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Garrett hardin's lifeboat ethics
Garrett hardin's lifeboat ethics
Garrett hardin's lifeboat ethics
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In Garrett Hardin’s “ Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor,” Hardin argues that we should not aid the poor because there is only a limited amount of resources available, and it can become a threat to everyone if the population growth of the poor keeps increasing and if our limited resources keep decreasing. Hardin cleverly uses a lifeboat metaphor to set up his argument by putting the reader into a life or death situation. He places the rich people inside of the boat which only has a limited amount of space and the poor are placed outside of the lifeboat stranded in the water. Hardin convinces readers that the only way for survival is if the rich let the poor suffer. However, in Alan Durning’s “Asking How Much Is Enough,” Durning states that the real reason why our resources keep dwindling is because the rich are carelessly over consuming them. Unlike Hardin, Durning includes three world classes the rich, the middle, and the poor. Durning brings in the middle class which gives the reader a more realistic picture to realize that the overconsumption of the rich is just making the poor, poorer. Hardin fails to even mention the middle class or overconsumption because he only wants the reader to focus on the overpopulation of the poor. Durning exposes Hardin’s rhetoric by stating that the rich are the ones who are carelessly over consuming their own resources and how Hardin falsely demonizes the poor by making it easier to blame them for abusing our limited resources.
In Hardin’s lifeboat metaphor there are 50 rich people inside a lifeboat with a total capacity of 60 people and 100 poor people swimming in the water which represents rich nations versus poor nations (508). Hardin says, suppose, if we ignore the limited cap...
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...t’s simply just thin air. The real problem is that the rich are much more wasteful and they will never be satisfied because their wants are limitless and that’s why “there is no such thing as enough” (408). Hardin believe that one space for the rich is equal to one space for the poor but in Durning’s argument of overconsumption he makes one realize that the rich overconsume much more than the poor. Americans will constantly keep overconsuming for their own selfish desires. However, the poor just want a small portion of what the rich have because they want a minimal amount to just survive. The poor have to “slash and burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America” to find resources for them to get by another day (405). Clearly Americans are the ones constantly wasting their limited resources and watching others in need suffer so ultimately they are the threat.
Later in the essay, Hardin writes about the differences in the population growth between rich and poor nations. Poor nations multiply much more quickly than richer nations. The essay then goes on to explain what the consequences would be of setting of a national food bank. It explains that only the rich nations would be able to contribute to the food bank and the poor nations would only draw. This would only add to the problem of the poor nations as they would have no desire to save of food for themselves since they know they will be taken care of anyways. Giving poor nations food would be bad a...
In other words, Singer believes that unless you can find something wrong with the following argument, you will have to drastically change your lifestyle and how you spend your money. Although some people might believe that his conclusion is too radical, Singer insists that it is the logical result of his argument. In sum, his view is that all affluent people should give much more to famine relief. While I agree with Singer’s argument in principle, I have a problem with his conclusion. In my view, the conclusion that Singer espouses is underdeveloped.
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
“If only there was a way to end world hunger.” Is that not a plea that has been the base creed of a legion of organizations determined to help the famished and impoverished? As Jonathon Swift has said in his Gulliver’s Travels, “Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and Pride and Hunger will ever be at variance” (2602). Swift criticizes this reality in Gulliver’s Travels just as he does in his essay, “A Modest Proposal”; however, unlike in Gulliver’s Travels, the speaker in the “Proposal” offers a not-so-modest solution to the issue of hunger in Ireland: cannibalism. The speaker in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” develops a firm argument using Aristotle’s various modes of persuasion – logos, mostly, but ethos and pathos as well – to the fullest by utilizing convincing tone, specific diction, and frequent statistics that weave a certain irony to effectively criticize the faults of both the wealthy elite and the poverty-stricken Irish.
Peter Singer's paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”has made a drastic impact in modern applied ethics. The simple nature of the paper makes for an easy read, yet the point clearly set out by Singer is at ends with the targeted audiences' popular beliefs. Although most will object to Singer's idea by throwing away a basic principle of most moral theories, I wish to deny Singer's solution by showing that the ability to apply Singer's conclusion is not reasonable and does not address the problem's core.
...th what little they have, however; why is it left to the poor to have to suffer the consequences of these political choices. The persistence of extreme poverty and social ills speak to a situation that bears for a different approach. It is clear that capitalism and free market solutions cannot spread wealth as advocated. American governments have shown their reluctance to admit this discrepancy through the strategic creations of welfare policies and welfare reform coupled with placing blame upon the citizens who possess little power to change market decisions that govern and effect their lives.
