Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The World

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

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.

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

As Andrew Kuper, a Fellow of Trinity College of Cambridge and researcher of philosophy, politics, and the modern world, once said "Since the costs to ourselves may be significant, how much ought we to sacrifice?" (Kuper, 1). A direct correspondence of such can be seen in the work of Garrett Hardin, specifically "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor," versus Peter Singer, author of "The Singer Solution To World Poverty," and Alan Durning, author of "Asking How Much Is Enough." Garret Hardin, a former professor and ecologist, argues that the wealthier nations of the world need to not allow themselves to get caught up in helping the

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 a country like this, growing from being poor to wealthy is extremely hard seeing as how it isn 't built for most. It was built by most but wasn 't built for most. The poor stay poor and the gap between the rich and people without money just increases.

It is crazy to hear that the top richest people in this world have the same wealth as the poorest 3 billion people in this world. Even though rich countries are giving aid to poor countries, the huge gap difference between their wealth is due to large corporations form rich countries taking more money from poor countries, and this really explains a lot why poor country never have the chance to actually thrive. The thought that poor people should be able to come up from where they came from, which is a thought in many people's minds, especially those who have money, isn't all that simple.

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.

In October 12, 1999, the world's population has reached to 6 billion people. about only 12 years later (October 31, 2011) the world has gone up to 7 billion. Many people on the planet are worried about the world population going too high. They fear that too many people would result in starvation and quick depletion of resources. Some people believe that we should have some type of law that would limit the number of children we can have in each family. Something similar has come true in China about 30 years ago. In September 25, 1980, China's One-Child Policy has been created. This policy keeps parents from having more than one baby with the exception of twins, triplets, quadruplets, and so on. Parents may also have

Since 1991, the southern half of Somalia, a poverty stricken African nation, has seen various tribal militias battle for dominance and power over individual regions of the country. Violence has plagued Mogadishu, the capital, since warlords ousted the former president. Mere months after the collapse of the government, men, women and children in torn clothes ran helplessly towards packages dropped from military planes towards the hot sand of their tiny village. This action was one of many attempts to help underdeveloped nations receive food by the United Nations' World Food Programme. Within his article titled "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor", Garret Hardin, a well-known philosopher of ecology, analyzes the difficulty

- No! You Cannot Come in Garrett Hardin writes about saving the poor in his essay"Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against the Poor" found in The Blair Reader. Hardin writes about how the rich countries are in the lifeboat and the poor countries are swimming in the ocean. He also writes about how the United States helps other countries. Hardin feels that if the government keeps helping other countries and letting people in then America will also drown. "We must convince them if we wish to save at least part of the world form environmental ruin"(page 765). Why should I help the poor countries? Why should I let the immigrants in? I see no reason for helping someone that

Garrett Hardin was a controversial ecologist who believed that overpopulation was going to bring a downfall to a world of limited resources. Each nation was compared to a lifeboat with the rich being inside the boat and the poor in the water, drowning (Hardin, 561). He wrote the “Lifeboat Ethics” in 1974 when Ethiopia was having a starvation problem. Hardin’s opinion about the situation was that sending aid to Ethiopia was only making the problem worse and by feeding the people would aid overpopulation; the root to the problem. Hardin’s thesis developed from the notion that the rich should do nothing to help the poor. He believed that one

It can be seen that there are a multitude of reasons that the poor tend to remain poor. Reasons ranging from the spending patterns of the poor to the health and nutrition of the poor all attribute to the creation of a poverty cycle that seemingly condemns the poor to being poor. Obviously this isn’t a rule of thumb but rather an accurate observation, it is not to say that the poor can’t become affluent but rather the conditions and environment that surrounds those who are poor severely impedes their ability to earn an income and move over the poverty