Garrett Hardin Lifeboat Ethics Summary

Initially, the author provides two metaphors, the widely accepted spaceship metaphor and his own lifeboat metaphor, explicating why his lifeboat metaphor is more realistic. After that, the author elucidates to his audience how the rate of population growth in poorer countries is much greater than the rate of growth of rich countries, and how with the continuous provided aid, the rate would only continue to increase. Moreover, Hardin mentions the disadvantages of the proposed World Food Bank, and how it is run by selfish companies whose main aim is financial gains. Also, Hardin discusses how the poor countries’ planning is what got them to the stage they are at, and how they negatively affect the environment. Finally, the author debates whether there is a true benefit from immigration to rich countries, and identifies how it negatively affects the growth of the United

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.

Regardless of the ever-so-sensitive metaphor of a lifeboat, Hardin uses an appeal to force, or ad baculum, to make his point. He basically states, "If everyone, rich and poor nations alike, is let on the lifeboat, then everyone will die. We don't want everyone to die, so everyone shouldn't come onto the lifeboat, as in the wealthy should stay where they are."

By allowing all of the people in the water onto the boat, then all of the resources that the wealthy people on the boat have will be lost and there would be a survival rate of zero. Hardin states in the beginning of his essay that right now, earth is being treated more as a spaceship than a lifeboat because all of the resources and money is being shared and passed around. The main worry of Hardin’s essay is overpopulation to the point of complete loss of all resources and that the poor are the ones causing all of the resources to disappear because they are growing in population at outstanding rates. There is one thing in his essay that Hardin does not necessarily address and that is overconsumption by the upper-class. The lifeboat is almost full, but it’s not completely full. Why does Hardin want the wealthy to keep the extra space to themselves? This is the problem that Durning addresses in his essay, Asking How Much Is Enough. He states that “consumption has become the central pillar of life in industrial lands, and is even embedded in social values” where he begins to point fingers at the United States and Japan (405). Hardin seems to have forgotten to mention the middle-class and seems to only focus on two social classes when there are three present. Durning states that “American children have more pocket money…than the half-billion poorest people alive” (404). The

When natural disasters hit an area, the only way to relieve major suffering is with the help of foreign aid. Major suffering from lack of food, shelter, and medical aid in developing countries is an easily avoidable dilemma. I will present you with Peter Singers’ Basic Argument regarding our moral obligation to relieve suffering that he presents in his paper “Famine, Affluence and Mortality”. There are two problems of spatial distance and shared obligations that help to show the universality of Singer’s Prevention-Principle. Then there are three questions Kekes asks Singer in his paper “On the Supposed Obligation to Relieve Famine” regarding the Prevention-Principle. He displays potential problems for the current principle as described by Singer. The revised version of the principle, after considering the problems, does not support Singer’s original conclusion. In Affluent Countries we should drastically change our moral conceptual schemes and give up luxuries to provide aid to those in developing nations.

The metaphor of a spaceship is discarded by the metaphor of a lifeboat in Hardin’s writing; each nation on Earth is considered a lifeboat. The wealthy are living in the lifeboats. The poor are drowning in the waters. Poor nations are unable to let people on their lifeboats. There needs to be a solution for this issue. The nations with wealth have limited resources, so they cannot afford to let the number of poor people on their lifeboat. The poor nations have already reached their capacities. If the wealthy nations let the poor into their boat, then their resources would get used up, resulting in the sinking of their lifeboats.

Although Hardin states reasonable facts against helping the poor in his essay, “Lifeboat Ethics” , he overlooks key factors which would contradict with his point of view. Hardin is against the sharing of resources because in his opinion the population growth rates of the poorer countries are much higher as opposed to the wealthier. He claims that if resources are shared equally amongst refugees in LEDCs, in 21 years, "each American would have to share the available resources with more than eight people." What Hardin overlooks when making this statement is that the mean wealth is tied in with the mean birthrate.

The author begins by comparing the two metaphors of the earth that describe the allocation of resources between the poor and the rich people. In the spaceship metaphor, the earth is described as being enclosed and all of the people share resources equally with each other. On the other hand, in the lifeboat metaphor a lifeboat represents different countries, the wealthy people survive on the lifeboat, whilst the poor are in the ocean struggling to survive. Hardin goes on to say that the spaceship ethic is invalid since the earth has limited resources. Also the fact that it is very difficult to share resources equally amongst each other since poor people are more populated than rich people causing the number of limited resources to decline. In addition, he talks about immigration and how unchecked immigration can affect the environment because of overpopulation.

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’s lifeboat metaphor can be used to understand the rationale of those who disagree with this viewpoint. The metaphor separates the world into two groups: the rich and the poor. The rich exist on a lifeboat, while the poor

In this paper I will argue that other people’s suffering matters and that as humans, we have a moral obligation to help others in regards to the envelope and shallow pond cases, however, those we know or are closer in proximity to, take priority over strangers. I will also address O’Neill and Singer’s main expositions and their application on the issue of famine relief.

All the other countries are floating in the water waiting for their inevitable doom and hoping, praying for a spot on a lifeboat. He then complicates things further, each lifeboat has a carrying capacity of 100 people, each lifeboat is currently carrying 90 people. So then what are the rich (in their make believe lifeboat) to do. Hardin proposes three options the first is to let all the poor onto the lifeboat, exceeding the carrying capacity and dooming everyone to a deathly

Ok so Hardin from the lifeboat ethics his main argument was about the overpopulation and he warn others about the population dangers. For example if in a place and if there is double the population that could be a problem. How because if there is too many people then we will have to built more houses and especially get more resources since there is gonna be a lot of people that are not gonna be as far so when this happens you are gonna have to share the resources now resources could be anything but one of them is food so if there is people starving and people starving around the corner then you will probably get your food stolen or there can even be riots or people killing each other over food. So pretty much there would be chaos all around

To begin with, Hardin’s essay Living on a Lifeboat expresses fear of over population by comparing nations to life boats, since they both have limited carrying capacities. For instance, Hardin asks the question, “Would you fill a life boat at its maximum capacity with another 100 people? Specifically, Hardin mentions the loss of land and how we have been historically living on capital such as stored petroleum and coal, and now we must depend on income alone (Hard 857). Basically, Hardin’s core thesis is that we do not have moral obligations to the poor.