2003, p.9). The concept of international community, however vague or disastrous it might seem or sound, is also the source of logistics for

In the article “ Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”, Garrett Hardin (1974) argues that wealthy people should not be responsible for the poor and that the consequences of feeding the poor are detrimental to the environment and to the society as a whole. Hardin was a well known philosopher and ecologist. He earned his bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and also earned his doctorate degree in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941 (Garrett Hardin, n.d.). The main issue that he tackled was human overpopulation and one of the books that he wrote that analyzed this issue was called ‘How Global Population Growth Threatens Widespread Social Disorder’(1992). Because the author has a sufficient

Hardin’s lifeboat analogy proposes an interesting situation. If a lifeboat with 50 people on board and a capacity of 60 floated past 100 other people in the water, who would we take, if anyone? If we tried to take everyone, the boat would capsize and everyone would either become stranded or die. It would lead to “complete justice, complete catastrophe” (Hardin 1). If we took no one, we would constantly have to stave off desperate people climbing on board and those who claim entitlement. If we decide to push our lifeboat to its limits, and add 10 more people, how would we choose who to take? What I gather from this is that there’s no truly correct solution. If we take everyone, we all die. If we take no one, we get shamed and blamed for leaving others behind. If we take a select few, we get called out as biased by those who weren’t selected.

Hardin begins to describe how there are fifty people sitting in the lifeboat, with a total capacity of sixty. There are one hundred people swimming in the water, begging to be let on the lifeboat. The people that are on the lifeboat to begin with are the rich people who feel guilty that they already have a spot. Hardin believes that the people shouldn’t

The struggles of William and his people touched me deeply and moved me to wonder if anything had been done to help the Malawians in their time of need. Were such a catastrophe to occur in the United States the outcry of the public would only be outdone by the victims of the problem themselves. Yet in Malawi what few questions were put to their tyrannical government were crushed with an iron fist and there was nothing more to be said. Thus it was from the hands of foreign powers that some small relief came. Michael Wines of The New York Times reported that the United States in association with the World Food Program stepped in almost immediately to assist with the food shortage (Wines). But some did not consider this assistance the wisest course of action. In light of the fraudulent Malawian governments' penchant for conveniently misplacing funds it was said that they should be left to their own devices. Fred Smith, Jr, President of Competitive Enterprise Institute claimed as much, saying, “One of the