Lifeboat Ethics

Metaphorically, each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean, swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in. First, we must recognize the limited capacity of any lifeboat.
-Garret Hardin

Everything in this world has its own limits. What Hardin is trying to say is that “the boat” has a limited capacity and not everyone can be offered help. Those unfortunate people who can’t get in the boat are the poor ones who aren’t given much priority. In our world today, there’s really no such thing as equality between the rich and the poor. The rich receives the best and the poor gets what’s left.

In Hardin’s case against the poor, he discusses that it is hard to save and help all the poor. The rich countries easily develop because there are less number of poor people to help while the developing countries are having a hard time keeping up with the fast pace of the developing world because of the huge number of poor people they have to consider helping in order to improve the nation and its people.

In relation to Garret Hardin’s Lifeboat Ethics, I remember the movie 2012, a movie wherein it shows that the world is near its end and the earth undergoes a lot of destructions coming from natural calamities like tsunamis and many more. Everyone wants to survive the tragedy and runs for their lives but they have nowhere else to go since the water in the oceans are increasing rapidly towards the people and soon the whole world will be filled with water and no human would survive having no land to stay in to. To make the long story short, the rich and influential people like the President, Prime Ministers and other powerful people were undoubtedly safe because they knew beforehand that this time would come and they have prepared for this by buying shares worth billions of money just so that they and their families would be safe from the destruction brought about by the end of the world. But for the common people, they couldn’t afford such amount of money. The ship has only a limited capacity but can still accommodate a huge number of people but still the rich people inside the ship won’t allow these people to enter because they couldn’t pay the same amount they’ve paid and are also afraid that they would run out of food supplies. Because of the limited space of the ship, the people are fighting for a chance to be in a ship to survive. But reality tells us that only the rich and the powerful can afford it. But the story ended with the few survivors, rich or poor, together after the tragedy.

The Lifeboat Ethics of Hardin and the movie 2012 both describes to us that in the real world, whether we like it or not, the rich would have the privileges and the poor would have no choice but to try their best to survive. While the lower class people fights for survival, the upper class people enjoys the luxury of life. The Lifeboat Ethics is similar those rich nations who are hesitant in helping the Third World countries.