Analysis Of Garret Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics

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

Garrett Hardin argues for a very harsh thesis: we simply should not provide aid to people in poor countries. His argument is consequentialist: he claims that the net result of doing so would be negative -- would in fact be courting large-scale disaster. One of the things that we will notice about Hardin's essay, however, is that whether he is right or wrong, he paints with a very broad brush. This makes it a good essay for the honing of your philosophical skills; you should notice that there are many places where the reasoning procees with less than total care.

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.

This increases the responsibility of the state for looking after its citizens as the poorer population of the country grows in numbers. Hardin demonstrates this in ‘Living on a Lifeboat’ by examining the rate of reproduction of the poor in comparison to the wealthy. According to Hardin, the population of the poorer classes doubles every thirty-five years, whilst the wealthier classes experience the same growth over a period of eighty-seven years. (Hardin, 1974) In a lifeboat situation, this reproduction rate would mean the poor would be heavily reliant on the income and supplies of the wealthy. Due to this Hardin states that the wealthy must assume that the poor will be self-interested and sharing our resources with them will only be harmful to our own survival. (Hardin, 1974) Why should the wealthy share if they get nothing from the poor in return? They deposit their supplies into a shared collective on the boat and the poor on-board take it without giving anything back. Hardin refers to this as the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and if taken into a real-life situation we are presented with the development of social benefits for the poor - a system in which the rich pay taxes in order for the poor to be financially supported through state benefits, social housing etc. (Hardin,

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,

This is the scenario of the Lifeboat Ethics in which Hardin relates this lifeboat to the space ship Earth. It goes that the lifeboat is the wealth nations and the people in the water are the poor or unfortunate. All ethic beliefs have flaws and strong points, as you will see in the following explanations. The 5 ethical theories have a one or two examples explaining how someone would go about making this decision from the view of: Divine Command Theory, Egoism, Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics, and Natural Law. All five have ethic believes do justice, but have flaws, and strong point. An ethic theory to solve a problem is good. Following

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

Garrett Hardin’s excerpt from “Lifeboat Ethics” first appeared in Psychology Today in September 1974. In this essay, there is a metaphor that rich and poor are very different. I strongly disagree with Hardin’s metaphor even though he is truthful about his beliefs. The metaphor is only being seen in one point of view, when there are multiple ways of looking at it.

The consideration of preserving life with humanity requires a foundational ability to meet with adequately supplying enough resources to sustain continued support of essential supplies to provide for humanity’s needs. Undoubtedly, food and shelter encompasses a key part therein, as well as somehow maintaining a healthy form of living. What would it take to accurately assess everything is essentially what “The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin” (The Garrett Hardin Society, 2015, title) attempt has to cover in thoughtful analogy utilizing some commonsense mixed with a socialist view.

Hardin refers to the commons with its natural resources, an area that we all share, access, and use providing there is enough for all. The resources of the commons include such things as open waters, clean air, as well as forest land preserves. He illustrates, through a parable of animals grazing in an open pasture of the common ground, for everyone to use and dare I say abuse. The herdsmen of the said grazing flocks are driven to increase their herds on the commons, in which to grow personal wealth. This leads to numerous problems for both animal and user as quantities exceed the lands carrying capacity of the commons, as this land degrades and compromises the needs of future generations. He suggests we abandon the commons in food gathering

One of this week’s readings was Garret Hardin’s essay The Tragedy of the Commons published December 13, 1968, in Science. Hardin was an American ecologist and philosopher born in Dallas, Tx in 1915. In 1936 Hardin received a degree in Zoology from the University of Chicago is 1936, in 1941 he earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in Microbiology and, served as an Ecology professor at the University of Santa Barbara from 1963-1978. Both he and his wife of 62 years, took their own lives at their home in Santa Barbara in 2003. Before his death, Hardin became known for several things but mostly, his stance on overpopulation, which is the topic of his essay from this week. Additionally, he wrote a number of books and different essays on a wide variety of topics ranging from abortion, eugenics, and sterilization to immigration, conservation, and

The “tragedy of the commons” is an economic problem where people will neglect the needs of other individuals and fight for their own personal gain. For example, imagine a huge pond with a lot of fish in it. Every fisherman has a regular fishing pole and they all average about the same catches per week. Then, a company designs a new, more advanced fishing pole. A few fisherman try it out and they end up catching double the amount of fish. Regardless of the fish declination in the pond and the impact it is having on other fisherman, they continue fishing with