preview

Living On A Lifeboat

Decent Essays

In his article Living on a lifeboat, Garret Hardin describes the problems with overpopulation, poor countries and gives a couple arguments of how, in his vision, people should deal with that. He starts by describing different nations as different lifeboats, each of them having a limit of how many people it can fit. Then he brings up a question stating, “The 50 of us in the lifeboat see a 100 others swimming in the water outside, asking for admission to the boat, or for handouts. How shall we respond to their calls?” In the response to the question, Garret gives three possible actions and one of them consists in not accepting anybody on the lifeboat and his other, more specific to problems arguments are derived from this action. In one of his arguments, Garrett argues against world food banks and foreign food aid. He is unhappy with the fact that a lot of money that came from tax payers was spent on helping others with investing into world food banks. He also states, “They should be able to learn from experience. They have a chance to mend their ways and learn to budget for infrequent but certain emergencies.” By they he means poor countries, and his words look indifferent. Garret tries to say that if a nation is poor, it should be left by itself so people learn their lessons and not wait for help from others. The problem here is not in the nations that don’t care …show more content…

Food is one of the most important things that are

Get Access