Garrett Hardin introduces the lifeboat ethics, which is in complete antithesis to the humanism of helping people in need, in the text of Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor. To state his point of view, the author makes the metaphor of a lifeboat and divides the world into rich nations and poor nations. The rich nations are likened to people inside the lifeboat, while those poor ones are people outside the boat. And then lots of assumptions are made, to illustrate the harm and danger for rich nations to help those poor ones.

However, it comes to me that the lifeboat ethics is so ridiculous since it is based on a completely wrong metaphor of rich nations and poor nations. It seems that in the metaphor rich nations are playing the role of Christ while poor nations become paupers that could contribute nothing but only wait for help. This metaphor is so unfair because it totally distorts the relationship and exaggerates the differences between rich nations and poor nations.

As we know, in the modern society no single nation could survive without the premise of intercommunication and mutual benefit. Even for the wealthiest and strongest nation the United States, imports and foreign help are quite necessary. As one of the biggest consumers of gasoline in the world, every year the United States needs to import plenty of gasoline from OPEC, which might be considered as poor nations, otherwise the American economic would collapse promptly. Also, after the New Orleans tsunami, without the immediate help from all over the world, it was impossible for the United States to recover from the loss so quickly. In this case, how could the United States always be the people inside the lifeboat or rescuer for others?

What’s more, the lifeboat metaphor ignores a basic connection between rich nations and poor nations. It completely neglects the fact that all the people in the world are sharing the same living environment. Once this only living environment is destroyed, all the people around the world would need to bear the kickback together, regardless rich or poor. Therefore, helping poor nations is not only a form of humanistic expression, but also a kind of self-help for rich nations. In other words, those rich nations, in a way, help those poor ones out of egoism and the concerns on their own interests, which is quite different from the generous aid for the people outside the lifeboat by the people inside the boat.

Therefore, I prefer to liken the earth to a ship crossing the ocean, and all the nations are the people in this ship. All the people on board, regardless rich or poor, shall have the same basic task and obligation to protect this ship, since no one would survive once the ship sinks during its voyage. However, besides this basic task and obligation, the people on board are allowed to be independent and self-governing. They are allowed to use the resources and develop according to their own economical capabilities, which is different from the idea of spaceship ethics in the text that every people in the world shall have equal share of the resources.

But when some people are obsessed with certain problems such as overpopulation, natural disaster, decease etc, it is the responsibility for all the people on board to solve the problems as soon as possible, before the harmful effect of such problems extending throughout the ship. It is useless to blame for anyone at that time. Take the overpopulation problem mentioned in the text as an example. Although I agree that the control of reproduction is the basic approach to solve the problem, I don’t think rich nations shall sit back and look unconcerned. In fact, the overpopulation problem has become a big burden on the use of resources in the whole world, rather than for those poor nations only. Those rich nations may help those poor ones by admitting immigrants. By admitting immigrants, rich nations would not only help to ease the burden of poor nations, but also solve the problem of negative birth rate in some rich countries. It is a win-win approach for both poor nations and rich nations.

As a conclusion, the lifeboat ethics introduced in the text is not so proper. Helping the poor in need is not only out of humanism but also for the consideration on their own interests for the rich nations. As to the overpopulation problems, it is useless to blame the poor nations only. Although the control of growth rate is the basic solution, the effort to ease the harmful influence by both poor nations and rich nations is quite necessary in the short term.