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Life is like a cruise ship ... or a minimum of till the engine blows up and your oasis of luxury sinks. Before you know it, you discover yourself being in among the couple of lifeboats, surrounded by hundreds of people who are now properly representing survival of the fittest. They are treading water and fearing sharks, all due to the fact that there are insufficient rafts. You are grateful to be in your lifeboat and ultimately concern if everybody on this earth has an equivalent right to an equal share in its resources (Hardin 1).
Well, if you were not questioning about that, Garrett Hardin was.
In his essay "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor", Hardin compares the condition of rich countries to that of a lifeboat. Hardin's essence is that rich nations must not use any kind of assistance or assistance to people in poor nations due to the fact that the result in doing so would be a catastrophe.
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“ Ok, let me say I’m extremely satisfy with the result while it was a last minute thing. I really enjoy the effort put in. ”
Although Hardin's ideas properly specify the problems of over-population and supporting the poor, he stops working to safeguard his logic by not mentioning a satisfying compromise between the 2 extremes of offering all of our resources to the bad and not helping the poor at all.
He uses a lifeboat example to reveal the segregation to show the segregation of the abundant people in the boat and the poor individuals swimming in the surrounding water. Natural impulse is to take in as many poor people as possible even if the raft does not have space, however Hardin argues that the
result would be a sinking raft and a disaster.
There would be no positive result. If rich individuals pull bad individuals in the raft, the raft would then lose its "safety aspect". In the end, there would be no positive outcome in helping the swimmers and the outcome would be "complete justice, complete catastrophe" (Hardin 1).
“In a crowded world of less than perfect human beings, mutual ruin is inevitable if there are no controls. This is the tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 3). The tragedy of the commons is a perfect example as to why there is no advantage in helping the poor. A person’s property or possession is well taken care of because it is his or her own responsibility. But if it is available for everyone it would not be taken care of as much. Hardin uses air and water as examples of commons that have been taken advantage of. Since air and water are both treated as commons, they have become polluted and therefore endanger everyone.
Another negative product of helping the poor is that they will never learn from their mistakes. Since poor countries know that the wealthy countries will be there to help and give them aide when needed, they will never learn to save themselves and prepare for future disasters. Why would they? No one would go out of their way to get something if they knew it would be handed to them when needed.
“But they can learn from experience. They may mend their ways, and learn to budget for infrequent but certain emergencies” (Hardin 4). Hardin does not give a neutral idea to this problem. He basically states, either we give the poor everything or we give them nothing at all. This problem could easily be solved by limiting how much we give other countries in their times of need. If they are aware that they will only get x-amount of supplies from us, they will be more likely to stock necessities and other resources.
Hardin’s argument is whether we should help poor countries and have them forever depend on us, or not help them and let them learn their lesson in the hopes that it will benefit them in the future. It is understandable that we should help them because we are a rich nation and should not be greedy with our wealth, but people are naturally careless and selfish when tragedy strikes. When people receive aide, they end up depending on it as long as they can. So the answer to the question asked earlier is no, not everyone is entitled to a fair share of resources. “For the foreseeable future, our survival demands that we govern our action by the ethics of a lifeboat, harsh as though they may be. Posterity will be satisfied with nothing less” (Hardin 8).
Survival of the Fittest: Reflections on Life's Inequalities. (2016, Dec 25). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/lifeboat-ethics-essay
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