Justice vs. Reality in "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case against Helping the Poor" by Garrett Hardin

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

In 1974, Human Ecology Professor Garrett Hardin published his work Lifeboat Ethics: a Case against Helping the Poor. Throughout his essay Hardin uses rhetoric to defend his stance on how helping the poor doesn’t help anyone in the long run. He believes that aiding the poor actually hurts everyone globally. Hardin breaks his essay down between two major topics: food aid and immigration. Hardin argues that if rich counties provide food to poor ones, the poor countries will slowly drain the entire system and deplete all of the surplus food; and he also argues that if we were to allow open immigration to wealthy countries from poor counties we would ruin the environment because we would put an additional strain on the land to produce food and in order to increase food production we would need to clear other land, eliminating other resources we need. In order to back his argument Hardin uses the rhetorical devices logos and ethos.

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.

Hardin and Benjamin have many more differences in their essays than similarities in my opinion. Benjamin’s views on zero population growth, can sound ridiculous to some, but a strategy similar to this has been enforced in China since the 1970s. Hardin’s theory is to give people a better life to lower the birth rate. People in poor nations have higher birth rates to compensate for higher death rates. So, giving a better life would lower death rates and therefore lower birth rates. Our nation, despite our greatness, is not a self-sufficient one. Benjamin points out how our country is dependent on others for oil and other minerals. U.S manufacturers are now more than 40 percent dependent on imports of many commodity and rare earth metals (Perry, Mark). There are quite a few countries that dependent on the U.S. economically as well. The countries that benefit the most from economic ties with the U.S., and which therefore can be said to be most dependent upon the U.S. economically, are Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, China, and Israel, as well as the Bahamas and several Caribbean countries (Flom, Peter). Hardin holds Third World nations responsible for their own starvation and

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.

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

Mill argues that all sources “of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort” (Mill 15). Through this statement, Mill and Singer’s perspectives realign. Singer states that “if we stopped feeding animals on grains and soybeans, the amount of food saved would-- if distributed to those who need it-- be more than enough to end hunger throughout the world” (Singer 220). Thus, the problem rests in the selfishness of affluent nations, who do not distribute their grain to poor nations. Singer furthermore argues that we could provide contraceptives to poor nations to slow their birth rates (Singer 241). By evenly distributing food and slowly the birth rate, human suffering caused by absolute poverty could cease to exist.

At the beginning of the chapter, the author raises questions that were prevalent a century ago and that are still important today.  The one question I found most interesting is, “Can white, native-born, economically secure Americans ever really understand, much less help, those who are struggling to survive?” (1).  Much of the prevalent political culture emphasized Aryan superiority, as well as the concern a changing society would suffer from massive immigration.  Even authors, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, recognized the oppression she suffered from as a woman.  However, she did not recognize the oppression others suffered in her embracing of anti-immigration as well as racist beliefs.  Reactionary to the massive immigration of this time, Charlotte Perkins Gilman also supported eugenics to improve the human race.  Yet Addams did not argue immigrants were inferior to the Aryan people.  In fact, three-quarters of her residents at Hull-House were first and second generation immigrants.  Not only was Addams sympathetic to the poor, but she also was sympathetic to the plight of immigrants.

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

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

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.

One good comparison Hardin makes is the example of the herdsman bringing in new cattle for personal gain. These men are forced to decide between brining in a extra cattle and gain the benefits, or the negative effect being bringing in another animal and causing overgrazing. The positive outcome almost always wins, which brings in the moral reasoning of if the herdsman is doing the right thing. They want to reap the benefits but Hardin is making the point this selfish decision is going to have consequences down the line to others.