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Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor

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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

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