Analyzing Hardin's Lifeboat Metaphor for Wealth Disparity

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To Save or Not to Save Garrett Hardin presents several ideals on saving the poor through the lifeboat metaphor although he fails to explain himself through a few of the ideas. The lifeboat metaphor states that there are fifty people in a lifeboat and there is room for ten others. Those in the lifeboat are rich, those in the water are the poor. Which ethics are they going to use to save those in the water? The world is divided into two sections: the rich and the poor. Garrett Hardin uses the Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor to illustrate whether the poor should be saved by the rich or not. Throughout the Lifeboat Ethics he describes the situation. Ten people could possibly be saved by those fifty on the boat. All one hundred could be saved and the lifeboat would sink due to the capacity then both rich and poor would be in the ocean. Meanwhile the question is, who to save and who to leave behind. There …show more content…

Four scenarios he used throughout the essay are: the Christian and Marxist ideals, “Our brothers” and “Get out and yield your place to other” sayings. These were strengths because he listed several ways on how to save those people by using logic and not just choose. If there were Christians on the boat they would feel compelled to help the others, because they see everyone as equal regardless if they were inside or out the boat. Those that live by the “get out and yield your place to others” phrase would feel bad because they are safe and the others are not. They are willing to just automatically give up their spot. Some may see the poor as all the same and just have one need in common, that is, to get onto the lifeboat. The logical people on the boat will try to save those whose skills would be necessary to them overall. Throughout the essay he explains these scenarios on why and why they should not use

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