Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor
In 1974, Garrett Hardin published a paper to make a case against helping the poor. Hardin’s arguments are compelling. This paper will show that many of the main moral approaches to global ethics concerning poverty and famine relief are conflicting, inadequate, and not able to withstand Hardin’s main argument. This paper will look at the arguments of Singer, O’Neill, and Pogge and show how none of these approach are viable as a global ethical basis for a solution to combat famine relief and poverty. Furthermore, it will show that Hardin’s own solution is not a viable option either. It is not within the scope of this paper to offer a solution, but to show that our current leading moral theoretical approaches are inadequate to deal poverty and hunger on a global scale and that a new moral approach is needed. …show more content…
The rich nations of the world, according to Hardin, should be compared to lifeboats full of relatively rich people and that the oceans surrounding these lifeboats are filled with poor swimming in it. These poor would all like to enter the lifeboats, but how do the people on board proceed? Before answering this question one must consider the state of the lifeboat: its capacity is limited, a nation’s land (and the Earth for that matter) has a limit in relation to the total population it can sustain. Hardin relates this to the energy and food
Rhetorical Analysis Of Lifeboat Ethics By Garrett Hardin
1241 Words | 5 PagesHardin wants his audience to see his rationale, which forms the basis of his argument behind not helping the poor. It is impossible for the reader to draw the line as well as pick and choose between who he or she wants to save or let drown. This goes back to reinforce Hardin’s argument because affluent nations cannot simply select one impoverished nation they want to support and ignore all over nations facing the same economic instability. Instead, they must provide consistent aid to every nation; however, doing so is financially taxing, taking a toll on their own economic
Rhetorical Analysis Of Lifeboat Ethics By Garrett Hardin
303 Words | 2 PagesFrom a young age were taught that everyone needs help and that we should always try to help others. We tended to want to do our part no matter how small to help others but is that always a good thing by helping are we really helping or just creating future problems? In “Lifeboat Ethics” by Garrett Hardin, Hardin tries to reason with those people who always want to help he explains why foreign aid is not beneficial for any party involved. The author uses pathos appeal to address the audience’s values, beliefs, and assumptions about foreign aid. He understands that most of his audiences believe that if they can help then they should.
Famine Affluence And Morality Analysis
1790 Words | 8 PagesQuestion 2 Peter Singer in his paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” described a principle I know as “Singers Cardinal Principle.” The principle reads “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable more importance, we ought, morally to do it.” Singer is saying that if one person has a opportunity to prevent something wrong form occurring without that persons action ending up causing the same or worst results to happen, then that person is morally obligated to do such action. In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” Singer argues that people who are from wealthy countries should change the way they live to living committed to helping those people in need.
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729 Words | 3 PagesBy challenging common assumptions and being ethical he effectively claims that the solution to solving these global hunger problems is foreign assistance. Paarlberg shows Pathos, Ethos and Logos through the thought of unravelling worldwide starvation by being realistic of the view on pre-industrial food and farming. Pathos is clearly evident in Paarlberg’s article through the presentation of the food insecurity problem in Africa and Asia. He uses impassioned words as an attempt to reach out to his target audience on a more emotional level by agitating and drawing sympathy of whole food shoppers and policy makers. Paarlberg employs Pathos during the article when he says, “The majority of truly undernourished people -- 62 percent, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization -- live in either Africa or South Asia, and most are small farmers or rural landless laborers living in the countryside of Africa and South Asia” (page 611-12).
Peter Singer's Argument In Famine, Affluence And Morality
3128 Words | 13 Pages(Singer, 1972, p. 235) This could end up with humanity missing out on revolutionary improvements in human knowledge and impede the betterment of civilisation. However, this does not imply that people are morally permitted not to contribute to famine relief, and does not imply that people are only obligated to
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1292 Words | 6 PagesMoney: the root of most social problems and one of the few matters that almost everyone has an opinion on. Peter Singer’s “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” a newspaper article, is no exception. Singer argues that one should donate all unnecessary money to the less fortunate because of the morality of the situation. However, though the goal is noble, his commentary is very ineffective due to its condescending tone, lack of hard facts, and overall extremism. The piece is written by Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University.
Similarities Between Hardin And Walter Benjamin's Lifeboat Ethics
384 Words | 2 PagesGarret Hardin and Walter Benjamin wrote essays called “Lifeboat Ethics” and “Challenge to the Eco-Doomsters. Both authers present different points of view when it comes to immigration, foriegn aid, and population. Hardin is opposed to immigration and compares the United States to a lifeboat that can only hold so many people before it sinks. He belives if we keep letting people in to the country we will overcrowded and everyone who is already here will be effected. He says the country is a “commons”, and can hold only so many people.
Essay On Poverty In Canada
1580 Words | 7 PagesThe poor are not responsible for hungry lives, without water and electricity. There are deep inequalities and fundamental deficiencies of social organization. The problem of hunger is not only a question of food production (the bigger, the better) but also of access to food and equity. There are no winners and losers. With these degrees of exclusion, we 're all losers.
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Lifeboat Ethics Rhetorical Analysis
1211 Words | 5 PagesHardine declared the metaphor “spaceship” can be dangerous when used by misguided idealists, sharing our resources with uncontrolled immigration and foreign aid would consider to be the ethics of a lifeboat. He gave a logical reasoning about if we help all the swimmer to get on the boat, the boat will drown and we all die. Also “when we let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our “safety factor”, this is true, if we don’t leave space for safety factor, even us can face some catastrophic consequences. He said “since the world’s resources are dwindling , the difference in prosperity between the rich and the poor can only increase”, the poor nations reproductive rate is a lot greater than the rich, and so helping the poor probably will lead to more poor people. In “the tragedy of commons” , he concluded “only the replacement of the system of the commons with a responsible system of control will save the land, air, water and ocean fisheries” which an accurate statement for “commons” can be diminish overtime if no one take the responsibility to care for it.
Garrett Hardin Lifeboat Ethics Analysis
755 Words | 4 PagesNevertheless, Hardin does not succeed in persuading the readers of his viewpoints, as Hardin fails to provide enough evidence to support his controversial arguments. In the article, Hardin discusses the principles behind supporting poor countries and how it can substantially hinder the growth and prosperity of the rich countries. Initially, the author provides two metaphors, the widely accepted spaceship metaphor and his own lifeboat metaphor, explicating why his lifeboat metaphor is more realistic. After that, the author elucidates to his audience how the rate of population growth in poorer countries is much greater than the rate of growth of rich countries, and how with the
Persuasive Speech On World Hunger
1046 Words | 5 PagesMany people don’t get the chance to survive and live to have a horrible death. Many people here in the U.S. don’t think that survival is important in other countries. I believe that in order to have a better world, everyone needs to survive and that means ending world hunger. Do you know when your next meal could be the last? Eight hundred fifteen million people don’t have the food they need because they have no job, natural disaster has struck them or they live in very poor spots of the world.
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