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The Contorical Analysis Of Garrett Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics

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Earth is a spaceship. No single person has the authority to destroy it, waste it or use all of its resources. There is no singular leader of the entire world, therefore there is no captain of the spaceship. “But does everyone on earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources?” (Hardin 1).
Many are familiar with the story of the “indestructible” passenger liner ship, the Titanic, that sank in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg. When the ship was sinking into the water, the passengers were frantically in search of some form of way to save their lives. Aboard the ship, there were estimated 2,500 passengers, with a very limited supply of lifeboats. Unfortunately, the Titanic’s crew was not appropriately trained for an evacuation crisis and did not fill the lifeboats to full capacity. Majority of the remaining passengers fell into the freezing water, with the lifeboats surrounding them. If the circumstances were different, the lifeboats had the potential to save many more lives than they did that night. If that was the case, how would the passengers aboard the lifeboat determine who to allow on, out of the large amount of drowning people in the freezing cold water? In other words, who receives the privilege to get aboard the lifeboat? This is a question that is asked in Garrett Hardin’s article Lifeboat Ethics, the Case Against Helping the Poor.
Garrett Hardin explains that the world is divided into thirds. One third of the world is considered to be wealthy,

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