Lifeboat Ethics : The Case Against Helping The Poor Essay example

1460 Words May 20th, 2016 null Page
In a campus filled with countless of students, the overall goal is to make sure that every student achieves their goals. However, imagine if the lifeboat ethics metaphor was applied to college campuses, students that are underprivileged would be left out and only the privileged students would achieve their goals. Many students would like to attend classes, but due to lack of money or space available in the classrooms, they are left outside the lifeboat. In Garrett Hardin’s essay, “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor”, Hardin argues that “a nation’s land has a limited capacity to support a population and as the current energy crisis has shown us, in some ways we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our land” (415). Hardin provides several solutions before he ultimately acknowledges that they will not work and finally states that “our survival demands that we govern our actions by the ethics of a lifeboat” (423). In other words, in order to survive, the people in the rich nations should do nothing for the people in the poor nations. By following Hardin’s claim, many students will not be in the lifeboat and, therefore, they will not be able to succeed in the future. Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics” relates to college in a couple of ways, which include: the lack of money that is given to undocumented students and the limited capacity in the classrooms.
First, Hardin shows how there are numerous of immigrants living here in the United States; though it is not…

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