Global Economic Justice
Garrett Hardin: “Living on a Lifeboat”
• The affluent should not aid the poor and starving
people of the world because doing so will only
lead to disaster for everyone, rich and poor.
• The problems of poverty and starvation are due
to uncontrolled population growth.
• Giving the hungry food will make the situation
worse by artificially enlarging the population still
more, causing it to outstrip the carrying capacity
even further.
Global Economic Justice
William W. Murdoch and Allan Oaten:
“A Critique of Lifeboat Ethics”
• Hardin’s analysis is simplistic: The lifeboat
metaphor implies that the rich lifeboats barely
interact with the poor, but in the real world the
rich countries have greatly affected the poor
ones, and often for the worse.
• “Rich nations have arranged an exchange of
goods that has maintained and even increased
the economic imbalance between rich and poor
nations.”
Global Economic Justice
Peter Singer: “Famine Affluence, and Morality”
1. Suffering and death from lack of food and
other necessities are bad.
2. If it is in our power to prevent something
bad from happening without excessive
sacrifice, we have a moral duty to do it.
3. Therefore, we have a moral duty to help
the poor and starving of the world.
Global Economic Justice
Louis P. Pojman: “World Hunger and Population”
4 responses to world hunger:
(1) Neo-Malthusianism
(2) Liberalism
(3) Conservativism
(4) Pojman’s Moderate Alternative.
We may have a duty to give our surplus to “help
save drowning children in a distant land,” but we
also have “special responsibilities to family,
friends, and neighbors.”