Analysis Of Lifeboat Ethics Garrett Hardin

In “Lifeboat Ethics: The case against helping the poor” by Garrett Hardin, the author points out many reasons for his main argument that rich nations should stop giving foreign aid to the poor nations that are in need. The well-developed nations, including the United States of America and other European countries are known for the aid they offer whenever a country is in need. However, Hardin claims that giving a foreign aid to other countries in need will be detrimental to the rich nations’ economies. He explains his claim using the “Lifeboat Metaphor” in which the rich nations represent the people on the boat. The poor, in contrast, are represented by the swimmers trying to climb on the boat. Hardin believes that taking in additional 10 people …show more content…
It is not accurate to say that the third world countries are always dependent on the rich nations. To say that “it is time to refuse to give aid in the form of food to needy countries that do not accept responsibility for limiting their population growth (Hardin 204)’’, is definitely unethical an contradicting as well to what he has studied while he was in school. One thing that very much makes his reader question his stance of aid is his ethics and humanitarian perspective. He explains in many occasions throughout the text that programs such as “food for peace program” (Hardin 205), will only do harm than benefit the countries eventually. Because of the failure of the food for peace program, Hardin assumes that the newly developed program called the World Food Bank, will also fail because of human greed and it will do no good but harm those who are in need. From an ethical perspective, even if it the Food for Peace program were to fail, the program should at least be tried. Hardin is very skeptical when it comes to foreign aid and he encourages the rich nations to stop helping those in need and basically this in his perspective teach them a lesson to control their population and get themselves out of the situation they are in. He claims that foreign aid is only going to hurt these nations and they have …show more content…
In the Christian Paradox by McKibben, he pointed out that “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (McKibben 272). Poverty is a cyclical and one of the cause is unexpected natural disasters. Nothing could be expected and so, like McKibben says, it is up to the rich to help those in need and the rich nations should help those in need because when and if one of the rich nations are stricken with some unexpected natural disaster and causes a damage to the people and the economy, then these rich nations would need and expect the other nations to help out with whatever they can. The poor nations are not poor because they wanted to but because they didn’t have the choice. Also most of the third world countries are poor because they were robbed off their resources by these rich nations. Hardin is very much unethical to say not to help others because it would cause the rich nations to