Week 3.1

          Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor by Garrett Hardin. Hardin argues that the earth can only supply a finite number of resources rather than an infinite number of resources. He uses the example of World Food Banks and Immigration as evidence to support his argument.

          The argument that Hardin makes is true because he says that when a developed country helps an undeveloped country it causes more harm than good. He uses the analogy of a lifeboat to represent a developed country and when a lifeboat helps more people than it can hold, it causes more destruction than it should of. This is just like how it works for a developed country. For examples the World Food Banks are meant to help countries especially third world country in cause of a crisis. Hardin explains that if a country like the United States was to help a country like India during a time of need India would not learn how to fend for themselves. India would be banking on the World Food Bank to help them and they would not learn to prepare for a disastrous event and they would be dependent on outside resources rather than their own resources.

          The World Food Banks would also cause an increase in population. An increase in food causes an increase in population growth. If there is a shortage of food like a famine population tends to go down, so if a well industrialized country participates in the World Food Bank they are just causing more harm than good because they are creating more people to help and that would cause more food to be donated. This idea goes back to the lifeboat because when a lifeboat helps more people than it could hold it just caused more destruction. To back up the argument of more food causing more people to be born Hardin uses the statics to say that United States of America has a population increase at rate of 0.8 percent while a country like Thailand or Morocco has a population increase of 3.3 percent. In the end a country like the United States will not be able to keep up the all the country that need help because the population in Thailand or Morocco would be increasing faster than the United States of America. Many people who are for the Food Banks argue that we should help people in need because as Hardin puts it is the “Christian ideal of being  Our brother’s keeper”.

          With immigration Hardin states that many Americans are guilty of “bigotry “ because many say that immigrates should leave, but they forget that if someone is not Native American decent they are immigrants as well because immigrants took the land from Native Americans. He uses the chain reaction of since America is really Native America land the money that Americans make on land really belongs to Native Americans.

          In the End the Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor causes one to think if it is really necessary to help other countries than your own because one might be doing more harm than good.