Comments on: Lifeboat Ethics

By: YMSP82

YMSP82 — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:34:46 +0000

The metaphor in Hardin, that is, is inapt. The world’s “carrying capacity” is not fixed, nations are not like boats, etc etc. Nielsen pretty much demolishes Hardin, I think. The essay is “Some Facts About Famine.”

By: YMSP82

YMSP82 — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:01:39 +0000

I think it’s Kai Neilsen that has a great response to that Hardin essay. It’s in the Mappes “Social Ethics” text that we used in the last Contemporary Moral Problems class I TA-ed for at UT. The whole metaphor is just inapt.

By: mon

mon — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 08:39:59 +0000

m: I read Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics” in the same vein as I read Swift’s “Modest Proposal.” Haha… seriously?? You didn’t notice a remarkable difference between the two? that is, aside from the difference in what and how and what field they wrote in? Or is it just because you’re American? :p

By: BP

BP — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 07:51:47 +0000

The biggest flaw with the entire article, is the underlying assumption that the acquisition and distribution of wealth is a zero-sum game. Hardin has literally less confidence in the effectiveness of the free market than Marx.

By: h. e. baber

h. e. baber — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 06:45:48 +0000

I used this piece when I taught “contemporary moral issues.” I recall that Hardin suggested that people would breed as long as there was a supply of food—like yeast cells that keep on multiplying as long as you keep dumping in sugar. Provide aid to poor countries (or individuals) and the population will just rachet up. A nice a priori argument. The interesting thing about this thesis is that it has knock-down empirical falsification. The most affluent countries have the lowest birth rates and, to everyone’s amazement, birth rates in developing countries have fallen as they become more affluent and women become educated. People aren’t yeast cells.

By: artclone

artclone — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 05:32:57 +0000

Why is the objection so popular that egalitarian or communist welfare distribution would fail because it is too hard to find or agree upon an adequate level of social and material goods to be provided? (for example, see josh jasper’s post above.) Seems it would be pretty easy for commitees to figure out nutritional requirements, allotments for leisure time, etc. Or minimum standards could be decided locally and democratically. Just to name a couple ways . . . .

By: m

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:29:29 +0000

I read Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics” (and had not read it before; thank you for the excerpt) in the same vein as I read Swift’s “Modest Proposal.” (e.g., http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/Courses/95c/Texts/modest.html) Something written in exasperation at an insoluble problem. But written without malice. Swift: “The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed.” Can’t you use them both as well-meant, though not claimed to be operable, attempts to find a solution, their point being that a solution is not to be found in one essay.

By: mon

mon — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:15:40 +0000

Thorley: actually, that did happen under the nazis – people willingly taking the place of others who were going to be sent off to concentration camps. Very rarely, obviously, and the cases I read about were mostly family members, but it did happen. So I don’t think Jon’s mention of the Holocaust survivors is that far off. It’s the essay itself making that connection between the lifeboat metaphor and survivor guilt, in a context where you have to choose who survives and who doesn’t. Seems intended to apply to all such situations, from natural disasters to genocide.

By: Douglass Carmichael

Douglass Carmichael — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:02:14 +0000

Most of us are probably familiar but few have read Garrett Hardin’s original paper http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html … Hardin revisited his own paper 25 years later, and summarized himself, with approval, http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_extension_tragedy_commons.html … What you can notice is that Hardin treated the farmers as if they were part of the modern culture , but they were not . They left in a pre commercial culture of cooperation were that I asked was using the land to grow the community . The commercial culture that replaced it, basically using the instrument of the law, which declared that everything had to be owned by somebody , took it as natural to use the land to grow crops or cattle for the market.

By: aps

aps — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 21:23:06 +0000

It seems that the arguments in the article could just as easily be used in a case against having and feeding children. My kids are ‘slovenly rulers’, freeloaders of the commons, and immigrants in a way. Why am I so irrational that I let them sit at the dinner table and eat? They should get their own damn lifeboat.

By: DJW

DJW — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 21:01:54 +0000

“The Tragedy of the Commons” doesn’t make precisely the same point, but you can use it to talk about this and any number of other points. It’s a much better essay, IMHO. The framing of ‘the problem’ here is much better, and allows for more creative problem-solving on the part of the students.

By: Shai

Shai — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:13:24 +0000

most of the examples are between countries but it’s not hard to see that even more absurd conclusions follow from the same arguments employed within a country. now, I didnt read every word but the most obvious objection follows from the percent of the world resources consumed by affluent countries—the assumptions about decreasing birth rates and anti-immigration simply don’t wash. the most ridiculous aspect of the article is that it is more interested in being controversial than a good faith discussion of issues of sustainability

By: jdw

jdw — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:10:43 +0000

I especially enjoy “Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. [...] If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our “safety factor,” an engineering principle of critical importance. For example, if we don’t leave room for excess capacity as a safety factor in our country’s agriculture, a new plant disease or a bad change in the weather could have disastrous consequences.” Which sure is a nice way of mangling an inapt metaphor.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:01:03 +0000

What I had forgotten and found especially appalling is his attitude toward “survivors’ guilt.” When those in a lifeboat don’t have the capacity to rescue other innocents, “Some say they feel guilty about their good luck. My reply is simple: ‘Get out and yield your place to others.’” Right – and Holocaust survivors could have volunteered to go to the ovens themselves.

I do not think that the two situations are analogous. In the case of Hardin’s lifeboat example, he is clearly referring to a person who feels guilty that he could not save a drowning person unless he was willing to give up his own spot in the lifeboat or risk killing everyone. That does not appear to be the case for the Holocaust since the National Socialists would probably not spare the life of one of their victims simply because someone offered to take their place in the ovens. In which case a survivor really did not have an opportunity to save someone else’s life at the expense of their own.

By: mon

mon — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:39:12 +0000

The only mention he makes of birth control is to picture it as one of the causes for higher immigration which is also pictured as one of the factors that risk sinking the lifeboat. Seems amazingly detached from reality. Where’s the awareness that immigrants get exploited for cheaper labour by industry sectors that would not otherwise thrive so much were they to rely entirely on non-immigrants? Where’s the facts about birth control not being as widely available and encouraged in the areas of the world where it would be most needed? Aside from the repulsive nazi-like ‘ethics’, you’re absolutely right, it’s just such sloppy reasoning. Tunnel-vision, and so centered on America only while pretending to be about the earth. I’m surprised this stuff gets taught in schools at all. Does it really have to? and why?