Garrett Hardin
Professor at UC Santa Barbara
Follows Thomas Malthus: 19th Social Thinking: population grows exponentially, while food supply can only increase arithmetically: hence: overpopulation leading to starvation
The Case Against Helping the Poor
Hardin opens discussing two metaphors
One: Space Ship Earth–we’re all in this together. We better share all our resources
Two: Life boat Ethics–some of us are in the life boat, some of us are drowning.
If we let all the drowning people into the life boat, the life boat will sink and we’ll all drown.
Question: which is a better metaphor: the space ship or the life boat?
Adrift in the Moral Sea:
Hardin’s “lifeboat ethics”
Posed in opposition to say, Christian or Marxist ethics
Are we “our brother’s keeper”
Harsh ethics of the lifeboat
If you feel guilty about being in the lifeboat, the simple solution is to get out and give someone else your place.
Multiplying the Rich and the Poor
One thing that creates a problem: the poor multiply faster than the rich.
If the U.S. agreed to pool its resources with eight other poor Western hemisphere countries
Pretty the ratio would go from one American supporting one non-American to one American supporting eight non-Americans.
The philanthropic load created by the sharing ethic of the spaceship can only increase.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Hardin’s key idea: a commons–everyone shares it in common.
Not unlike: Locke’s state of nature
Land has a certain carrying capacity: how much life of a given kind it can support
In private ownership: it is in the farmer’s own self-interest not to exceed the carrying capacity
However: in a commons: any herdsman who refrains from overloading the commons will suffer more than a selfish herdsman who says his needs are greater.
590 If everyone would restrain himself, all would be well; but it takes only one less than everyone to ruin a system of voluntary restraint. In a crowded world of less-than-perfect human beings, mutual ruin is inevitable if there are no controls. That is the tragedy of the commons.
Key example here: The World Fishing Industry
591 Fishing fleets have nearly disappeared in many parts of the world; technological improvements in the art of fishing are hastening the day of complete ruin. Only the replacement of the system of the commons with a responsible system of control will save the land, air, water, and oceanic fisheries
Another example: the World Food Bank
Who really benefits here
For one, it means billions for U.S. business
Hardin’s Question: would the program do more good than harm, not only momentarily, but in the long run.
592: What about the response of the “kindhearted liberals” that
It isn’t their fault!
How can we blame poor people caught in an emergency
Hardin says the concept of blame isn’t relevant here.
Population control the crude way
What about the “Green revolution”
Hardin refers to the Chinese Proverb:
give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he will eat for the rest of his days.
Quotes Allan Gregg: compares the spread of humans over the globe with the spread of cancer in a human body.
“Cancerous growths demand food; but, as far as I know, they have never been cured by getting it.
Problem: we are Overloading the Environment
Hardin is also against unrestricted Immigration into first world countries like the United States:
Says: World food banks move food to the people, hastening the exhaustion of the environment of the poor countries
Unrestricted immigration, on the other hand, moves people to the food, thus speeding up the destruction of the environment of the rich countries
So: the issue comes down to: Pure Justice vs. Reality
Doesn’t really agree with Nozick that we’ve acquired the land justly.
Says: 594 We are all the descendants of thieves
The worlds resources are inequitably distributed.
However:
595 Without a true world government to control reproduction and the use of available resources, the sharing ethic of the spaceship is impossible.
For the foreseeable future our survival demands that we govern our actions by the ethics of a lifeboat, harsh though they may be. Posterity will be satisfied with nothing less.
Goes into his Final question: does food aid really help?
Problems: 1) waste
2) corrupt politicians
Hardin says it is a mistake to focus on starving people while ignoring their surroundings
Low “carrying capacity” of their environment
The ultimate solution is a much reduced population that doesn’t exceed a lands carrying capacity
Cites Nigeria as an example of what can go wrong.
Long-term policies have to give way to short term ones.
The farmer plows up his overstressed fields, thus diminishing long-term productivity.
Peter Singer (1946 - )
Peter Singer–a leading theorist here.
Formerly a professor at Monash University in Australia
Now, controversially, at Princeton.
Singer is a utilitarian: differs from Mill and Bentham–primary consideration is not the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but serving the best interests of all concerned in a moral dilemma: a recognition and protection of the widest range of interests among equal beings.
