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,
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.
Old timers will see Chief Jones’ as an outsider that will weak when dealing with personnel and politicians, have no concept of what the work needs to be done on the scene of a large commercial working structure fire or how to properly deal with a mass casualty incident because she is a woman. Certain staff members will more than likely go even further and say that she did not earn her position ,consider her a second class officer and others will call her the token woman so that Union County can say they adhere to the Equal Employment Act and they even have a woman as the leader of one department. These are just a few of the ill feeling and statements that some will say when she attempts to apply changes that they will strongly resist
on its maiden voyage in 1912 the British ocean liner titanic sank after ramming an iceberg in the north atlantic ocean. the nearest ship the California did not get the SOS message because the radio operator had gone to bed and turned off his radio. the titanics captain Edward j smith knew that there were only enough lifeboats for half the 2100 people on board in the panic even those were not filled. seventeen year old jack Thayer from Philadelphia was not lucky enough to get into a lifeboat but as the titanic slid into the water, he dived from its deck into the ice waters coming upon an overturned lifeboat he hung on until the carpathian came to his rescue at dawn more than 1500 other people were not so
The movie Titanic, based on personal stories from the ship’s passengers, expresses the importance of safety precautions and the division of class as well as spreading awareness of the issue. The ship set sail in April of 1912 from Southampton in United Kingdom to New York City. When it sank, about 1,500 people died. Though the main characters in the movie were fictional, there were five characters that were based off of real people who were on the ship. Margaret Brown, Archibald Gracie, Captain Edward John Smith, Thomas Andrews and Joseph Bruce Ismay were those five. The captain of the ship was Edward John Smith, and his personal story is shown throughout the movie. Smiths’ attempts to save lives were not
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
“A Dog’s Life” The autobiography of a stray by: Ann M. Martin, a book i’ve had since the 4th grade, I can never stop coming back to it at least once every year though. A dog named Squirrel goes through many changes in her life with losing her mother, then her brother, being abused, surviving on her own, making new friends losing those friends and finding a good home for good where she can live her elder years. To me the book basically covers the life of a human, as I got older and repeatedly read the book I realized that it has substantial similarities with the way humans generally go through life. People lose their family, get in abusive relationships, have to go to college and survive on their own, we make friends, lose friends and hopefully
Wealth is something that not all people have, but most typically want more of it. There are many people on Earth that wish they had more wealth, and there are even a select few that have too much. “The Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie is all about what should be done when there is too much wealth held by an individual. Carnegie begins his essay by describing how the disparity of wealth has changed over the years. He also describes how wealth has simply grown in general over time.
As individuals, we have different morals that can cause us to have a different opinion about things in life. Morals can be defined as having different beliefs when it comes to right and wrong. For instance, what one may consider unjust, another can consider the actions just. In the case of The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens,1884 it illustrates how individuals face different dilemmas that caused them to sacrifice a life for their well-being. I disagree with murdering the boy because I feel that people we should go right and do unto others, you will want them to do to you.
Each person was given a life jacket but survival wasn’t very likely in -4 degree water temperature. As the ship sank lower into the water life boats were lowered with only half their holding compasity inside. One survivor remembered, “It soon became obvious to some of us that we weren’t going to be finding any safety in one of those life boats” (“The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912”).
The text states, “ The Titanic designer, Thomas Andrews was pushing for 48 lifeboats which would have been enough to carry anyone on board. Ismay was footing the bill for the Titanic, and for whatever, he said no to the 48 lifeboats.” The text also states, “ Only twenty were placed on board. Because of his choice, it puts him under some obligation to stay aboard the ship and take whatever comes.” This shows how if the 48 lifeboats didn’t get footed, all 2,208 would have been able to make it out of the Titanic. When ships put in lifeboats, they need to insure that they would have enough to get everyone off the boat if something were to happen.
“Although there was room on deck for twice as many lifeboats, the Titanic carried lifeboats for just over half of the passengers and crew on board. The designer of the Titanic had allowed room on deck for two rows of lifeboats, but one row was removed before the voyage began to make the deck more aesthetically pleasing [Rogers and others, 1998]. With outdated British Board of Trade regulations, the Titanic's twenty lifeboats actually exceeded requirements by 10 percent capacity [Refrigerator, 1998].”
One thousand five hundred and three people died in the sinking of the Titanic, but was it avoidable? The behemoth of a ship was supposed to be unsinkable; however, due to the Captain’s negligence, the speed of the ship, and not listening to multiple warnings it was sunk. Miss Jessie Allis Mary Goodwin, a twelve year old girl, lost her life due to the tragic sinking of the Titanic. Unfortunately, she died because she was a third class passenger so she was sealed in by the watertight doors.
The way money is distributed within the United States is unbalanced, with the majority of the wealthy owning the bulk of the country’s wealth. Wealth can be defined as a person’s assets and monetary gains. This unequal distribution has caused numerous economic and geographical problems, such as how resources are divided among countries, how developed or industrialized a country is in relation to wealth distribution and the wide spread of disease and lack of medical attention due to an absence of money. In this paper I will address the negative and positive aspects associated with wealth distribution. I will explain how resource distribution contributes to an area’s economic growth. I will also discuss varying ways to measure wealth
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.
Mark Pearson from the OECD, told BBC News: "It's not just income that we're seeing being very concentrated - you look at wealth and you find that the bottom 40% of the population in rich countries have only 3% of household wealth whereas the top 10% have over half of household wealth." (Anthony Reuben, 2015)