Are we letting the poor drown?

For over a decade I taught Development in Brazil as I attempted to inspire tomorrow ministers in training to work earnestly for the eradication of poverty in the country in which we lived.

 As part of the course we would study Garrett Hardin’s 1974 article, Lifeboat Ethics: the case against helping the poor. In it Hardin uses the metaphor of a lifeboat with 50 people that can hold just 10 more before it sinks. He then suggests that there are 100 people drowning in the see before asking what should those in the Lifeboat do? Should they save themselves for a long and prosperous future or should they help those in the sea and die together with them shortly afterwards when the boat sinks. It’s that classic Titanic sense all over again.

What’s interesting, or perhaps better alarming, about Hardin’s analogy though, is that he goes on to suggest that this lifeboat analogy is how we should see the world with its limited resources. His basic premise being, should we the world’s wealthy (in places like Europe and the United States) in the lifeboat seek to save those who are in the sea (the world’s 3 billion poor). His answer being ‘NO’. For in his opinion to do so, by allowing them in and sharing what we have with them, will not liberate them from poverty but instead cause our own demise and destruction. Thus in Hardin’s opinion there is a logical and ethical case against helping the poor. Needless to say, living in Brazil where you see the immense suffering poverty causes on a daily basis, my students and I were year after year appalled by Hardin’s suggestion. How could anyone let others die like this?

A decade later, as I look at the world I find myself living in the UK, and because of other realities like Trump’s attempts to build his wall, I find myself asking if Hardin’s horrific suggestion has not now become the new political paradigm on which elections are fought and votes are cast?