Garrett Hardin Life Ethics Analysis

Improved Essays
Poverty in the world is an unrecognized social predicament that exist everywhere from the largest cities to widest nations, but regardless for what reason being for those individuals who suffer in poverty. A fact well known that poverty will always be be a part of this world and will continue to grow. There will always be poor and rich individuals despite what measures are taken. With the condition of the world today, poverty is a concern that has become a much greater issue through the decades. Majority of the world's population who do not suffer in poverty would rather look away and ignore the fact that there are poor individuals and families who have fallen victim to a hostile lifestyle. In other terms it is a hoax .We personally do not experience what they see or what they do to survive. We are not forced to live in harsh conditions every single day or wonder where they obtain warm clothes, food, or a home to sleep in.
There should be no reason why we should be quick to judge or overlook someone, who is in need without knowing their story. maybe if we understood what the individuals who suffer in
…show more content…
Garrett Hardin in his article “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against helping the poor”, has taken the opposing side. Hardin claims that we already do to much to help the world's poor, as a result , they do not even help themselves. The concept of generosity and compassion can be a great act, but to the limitation where there has not have been a significant improvement is surely being taken for granted. Briefly said the lack of resources have decreased through the years trying to provide for the world's poor, but without the acknowledgement that a nation's resource is at stake. It is not possible to provide for all the world's poor if there's a limit to everything. To the extent if the human race wishes to continue to exist, everyone must fend for

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Life Boat Ethics Analysis

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages

    I read Life Boat Ethics: The Case against helping the poor. This happened to be one of my personal favorites of the essays I have read out of this book. The essay talks about how the world is growing so rapidly in some places and it has a lot different outlooks on the world compared to most things I have read. It talked about all the poor countries and poor people the world and that if they keep reproducing there will be so many people in this world that we will not be able to support all of them.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive,” quoted by Jack London in the story ‘The Call of the Wild.’ Garrett Hardin was an ecologist who alerted the risks of overpopulation and was so passionate about the topic that he wrote several essays and books on it. In the essay, “Lifeboat Ethics,” he discusses that people in rich countries should not help the people of poor countries, and we should not assist them with our resources. Hardin uses two metaphors to illustrate two ways of either helping the poor countries or not. One of the metaphors is the spaceship, which shows how if…

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are many protestations to Singer’s opinion that; we have moral obligations to contribute for the prevention of poverty. Such efforts to deny our moral obligation to the world’s poor originate from various ethical positions. Two of such objections are as follows: The first objection has consequential logic, however its conclusion is different. It states that by preventing poverty now, it may lead to more suffering in the future, so we should implement a triage policy - providing help according to the urgency of need of care - in order to lessen the usage of resources which inevitably will be need in the future (Campbell et al,…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In his essay “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor” (1974), Garrett Hardin argues that wealthy nations should not help impoverished countries. Hardin urges his audience not to share or give away natural resources to countries in need so that there can be plenty of resources in the future. Hardin explains how overpopulation due to immigration and reproduction will affect our natural resources. Hardin uses a serious tone with his audience in an attempt to persuade them not to be wasteful or generous with their natural resources. Garrett was an American ecologist and philosopher whose lifeboat metaphor makes people think of their future and their resources.…

    • 129 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Misconceptions Of Poverty

    • 207 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Many people have misconceptions of poverty which, are most of the time, are false. The misconceptions includes statements such as: people who are poor don't look hard enough for jobs, or they don't have enough education to find one. They also believe that race, gender, and many other factors don't impact the problem of poverty anymore, which is also false. Sticking with race- we cannot fix the problem unless we resolve the relation between poverty and race.…

    • 207 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover Should we help the poor? Individual nations are like lifeboats. Each with a distinct carrying capacity. If the number of passengers exceed this capacity, everyone drowns. In the story “Lifeboat Ethics” by Garrett Hardin, he believes the world would be better if we didn’t help the poor.…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Throughout the essay, Hardin relates overpopulation and tragedy of the commons to the Lifeboat analogy-thus Lifeboat ethics should be used. (Main Argument) Singer’s essay is trying to convince that everyone should reduce suffering by any means necessary. He puts a great emphasis on helping those who are distant from us. Singer links this case back to the analogy of the drowning child, he argues that if there are a lot of people surrounding the drawing child and no one is helping him out-…

