Garrett 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.

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

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."

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,

Susan B. Anthony inspired to fight for women’s right while camping against alcohol..along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton also an activist, Anthony and Stanton founded the NWSA . Which helped the two women to go around and produced The Revolution, a weekly publication that lobbied for women’s rights.She also went on saying that if women ever wanted to get reaction men had…only thing stopping them,..having voting rights. An american social reformer and women’s right activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement, also a teacher who aggregate and compare about nature. She gave the “Women’s Rights to the Suffrage” giving outside the jail she was going to be held in, she gave this speech in person in 1873 and her audience were mostly white women that want virtues like men. Also men that wanted to put women in their place and friends of her and fellow citizens. Her main points are that women needed power that men had. Growing up in a quaker household she knew that women needed honor as men just like slaves experience getting their freedom. In Women’s right to suffrage Susan B. Anthony uses tone, reparation,and logos which dematices why women should have equal morality and voting abilities as men.

In the two stories "Lifeboat Ethics" and "A Modest Proposal" the topic of distribution of resources is brought up. Hardin, who has a more realistic mindset believes that the resources should be given to the people that will benefit him and the rest of the society. Hardin thinks that if the poor are already in trouble, then that is their loss and they can not get any better. It seems very harsh but he discussing his thoughts on the idea of the World Food Bank. He says that the food bank won't neccesarilly fix the world starvation but may cause other parts of the world that aren't struggling for food to suffer.

In the article “ Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”, Garrett Hardin (1974) argues that rich people should not be responsible for the poor and that the effects of feeding the poor are threatening to the environment. As I stated before, the author’s argument is

Susan B. Anthony’s speech on women’s rights to vote explains the fact that women deserve the right to vote in America just as much as men do. Upon giving this speech, Anthony was recently arrested for voting in the most recent presidential election. By giving this speech, she intended to prove the innocence of herself and all women trying to vote. Anthony first makes the point that women are equal citizens to men. Then she makes several grievances to the Constitution, arguing that the document protects the rights of all citizens of the United States of America, even quoting it. Finally, she points out that one of these protected rights is that to vote, stressing her point that as an American citizen, she is entitled to her right to vote. These

Lifeboat Ethics is a metaphor for depicting the process of how resources and wealth are distributed as described by ecologist Garrett Hardin. Hardin published “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor,” rationalizing that wealthy nations should not be held accountable for assisting the needs of the poor. Hardin defends his utilitarianism “good for all” approach regarding the distribution of resources through rationalization with the use of statistical values and “commons” to depict his point. However, his metaphor of a limited, “safety” lifeboat is in fault for assuming that the problem for limited resources is primarily caused by the liberal, humanitarian efforts of richer countries helping poorer ones.

The article “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor” is a piece written by Garret Hardin who is an ecologist that focuses on overpopulation, which contributed to him writing this article. The work discusses the lifeboat scenario and how it can be applied to the rich and the poor of the world. In this piece, Hardin focuses on the gap between the rich and the poor and why it is growing. Hardin’s work gives us insight on why the upper class will always remain wealthy while the other two thirds of the population remains poverty stricken. Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the poor” gave a good comparison between the lifeboat scenario and the rich and poor of the world today.

“Spaceship Earth” is a metaphor commonly used by environmentalists and humanitarians in order to describe the planet earth. Environmentalists believe that since we all share life on this planet, no person in this world has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources. Garret Hardin in his essay “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor”, argues that the planet Earth is better represented by the metaphor of a “lifeboat” instead of the “spaceship” metaphor. In his essay, Hardin believes that the government throughout the entire world should enact mandatory laws in order to prevent population growth and that the “rich” nations of the world should not help the “poor” nations because by helping the poor countries,

Hardin claims that rich nations such as the United States of America are on track to double their population every eighty-seven years while poor countries that need help to care for most of their population actually double their population around every 35 years which only furthers their problems. The next passage “Multiplying the rich and the poor” just gives specific examples of nations having trouble with overpopulation. “The Tragedy of the commons” is where Hardin brings in the “Fundamental error of spaceship ethics, and the sharing it requires”. The Sharing is what he calls “the tragedy of the commons” because if you overextend your property then it tends to get messy as you cannot keep it clean. If a farmer allows more cattle than his land can hold it will erode and he will lose its value. One of the biggest “Tragedy of the commons” was the Food for Peace Program where no mentions of business were actually mentioned until after the humanitarian message was pushed on the masses. The World Food Bank would fall under the same idea because although it would be nice for all nations to have a food reserve some already do and the ones who don't will just be taking from others. On top of this, the ones who save might stop because there is some they can take from other nations. If we do not stop this way of