Lifeboat ethics is a metaphor about how Garret Hardin thinks the richest countries should behave towards the poor nation.
Explanation:
Garret Hardin was an American ecologist who warned the dangers of human overpopulation. He criticized the model of resource distribution model called Spaceship Earth because that would lead to what he called "Tragedy of the Commons". That is a situation where individual users acting on their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users.
In response to that model, he developed the lifeboat ethics. It describes a lifeboat bearing 50 people and with room for ten more in the middle of the ocean. But the lifeboat is surrounded by 100 swimmers. The problem radicates on what swimmers should be taken abroad.
Lifeboat ethics is a metaphor for resource distribution proposed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1974.
Hardin's metaphor describes a lifeboat bearing 50 people, with room for ten more. The lifeboat is in an ocean surrounded by a hundred swimmers. The "ethics" of the situation stem from the dilemma of whether (and under what circumstances) swimmers should be taken aboard the lifeboat.
Hardin compared the lifeboat metaphor to the Spaceship Earth model of resource distribution, which he criticizes by asserting that a spaceship would be directed by a single leader – a captain – which the Earth lacks. Hardin asserts that the spaceship model leads to the tragedy of the commons. In contrast, the lifeboat metaphor presents individual lifeboats as rich nations and the swimmers as poor nations.