Selection from his book: Practical Ethics
Starts out with: Some Facts
Hardin trying to make a “scientific argument”
Singer making a distinctly “moral argument”
Singer makes a distinction between absolute and relative poverty
Poor people in a wealthy country–relative poverty
Absolute Poverty: life at the very margin of existence almost beyond the power of our sophisticated imaginations and privileged circumstances to conceive.
1) infant mortality rate eight times higher
2) life expectancy one third lower
3) 60% less adult literacy
4) a nutritional level, for one out of every two in the population, below acceptable standards, and for millions of infants, less protein than is sufficient to permit optimum development of the brain.
Singer says this is the situation of about 800 million people in 1979.
The Obligation to Assist
Singer makes a moral argument:
Starts out: Would you be doing something morally wrong if you saw someone drowning and let them drown.
Yes. Does it matter that the person you can help is near, or far away, as long as you can help them?
No
Singer lays out his argument for an obligation to help those in absolute poverty
He says his argument would apply to non-consequentialists as well as consequentialists:
Singer asks you to accept certain assumptions: if you follow him, he thinks you’ll accept his conclusion
Premise 1: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it.
Premise 2: Absolute poverty is bad.
Premise 3: There is some absolute poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance
Conclusion: We ought to prevent some absolute poverty
Singer argues against, say Hardin’s claim that help won’t make any real difference
Singer has a strong Non-consequentialist side: it is a moral duty to help.
The Question is: can we help “without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance
Question: what would that mean?
Gives a list of things we can give up: 598
color television, stylish clothes, expensive dinners, a sophisticated stereo system, overseas holidays, a (second?) car, a larger house, private schools for our children.
598 For a utilitarian, none of these is likely to be of comparable significance to the reduction of absolute poverty; and those who are not utilitarians sure must, if they subscribe to the principle of universalizability, accept that at least some of these things are of far less moral significance than the absolute poverty that could be prevented by the money they cost.
That’s Singer’s Case
Remainder of article Responds to Objections
1. Property Rights Objection
Why should someone tell me what to do with my property?
Here Singer is responding to, for example, Nozick:
Nozick: Right of property acquired without the use of unjust means.
Singer contrasts this with Christian doctrine, say in Thomas Aquinas:
“what ever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance.”
Singer response:
He is not in favor of a doctrine of absolute property rights,
Nonetheless his obligation is consistent with property rights as something the property owner ought to do even if his giving cannot be mandated by government.
Population and the Ethics of Triage
What about overpopulation and poverty?
Singer looks at Hardin’s objection
Singer calls Hardin’s approach Triage:
Question: what is triage?
Help those who can survive.
Don’t waste limited resources on those who cannot
Singer mentions Hardin’s Lifeboat ethics: The rich should leave the poor to starve, for otherwise the poor will drag the rich down with them.
Singer raises the question: is overpopulation a myth?
He asks:
Could we feed ten times as many people as we do now, except for the manipulation of Third World economies by the developed nations, wastage of food in the West, etc.
Cites statistics: By the year 2000: Bangladesh will have a population of 146 million
Singer rejects the consequence of a policy of triage–i.e. mass starvation
Moreover, as a consequentialist ethicist:
Singer says a policy with a certain benefit is better than one with a possibly better benefit
Helping will definitely help some people
Doing nothing only might be better off in the long run
Goes through the theory of birth rates changing with standards of living
Initially: birth rate rises as improved medical care takes care of the most serious diseases
Later, as standard of living rises higher, birth rates fall because people no longer see having a lot of children as a social security system.
So ultimately: Singer see this as an alternative to the disasters accepted as inevitable by supporters of triage.
Final Question: Too High a Standard?
People, possibly Singer’s students object that he sets the moral standard too high for any reasonable person to follow.
Only a saint could follow it.
Problem: this could be counter productive:
I can’t give away everything, so why should I do anything?
Given a more realistic standard, people might make more of an effort to reach it.
Singer: such a high standard could possibly be counter-productive, but our ordinary standard: a few coins in a collection plate, is too low.
Suggest that perhaps we give away 1/10 of our income.
Concludes 602
No figure should be advocated as a rigid minimum or maximum; but it seems safe to advocate that those earning average or above average incomes in affluent societies, unless they have an unusually large number of dependents or other special needs, ought to give a tenth of their income to reducing absolute poverty. By any reasonable ethical standards this is the minimum we ought to do, and we do wrong if we do less.
Question: what do you think: Hardin v. Singer?
