Distilled Boat Case Study

1. Nell proposes a lifeboat an analogy: Six survivors on a boat could be in two situations, a well-equipped boat that is able to support the six survivors, or an under-equipped boat that could not support the survival of all six people. On the well-equipped boat, killings cannot be justified as unavoidable and could only be self-defence for special cases. Nell explains this in the analogy, “If person A threatens to discard the distilled water, and when person B fails to reason with A, person B shoots him with the justification, “It was him or me!”. In this case, it is justified whether person A was acting to harm others. In another situation on the well-equipped lifeboat, if the 5 other people decided to withhold food from Person A, the killing is unjustifiable as all could have lived.” (Nell, 276)

Nell’s underequipped boat analogy portrays that some death is unavoidable however, it must be justified. Nell presents a scenario of an under-equipped boat with 6 people that can only

Economic activities of some persons’ result in the deaths of other persons, also know as commodity pricing case, is an actual lifeboat example. The Earth, our lifeboat where some have the riches and others are left with droughts, famine, and poverty. The developing countries depend greatly on the prices of their raw material industry. However, when this prices drop, these countries have to face many calamities. Power, politics, alliances, globalization are few of the reasons for which world pricing is altered causing deaths of some people. “Investors, brokers, government agencies, etc., are choosing policies that will kill some people.” (Nell, 285) These deaths are not instantaneous, nor do the killers even know who exactly are the victims of the changes made by