Garrett Hardin: Lifeboat Ethics

Garrett Hardin argues for a very harsh thesis: we simply should not provide aid to people in poor countries. His argument is consequentialist: he claims that the net result of doing so would be negative -- would in fact be courting large-scale disaster. One of the things that we will notice about Hardin's essay, however, is that whether he is right or wrong, he paints with a very broad brush. This makes it a good essay for the honing of your philosophical skills; you should notice that there are many places where the reasoning procees with less than total care.

Hardin begins with metaphors. He points out that while the metaphor of earth as a grand spaceship has a certain popularity (or did 23 years ago) it is a flawed metaphor nonetheless. A spaceship has a captain, and couldn't survive without one. The earth has nothng vaguely resembling a captain, the United Natins in particular being a "toothless tiger."

Whatever we may make of the metaphor, we shold note what it was meant to support. By Hardin's own account, it was a way of bolstering the following proposition:

...no single person or instituion has the right to destroy, waste or use more than a fair share of its resources.

The correctness of this view would hardly seem to depend on whether the earth has a captain. But Hardin's reply would no doubt be that if we ae in a situation in which allowing everyone a "fair share" will lead to disaster, then this seemingly innocuous moral principle is dangerous.

In any case, Hardin prefers a different metaphor. Rich nations can be seen as lifeboats. The seas around them are filled with poor people who would like to get in the lifeboat or at least get a shae of the walth. Should we let them in?

Hardin fills out the metaphor. Suppose that our lifeboat has a capacity of 60 people and that there are now 50 people on board. Suppose there are 100 people in the water. If we take them all on board, we get "complete justice, complete disaster," in Hardin's phrase; we all drown together. We might let 10 aborard, but how do we choose? And what about the need for a safety factor? Aren't we irresponsible if we don't plan ahead for possible emergencies by leaving ourselves some excess capacity? (Recall that in this metaphor, capacity includes things like supplies.)

It should be obvious that this is a dubious metaphor. To begin with (and this will come up again) not all countries are either rich or poor. Furthermore, it is not as clear as Hardin assumes that we lack the resources to save everyone. And the argument from the safety factor may seem dubious. Couldn't we help some people -- even if we select them in a fairly arbitrary way?

Leave the safety factor aside. Presumably it is true that we should not give all our "excess" resources away; not planning for emergencies is irresponsible. The main reply that Hardin would make to our doubts is this: even if we have enough resources to help everyone in the short run, we don't have nearly enough to do so in the long run.

Why not? Because of the difference in rates of population growth between rich and poor nations. Suppose that in 1974, the U.S. had decided to share its wealth with a group of countries such as Columbia, Venezuala and Pakistan. Suppose that the combined population of the poor countries equaled the total (1974) populationof the U.S.: about 210 million. The populaiton in the U.S. increass at a rate of about .8% per year; the population of those countries increases at a rate of about 3.3% per year. By 2061 -- 87 years later -- the population of the U.S. would have doubled to 420 million. The combined population of the poor countries in the pool would be 354 billion. This is simply unsustainable; our sharing would lead to catastrophe for all of us.

This is the consequence that Hardin believes would follow from following the sharing ethic inherent in the "spaceship earth" metaphor. And he sees it as an example of a more general phenomenon that he labels "The Tragedy of the Commons." A commons is a public resource, open for all to share. The air is such a resource at present. To a lesser extent, water is as well, though the examle would have to be sharply qualified. The model Hardin offers is a public grazing space. If the space is a comons, there is a real danger that not everyone will use the resource with restraint and consideration for others. Adn, Hardin claims, "it takes