Garrett Hardin Lifeboat Ethics
Rights to Help the Poor?
Some people have much more than they need to live while others barely have enough to survive. Very frequently, the “haves” possess no special virtues, or superpowers only a mere few posess; they are just simply lucky to have been born in relatively prosperous societies. Very frequently, the “have-nots” are desperate through no fault of their own — for example, victims of natural disasters such as famine, those born into third world countries , lower-income class families, and even those who fell victim to the crumbling economy. But what are the obligations, if any of the “haves” toward the “have-nots” in these cases?
As Americans, we have Constitutional Rights, and nowhere in these documents does it state we must …show more content…
Examining the title of Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor”, we could deduce the rich nations and or people are the lifeboats and the poor nations are the people adrift in the sea clamoring to get aboard. Each lifeboat has limited capacity. Complete generosity, justice and equality would equal complete catastrophe for all. Complete selfishness, unjust and discrimination would result in two outcomes: disaster for one group and survival for the other. As the World’s superpower, we should have the means to find a happy medium, and invoke it as regularly as possible.
Poor nations are having children at a rate far surpassing the rich ones. Statistically their population doubles every 21 years while rich nations’ doubles every 87 years. 88% of the World’s children are born poor, therefore if we let the poor on board and they keep reproducing at the same rate, our lifeboat will go down much faster.
The fundamental error of “spaceship ethics” is the “tragedy of the commons”. The world’s air and water are commons. The pollution of the air and water result in depletion of fish. The resulting tragedy is that everybody eventually dies: the responsible stewards as well as the irresponsible
Some people have much more than they need to live while others barely have enough to survive. Very frequently, the “haves” possess no special virtues, or superpowers only a mere few posess; they are just simply lucky to have been born in relatively prosperous societies. Very frequently, the “have-nots” are desperate through no fault of their own — for example, victims of natural disasters such as famine, those born into third world countries , lower-income class families, and even those who fell victim to the crumbling economy. But what are the obligations, if any of the “haves” toward the “have-nots” in these cases?
As Americans, we have Constitutional Rights, and nowhere in these documents does it state we must …show more content…
Examining the title of Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor”, we could deduce the rich nations and or people are the lifeboats and the poor nations are the people adrift in the sea clamoring to get aboard. Each lifeboat has limited capacity. Complete generosity, justice and equality would equal complete catastrophe for all. Complete selfishness, unjust and discrimination would result in two outcomes: disaster for one group and survival for the other. As the World’s superpower, we should have the means to find a happy medium, and invoke it as regularly as possible.
Poor nations are having children at a rate far surpassing the rich ones. Statistically their population doubles every 21 years while rich nations’ doubles every 87 years. 88% of the World’s children are born poor, therefore if we let the poor on board and they keep reproducing at the same rate, our lifeboat will go down much faster.
The fundamental error of “spaceship ethics” is the “tragedy of the commons”. The world’s air and water are commons. The pollution of the air and water result in depletion of fish. The resulting tragedy is that everybody eventually dies: the responsible stewards as well as the irresponsible