Garrett Hardin Lifeboat Ethics Summary

In Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”, Hardin argues about “a world that must solve real and pressing problems of overpopulation, hunger and moral duty.” Hardin sets the stage by first giving his analysis on the structure of the world today by describing the earth as a lifeboat rather than a spaceship. He then dives into how population control, the tragedy of the commons and immigration are some of the main reasons for the problems we have today. Hardin argues that simply helping people and giving charitably will not solve these problems. Peter Singer, in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” seemingly goes against Hardin by saying that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby …show more content…
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. Help a few people, guilt and the constant need to guard against people boarding arises. This problem of who gets help and who doesn’t get help leads to the need of population control. Maybe there are just too many …show more content…
Instead he’s advocating that more can be done to help people in poorer countries. He gives an example of how a lot more money is spent of questionable things such as the Anglo-French Concorde project which was projected to cost £440,000,000, while Britain to that date, had only given £14,750,000 to the East Bengal refugees. In addition, Hardin’s argument doesn’t prove that Singer is wrong because Singer accepts that giving and helping is important but controlling population growth is important as well. Singer says that “I accept that the earth cannot support indefinitely a population rising at the present rate… The conclusion that should be drawn is that the best means of preventing famine, in the long run, is population control”. This shows that Singer and Hardin agree on a few