Garrett Hardin: Lifeboat Ethics
Garrett Hardin argues for a very harsh thesis: we simply should not provide aid to people in poor countries. His argument is consequentialist: he claims that the net result of doing so would be negative -- would in fact be courting large-scale disaster. One of the things that we will notice about Hardin's essay, however, is that whether he is right or wrong, he paints with a very broad brush. This makes it a good essay for the honing of your philosophical skills; you should notice that there are many places where the reasoning procees with less than total care.
Hardin begins with metaphors. He points out that while the metaphor of earth as a grand spaceship has a certain popularity (or did 23 years ago) it is a flawed metaphor nonetheless. A spaceship has a captain, and couldn't survive without one. The earth has nothng vaguely resembling a captain, the United Natins in particular being a "toothless tiger."
Whatever we may make of the metaphor, we shold note what it was meant......
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