In the essay “Spare Change”, the author, Teresa Zsuaffa, illustrates how the wealthy don’t treat people facing poverty with kindness and generosity, but in turn pass demeaning glares and degrading gestures, when not busy avoiding eye contact. She does so by writing an emotional experience, using imagery and personification whenever possible to get to the reader’s heart. Quite similarly, Nick Saul writes, in the essay “The Hunger Game”, about how the wealthy and people of social and political power such as “[the community’s] elected representatives” (Saul, 2013, p. 357) leave the problem of hunger on the shoulders of the foodbanks because they believe “feeding the hungry is already checked off [the government’s] collective to-do list” (Saul,
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich” (Kennedy 463). He describes the consequences of being selfish by explaining that focusing on one group will not bring success in the U.S but bring it down. There are many who are poor and suffering, but a few who are
Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Current Issues and Enduring Questions. 8th ed. Eds. Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 7-15. Print.
After reading Alan Durning’s argument, you see that Durning exposes Hardin’s rhetoric by using three classification levels. Alan Durning uses the lower class, middle class, and upper class which shows that he does indeed have a middle ground argument. While Garrett Hardin leaves out the middle class in his argument, Durning tells us that, “Their vehicles are directly responsible for an estimated thirteen percent of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels worldwide (408).” The multiple vehicles owned by the middle class are a major part of the problem. In Alan Durning’s argument there are a total of five billion people in the three classification levels, “one billion live in unprecedented luxury”, “one billion live in destitution” (404), and there are three billion in the “massive middle class of the world” (408). In Garrett Hardin’s argument he blames everything on everyone except the Americans. On the other hand, Durning points out that the Americans are the cause of the destruction. While Garrett Hardin tries to make the rich feel like the poor are dangerous, Durning on the other hand states that, “The world’s 1 billion meat eaters, car drivers, and throwaway consumers are responsible for the lion’s share of the damage humans have caused to common global resources (406).” Alan Durning goes against Hardin, he says that the rich need to slow down and stop
As stated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, “the test of our progression is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Many people may agree with this statement considering that the United States is such a wealthy country and in 2012, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in the United States and 15% of all Americans and 21.8% of children under age eighteen were in poverty.The honest truth is that many people do not know the conditions this group of people must live in on a daily basis because of the small number of people who realize the struggle there is not a great amount of service. In the article Too stressed for Success, the author Kevin Clarke asks the question “What is the cost of being poor in America?” and follows the question by explaining the great deals of problems the community of poverty goes through daily by saying, “Researchers have long known that because of a broad reduction in retail and other consumer choices experienced by America's poor, it is often simply more expensive to be poor in the United States.
Well known and famous author, Jonathan Swift, in his persuasive essay, A Modest Proposal, convincing people that there needs to be a new way to help out the population problem while helping out the hunger problem as well. Swift’s purpose of this essay is to show people another way to make the population go down but really he’s trying to grab their attention then inform them of his real idea. He adopts an aggressive tone in order to convey his audience which is the people of Ireland.
The world naturally corrects the over-population problems with famine and disease and Americans make any effort they can to stop the suffering. The “guilt factor” represented in scenario four of the lifeboat ethics directly relates to this. We feel bad the poor and homeless can’t protect themselves from these disasters so Americans do anything to save them. We save those who would’ve otherwise died in the crisis. We increase the population of an environment without expanding, causing more crisis. Inevitably, more people end up dying due to starvation or malnutrition. Thus, the never-ending cycle of the rich saving the poor continues. If other countries keep intervening by delivering food and aid to nations when they are in trouble, they end up making the next crisis even more
Garrett Hardin developed the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons. The basic concept is a giant pasture that is for everyone to have a piece of land and for the herdsman to have as many cattle a possible to sustain the land. This land should be able to maintain itself for quite a long time because of cattle dying as well as the population staying relatively stable. But at some point the population will begin growing and the herdsman will want to maximize their profits by having more cattle, which in return the land cannot sustain. The herdsman receives all the profit from adding one more animal to the pasture so the herdsman will eventually begin adding more cattle, but the overgrazing caused by that added animal will destroy the land making it uninhabitable for everyone. Thus you have the tragedy of the commons. For all the herdsman on the common, it is the only rational decision to make, adding another animal. This is the tragedy. Each man is compelled to add an infinite number of cattle to increase his profits, but in a world with limited resources it is impossible to continually grow. When resources are held "in common" with many people having access and ownership to it, then a rational person will increase their exploitation of it because the individual is receiving all the benefit, while everyone is sharing the costs.
Pogge, Thomas Winfried Menko, and Keith Horton. "Famine, Affluence and Poverty." In Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2008. 1-14.