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Lifeboat Ethics

In Hardin’s Lifeboat Ethics he argues for a very harsh thesis. He claims that we should not offer any kind of assistance or support to people in poor countries because the outcome of doing so would simply be catastrophic. He uses a lifeboat example to show the segregation of the rich people in the lifeboat and the poor ones swimming in the water outside. Say fifty people occupy a lifeboat, which has room for ten more, but suppose there are a hundred others swimming outside begging for admission to the lifeboat. Hardin says that if we choose to be generous and take them all into the boat, making a total of one-hundred fifty in a boat designed for sixty, then the boat would be overloaded and everyone would drown. No positive result. The other solution is that we only let ten people in. But which ten do we choose? And is it really safe to let more people in? If we do let the other ten in the lifeboat, we would have lost our “safety factor.” So in the end, there really is no ...

Posted by: Margaret Rowden

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