Eveleth 1

Kaitlyn Eveleth

James Smith

ENGL 2010

April 5, 2023

Hardin’s Take on Helping the Poor

Humanitarian efforts to diminish things like world hunger are widely known, and people

think of these programs as the good samaritans of the 21st century, but one man named Garrett

Hardin thinks otherwise. Hardin's “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor '' explains

his views on helping poorer countries. He argues that things like the world food bank and

immigration are the commons in our modern-day tragedy of the commons. Harden uses an

overly simplistic metaphor of comparing the earth to a lifeboat, he says the people of richer

countries are aboard this metaphorical lifeboat while people of poorer countries are adrift in the

sea. Hardin then explains that humanitarian efforts may have good intentions, but they might not

help poorer countries in the long run, he claims that providing food and aid when needed will

prompt poorer countries do not learn from past experiences and not learn to do better in the

future because of a lack of independence, Hardin argues that this codependency upon foreign aid

causes their populations to grow unchecked and generate more unneeded strain on the

environment. Hardin’s solution was to have countries be solely responsible for their well-being

and create awareness of the dangers of the commons so that people will recognize its many

varieties before trouble occurs.

Hardin’s use of ethos, pathos, and logos in “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping

the Poor '' constructively represents what he imagines are issues with helping the poor. This

article was written in 1974, by Garret Hardin who seems to be a leader of environmental
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movements in his time. It seems the intended audience for this document are the people within

said environmental movement, or a crowd that is interested in environmental movements. This

article was published in a popular magazine titled Psychology Today, this magazine company

was first started up in 1967 to give the general public more information about psychology

(“About Psychology Today | Psychology Today”). This article is a part of the conversation on

how to better protect our environment, and other things like population control, and foreign aid.

Beginning with how Hardin uses ethos, Hardin uses ethos by taking notes and

acknowledging people's ethics and then he continues to show how those ethics are unrealistic

from his point of view. He uses multiple sentences that appeal to ethos in an attempt to make the

reader trust his credibility and knowledge. In the section titled “Adrift in a Moral Sea” at the end

of the first paragraph Hardin finished by saying “The boat swamps, everyone drowns.” which

rhetorically implies how he thinks a person's ethics to help everyone are unrealistic which leads

one to believe he has great knowledge about the subject. While the article's appeal to ethos is not

half bad it is not all that great either, Hardin's appeal to ethos uses biased language like “U.S

liberals” in the second to last paragraph of the section “Immigration Vs. Food Supply”. This

makes the appeal to ethos not as strong because it comes off as unkind, and offensive, and it is a

way to undermine the other-sides credibility which is not how a mature writer who successfully

has a strong connection to ethos writes. Another example of an ill connection to ethos is in the

section “Population Control the Crude Way” Hardin says that without something like the world

food bank populations in poorer countries might “stabilize” and decrease, Hardin, however, does

not mention that there are different causes for unstable or increased numbers in poorer countries

populations, things like age, religion, higher fertility rates (Osoro), etc… Hardin avoids the fact

that having food supplied from other countries and other forms of foreign are not the only factors
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in the multifaceted topic, this is a manipulative use of ethos because Hardin lacks the

acknowledgment of the other factors and is not providing complete and accurate information

about the issue, that leads one to not trust a writer's credibility.

Hardin uses pathos in all parts of the article, a good example of how he used pathos is in

the section titled “Immigration Vs. Food Supply” He quotes a Hawaiian speaker and says “We

have children now, and someday we’ll have grandchildren too." That is not the only time he

mentions posterity and family in his article, the reason he mentions things like posterity and

family so frequently is that it brings forward feelings of love and protectiveness in the reader and

overall makes the reader feel more connected emotionally. Hardin’s use of pathos is how he

attempts to make the reader eager to listen to his counsel.

While Hardin has a strong connection to pathos and his connection to ethos is not half

bad, his connection to logos is sketchy. If Hardin has successfully made the reader believe he has

credibility and is worth reading more, his appeal to logos would be good, but his appeal to logos

is sloppy, and his connection to logos is weak because he provides little to no evidence behind

his claims. For example in the section titled “Learning the Hard Way” Hardin says “As a result

of such solutions to food shortage emergencies, the poorer countries will not learn to mend their

ways.” If one takes a close look at this one would notice that Hardin does not provide any

evidence that proves what he says is true, instead, he is presenting a theory of what MIGHT

happen, and not what WILL happen, to make his claims seem logical. Hardin uses very little

evidence throughout his whole article and he mostly relies on pathos and ethos to create a

semi-persuasive article.

While his rhetorical appeals are mild, Hardin had great organization, he titled his sections

to make information easy to find and he had seamless transition sentences. He used his tone
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quite well while making his main claim that wealthy people shouldn’t help the poor because

there are consequences that come with it.

Hardin's article constructively represented what he believes the issues are with helping

the poor; he used ethos in an attempt to build his credibility, and he used pathos to build a

stronger emotional connection between the audience and the article so he could show how his

claim is true, and his slight use of logos was able to showcase how illogical he thought it was to

help the poor. Harin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor '' is most likely very

persuasive for people of the same political party as Hardin, while this article is genuinely very

well-written, it is not persuasive to anyone who does not share all the same political beliefs as

him. Overall, Hardin’s article has good organization, tone, language, and a decent appeal to

ethos, pathos, and logos, as mentioned before it is well-written and informative, but Hardin could

have done better at providing more evidence for his claims which would have brought this article

to the next level.

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Works Cited

“About Psychology Today | Psychology Today.” Psychology Today,

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/docs/about-psychology-today. