Essays on Lifeboat

At least 9 million people die because of hunger and malnutrition, sadly 5 million are children. In a world of plenty, a huge number go hungry. The biggest percentage of the people who go hungry live in the developing countries. Three-quarters of all the hungry people in the developing countries live in rural areas, mostly in the villages of Africa and Asia. Despite this worrying trend, food wastage in the developed countries is very high. For instance, in the United Kingdom, close 40% of food is never eaten, in U.S., 40-50% of all food ready to harvest is never ...

Nowadays the problem of poverty and limited resources becomes more and more urgent. The famous Hardin’s essay, “Lifeboat ethics” covers different aspects of this issue and gives strong but often disputable arguments against helping the poor in the worldwide, international sense. The fact that Earth’s resources are limited is undisputable, and Hardin’s metaphor comparing nations of people to lifeboats floating in the limited space of resources seems very neat. In this situation different ethical and moral problems come into play. The main ethical issue in current situation is helping the poor with the limited helping capacity and ...

Seven Questions Answered

1. Garret Hardin uses the metaphor lifeboat to show the diversity that exists in the world today. He uses it to differentiate between the rich and the poor whereby the rich nations are the lifeboats and the poor nations swim around them. Lifeboat ethics differ from spaceship ethics in that lifeboat uses the notion that some nations are superior to others while in a spaceship everyone has equal shares to the resources. 2. Hardin argues that all the floaters are brothers and one cannot discriminate and choose who to help. They also have similar needs, which make it more ...