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    As population numbers of every country is different, needed resources are also unequal. In our crowded world, there are many people who are living good lives while two thirds of the population are living a poor life. Through Lifeboat Ethics: the Case against Helping the Poor written by Garrett Hardin (1974) it explains how there are many dangers of overpopulation through the world. Hardin goes into detail about how overpopulation and having different population’s causes for an unequal resource need. Hardin’s article has many strengths and weakness to prove his point that there are many things wrong with overpopulation and what the world is trying to do to deal with these issues.…

    • 1332 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poverty Capstone Paper

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Introduction of Topic The basic definition that the dictionary provides for poverty is “the state of being extremely poor” (CITE). The effects of poverty can be felt in most, if not all, levels of society. In fact there are many leaders and politicians that focus a lot of their campaigns on finding a solution to poverty.…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Poverty in America is a real issue, and the way we portray it is all wrong. The essay "Changing the Face of Poverty" written by Diana George talks about the problems of how nonprofits misrepresent the face of poverty in America. Most organizations put out flyers and adds that make the needy look like there from the depression era with rags and dirt smudges covering their faces. This is not a true representation of what poverty looks like in America. Most people think that the poor are easy to point out because of what they have seen in advertisements.…

    • 1231 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It does, nevertheless, infer that a utilitarian objection to a utilitarian argument would present an essential and potentially dangerous threat to the argument's credibility. Perhaps the most serious challenge and criticism to the argument that we have a duty to aid the poor is that because the main reason of poverty is overpopulation. In addition, aiding those currently in poverty will only guarantee that yet more people are born to exist in poverty in the future. I believe this objection generates the foundation for a thought-provoking discussion. Those who approve and concur with the objection are prone to adopt a view supporting a triage policy for long-term poverty prevention.…

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A spaceship metaphor to describe earth would be that “no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources.” Hardin argues that the earth is not a spaceship because there is no “captain” for the earth or one controlling entity. Hardin describes the earth as being divided into rich countries and poor countries while rich countries are the on the lifeboat and poor countries are in the ocean struggling to survive and hoping to get on the lifeboat. Hardin asks the question, “How do you pick who gets on the boat”. If you let too many people onto the lifeboat, the resources might run out, diseases might spread, and the lifeboat sinks.…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Poverty is an issue that people face in every country of the world. Many people are living in poverty today and unable to live within the same standards as others members of their same society, simply due to differences in their financial capabilities. This is an issue for individuals, as well as an issue between countries, having some countries striving with wealth, while other countries struggle to feed and house their people. A social problem is defined as “a social condition or pattern of behavior that has negative consequences for individuals, our social world, or our physical world” (Guerrero, 2005. 4). This paper was written about the issue poverty because it is an important social problem that affects such a large number of Americans…

    • 1805 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On War On Poverty

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Poverty has become a crucial problem worldwide and has a great influence on economic development. Regardless if poverty is on a large or small scale, some strand of poverty is visible within many communities worldwide. More than likely, somewhere in the world, there is a young man who is homeless on the street, a single woman who cannot adequately supply for her family, an elderly woman who is sick and is not able to afford her medication, a young lady that has to settle for contaminated water to compensate for nourishment of her body, and people who are on the verge of total financial collapse. America, one of the wealthiest nations on earth with having a high inequality than other industrialized countries has struggled with inequality within income, power and education which resulted in the high intensity issue of poverty.…

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die from poverty each day: 270 million have no access to health care, and 121 million children are out of education worldwide. Poverty remains one of the most severe harms against humanity in society today. Today, the question is not why one of two children in the world remains in poverty while a plethora of people live luxurious lifestyles, as we know the reasons are lack of education, lack of health care, and lack of income equality, but rather how this detrimental problem can be mitigated. Poverty will never truly be eliminated.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays