The Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor

If someone had the chance to save one person or five, which would they choose? Dependent on who that person is, what their assets are, and the nature of the person, most people would choose to save the larger majority people. In September, of 1974, Garrett Hardin published in the magazine Psychology Today, “The Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor.” In this essay, he used a metaphor of a lifeboat to compare first and third world countries and their duty to help other countries. For the most part his metaphor was successful in explaining that countries have finite resources therefore the space is limited on lifeboat and who's in control of what decisions and rules are made on the lifeboat. The point that Hardin miscalculates is that using our resources to help others we’ll die is not true. The lifeboat metaphor is applicable to countries in the world. Additionally, the number of lifeboats and the passengers they hold is the scenario that Hardin made up to emphasize his point. There are 50 people stranded on a boat; however, there are 100 other people swimming in the water, begging to be saved. The boat is only meant to hold 60 people. If the people on the boat let all 100 …show more content…
This puts a story into real life. The passage states that, “The people inside the lifeboats are doubling in numbers every 87 years; those swimming around the outside are doubling, on the average, every 35 years, more than twice as fast as the rich” (Hardin 291). Since there is no research supporting Hardin’s notion, this cannot be proven. Also from the passage, Hardin states, “The boat swamps and everyone drowns” (Hardin 291). To disagree with this statement, this is not necessarily what happens, countries do not just die because their country is overflowing of people. Some people will live and some will die. If there is valuable resources in the country, the people there will most likely stay