Explain Ok So Hardin From The Lifeboat Ethics

Disaster! The headlines all mention the utter destruction of the world. Their dismal outlooks on the future are often accompanied by generic solution such as; “Recycle”, “Ride a bike”, etc. The novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn the contains the same “Disaster!” message but is accompanied by many unorthodox solutions to the problems which Quinn identifies. One problem addressed is overpopulation. The solution to this problem is not answered by Quinn; rather, it is left up to the reader through a binary moral dilemma: sustain the excess population and maintain the problem, or stop aiding the people, the poor, and let the populations die off. Yet there is another solution to sustain current population growth and stem the problem.The solution to

In Garrett Hardin’s essay “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,” Hardin asks readers if every person on earth has an equal share of resources and then argues why he takes the position against helping the poor. Hardin uses the metaphor of a lifeboat that is almost filled to capacity, floating in an ocean where the “poor of the world” are overboard. This metaphor appeals greatly to one of humanities greatest instincts, survival. The main focus of Hardin’s essay and metaphor is to strip all morals, take the fault from the rich nations and place the responsibilities and blame on the poor. There are a few rebels who seem to think that the blame and responsibilities are incorrectly placed. One of these rebels is Alan Durning who presents his argument in his essay “Asking How Much is Enough.” Durning argues that overpopulation does not threaten the world’s resources. He believes the real culprit is overconsumption by the rich. Joseph K. Skinner is another rebel who argues against Hardin in his essay “Big Mac and the Tropical Forests.” Skinner argues that wealthy nations, including the United States, are responsible for the world’s resource problem because they use poor nations as main producers of goods they expend. The arguments made in the essays’ by Durning and Skinner make readers alert of Hardin’s rhetorical strategies and how he uses his

This New York Times article discusses the ideas of Paul Ehrlich on population and the environment. Although Ehrlich often resorted to dramatizations and apocalypse-type imagery in his writings, they often had some very poignant objective. Ehrlich discussed the “Population Bomb”, the idea that population was rising so rapidly, that widespread famine would soon be an issue for millions of people. As we saw, no such event occurred, but Ehrlich still firmly believes measures should be taken to limit population growth such as “tax benefits for having additional children” and taxes on childcare items such as diapers and strollers. These proposals and ideas remain highly controversial, as they were in the 1970’s and continue to create a stir even

In 1798 utilitarian Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population as an argument against an utopian society based on social and economic equality. Malthus believed that if the human population is left unchecked then the population would outgrow the resources necessary to maintain the population. Malthus’s argued that the population will continue to grow and the burden will unavoidably put on the poor population. However, the inequality of population would be a good thing in terms of controlling the population.

Population is one of the key points that Hardin stresses. Still thinking in terms of the lifeboat example, “The people in the lifeboat are doubling in numbers once every 87 years; those swimming around outside are doubling, on the average, every 35 years…” In the real world, developing countries’ populations are multiplying at an exponential rate, and the world’s resources can only dwindle.Hardin states that in 1970 the US had a population of 210 million people, who were increasing at a rate of .08 percent a year. In terms of the lifeboat example, Hardin says that we should imagine that same number of people outside the boat, only

On the other hand, Thomas Malthus had little hope for the future. He believed that the world’s population will increase faster than the production of food. The human race, he believed, would starve and there would be periods of chaos. Malthus said that the population increases at an exponential rate, nearly doubling amount. There is no way food growth would be able to catch up with population growth. Malthus’ solution was “War, Famine, and Plagues”. He believed that was the only way to decrease population and hopefully salvage the human race. These events would increase death rates liberating the world of disaster. Malthus tried to persuade lower classes form creating children and from marriage. At that time the lower classes were considered to be given higher wages, which would increase the makings of children and marriages. Thomas Malthus pleaded with everyone to make a change in order to decrease population.

“The Wreck of Time,” written by Annie Dillard, illustrates societies battle with population. Dillard emphasizes the disasters that savage our world. According to the author, “ By moderate figures, the dead outnumber us about fourteen to one. The dead will always outnumber the living.” (Dillard 168) The amount of natural or man-made catastrophes do not affect the population as much as we claim. Dillards opinions are supported with facts throughout her essay, but readers are still left to question, why is our world considered to be overpopulated? Perhaps it is time for our society to consider Earth is not overpopulated in terms of people, but in resources. In addition, humans are struggling to grasp that other ecosystems are also being affected. With the introduction of Darwinism (the theory of evolution, by natural selections), humans are programed with the mentality of “survival of the fittest” forcing our humanity to evolve. Although evolution proved to be beneficial, as our immune system and way of life improved, we sacrificed our natural resources along the way. The problem with our society is not the lack of knowledge, but the ignorance and selfishness within our society. Overpopulation, threatened by the lack of resources, intimidates humans to disrupt biodiversity as we know it. (1) Man-made changes jeopardize our biodiversity. (2) As a result, the Earth’s resources are being depleted due to rapid consumption. (3) Even though we lack resources,

