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Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor Analysis

1244 Words5 Pages

Some of the main issues facing the world today are the issues of poverty, the poor, and overpopulation. As each year goes by, it becomes awfully clear that these issues are problems that must be dealt with. While many want to address and solve these issues, there tends to be a divide on how to do so. A great example of this division is how the issue is presented in these two essays – Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” and Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor.” While both essays are well written and make their points, they support differing sides of the issue; Stinger’s essay states that we have a moral obligation to aid the poor opposed to Hardin’s essay arguing for the case against helping the poor. Even though both writers made very good points, I think that we do indeed have a moral obligation to help the poor. While reading through Hardin’s essay he failed to convince me otherwise. His essay starts by describing two different metaphors. First, he talks about the spaceship ethic, which is where we should share resources, and then the lifeboat ethic, which is where we should not …show more content…

I do not believe it is right to turn your back to someone that could use your help. An example supporting my view on this is Stinger’s shallow pond” analogy, an I illustration involving a small child drowning in a shallow pond, you should wade in and save them, even if it sacrifices something small like your clothing getting wet and muddy. As Singer states, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing something of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (392). While your clothes getting muddy is a down fall, the child losing his or her life would be ethically outrageous, so for that reason, the clothing should be sacrificed in order to save the life of the

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Summary Of The Singer Solution To World Poverty

676 Words | 3 Pages

In Singer’s essay, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” the author begins by presenting the reader with the heartfelt scenario of the cost of a child vs. the cost of a new TV. Singer discusses how child trafficking with the intent of organ harvesting is the equivalent of purchasing a brand-new TV because in both cases one can improve conditions for children around the world, either by saving their life or by donating money to help them. Next, Singer goes into the narrative of a man named Bob. Bob has his entire life savings put into a precious Bugatti. However, Bob must make the choice to save his car or to flip the lever and save a child stuck on the railroad tracks.

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Bell Hooks Seeing And Making Culture Representing The Poor Summary

1171 Words | 5 Pages

People in poverty are generally portrayed as worthless and this is because culture today illustrates a man’s worth from how materially successful they are. Hooks explains how this kind of representation of the poor can mentally and emotionally handicap and entire society of people in poverty. She goes into an example of how a

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1683 Words | 7 Pages

Farmer asserts that the people who died in Haiti without any form of effective therapy were exclusively “people who lived and died in poverty” (115). The author gives an example of Joseph who was an AIDS victim who narrates about his father’s attempt to get medication. The poor peasant sells all his belonging to pay the healer in a bid to save Joseph’s life (146). Paul Farmer seeks to enhance the living standards of the Haitian people with particular attention to making healthcare services available to the oppressed and vulnerable population of Haiti. He works in a diligent manner to fight for the needs of the poor people of Haiti by arguing against the huge gap between “this world” and the world of Haiti where there is an “accumulation of wealth in one part of the world and abject misery in another” (Kidder

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Analysis: The Singer Solution To World Poverty

794 Words | 4 Pages

According to the United Nations, a child dies of hunger every ten seconds. Likewise, millions of people live in poverty and do not know when they will eat again. While the typical American throws away leftover food, children are dying across the world from starvation. To put this into perspective: By the time you have started reading, a child has died of hunger. But who is to blame?

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263 Words | 2 Pages

In A Framework for Understanding Poverty, Ruby Payne try’s to explain the behaviors and barriers of three social classes: poverty, middle class, and wealth. Beyond the social class of poverty, it’s a breakdown of the elements of the classes and the ‘hidden rules’ each one has. She stresses that these hidden rules aren’t taught in businesses or schools, these of which function as the hidden rules of middle class. Payne states these hidden rules aren’t exactly natural, they’re learned, and as one grows up in a particular class those rules are set in place. She lists all the rules in each class, and the differences are striking.

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384 Words | 2 Pages

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Michael Harington's How I Discovered The Truth About Poverty

570 Words | 3 Pages

In the article “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty” Barbara Ehrenreich gives her view in poverty and explains why she think Michael Harington’s book “The Other American” gives a wrong view on poverty. She explained that Harrington believes that the poor thought and felt differently and what divides the poor was their different “culture of poverty.” Ehrenreich goes on to explain on how the book that became a best seller caused so many bad stereotypes on the poor that by the Reagan era poverty was seen as “bad attitudes” and “faulty lifestyles” and not by the lack of jobs or low paying jobs. And they also viewed the poor as “Dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification,” or possibly even set an alarm clock.”

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1292 Words | 6 Pages

Singer is no stranger to writing moral arguments, having written many different books and articles in the past on a wide range of ethical debates. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” originally printed in the New York Times in the fall of 1999 just before Singer began to work at Princeton University, is intended for the common man, a middle-class citizen who makes average wages and reads popular newspapers. As Singer is a professor of ethics, the article is structured around the

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1163 Words | 5 Pages

Ever thought about consuming a one-year-old baby with nice plump features? Most people will not consider such an immoral act; however, desperate times may force people to make difficult choices. This is the case in Dublin, Ireland in the late 1720’s. The attainment of human rights in the fullest sense cannot be achieved so long as hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken people lack the necessities of life. As a call to reform, Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal.”

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1170 Words | 5 Pages

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Peter Singer Solution To World Poverty Analysis

976 Words | 4 Pages

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The Singer Solution To World Poverty Analysis

1805 Words | 8 Pages

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3128 Words | 13 Pages

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550 Words | 3 Pages

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1211 Words | 5 Pages

In “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the poor” authored by Garrett Hardin, he had successfully used the three rhetorical tools in the

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