In his paper published in 1974 entitled ‘Living on a Lifeboat’, Garrett Hardin condenses the issues of foreign aid, growing populations and immigration amongst other things to a metaphor of people living on a lifeboat. In the paper Hardin’s premise is that each country represents a lifeboat, which can only hold a certain capacity depending on the relative size of the country that the boat represents. The capacity of each boat symbolizes the weight of responsibility that is placed on a state when caring for its citizens as well as the possibility of allowing new citizens onto the ‘boat’. This essay will discuss Hardin’s thesis for lifeboat ethics by outlining the problems faced in maintaining a stable lifeboat by examining the issues of immigration,

This paper can be an excellent source for anyone researching into how to fight overpopulation. Hardin provides several other viewpoints that show he did not selectively choose evidence or distort it. Hardin proceeds from point to point logically which allowed the reader to comprehend the main idea effortlessly. The author glided to how the people of poor

No matter how many people do claim overpopulation is not a relevant issue, it very much is because of the simple fact that starvation and pollution are very real and existing issues that are ultimately offset by overpopulation. In an article titled “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” author Erle C. Ellis uses the analogy “Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences,” to argue that overpopulation is not a problem by stating the opposing claim. “We are nothing like bacteria in a petri dish,” Mr. Ellis solemnly asserts, “...these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain

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

He believed this led to ratchet system. In other words, the food aid sent to poor countries would prevent the famine from decreasing the numbers in the population and preventing the famine from making the population more manageable. In nature, over-population is self-correcting through famine and disease; therefore a lot of suffering in the process. Our efforts to stop the suffering is what breaks the natural cycle (Hardin). This was the most controversial point made by Hardin. Hardin’s third point was clearly made, “shutting the door” on allowing immigrants to come to other nations is another way to solve overpopulation. He believed the resources in a nation belonged to the natives of the nation and therefore should not go to those that immigrate into the nation. Hardin’s thoughts on this point was that allowing immigrants to come into America would cause America to go deeper into poverty. Finally, Hardin’s last point was to draw the line that would prevent other immigrants from coming into our nation at this point. Hardin’s thought is that we can’t remove the immigrants that are already here, but an imaginary line can be drawn to prevent more immigrants from coming into the nation and this will continue to create more overpopulating. With considering all the points made by Hardin, it is clear that his purpose for writing “Lifeboat of Ethics” was to inform and educate society on the detrimental effects

This idea discusses how people are like any other animal in the world and that the population size will correlate with the amount of food available. That like every other animal out their we are limited to our resources so for instance if our food resources were only enough to feed 2 million people the population of the world would slowly go down to 2 million people and would not stay exactly at 2 million it would always be a little lower or a little over but it would never be enough to increase the number past 3 million. I think that Hollywood has given us many excellent examples of that exact situation happing in many end of the world type movies or maybe even a smaller version of that scenario such as stranded on a deserted island or something like that. When people picture those movies they know that there are going to be some people that are going to either starve to death, be kicked out of the camp because they we hoarding food, or the most twisted and most extreme choice is that the people end up becoming cannibals and end up eating the

Of course since my group “caught” all the M&M’s we did not receive any more. In the real world the same thing is happening. Fishermen are fishing violently so they can have the most for themselves and so they can benefit and they do not once think of the bigger picture, they are destroying the common and will eventually cause extinction. In Harding’s article, he mentions a quote similar to what I am saying above; ‘As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize is gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to herd?” This utility has one negative and positive component.’ The positive component is that the herdsmen will receive more money. The negative component is that if every herdsmen were to do the same they would end up destroying the common. Only when there is ownership we can prevent destruction of the common, because when you own something and have responsibility over it, you think about its future and how to use its resources responsibly. Here’s another quote that stood up to me “The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe.” What Hardin is trying to say is that the population problem cannot be solved because we cannot control what people do, and if we do create laws against

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how overpopulation causes social problems. To do so you must take many things into consideration, such as different views of racial problems and conflicting definitions of a social problem. Social problems can be defined in many different ways. They effect everyone and some of us encounter problems everyday as a result of our race, religion, gender, or low income. Others experience problems from technological change or declining neighborhoods, others are affected directly by crime and violence in their own neighborhood, and sometimes definitions of social problems are changed by society because of changes around you. Finally in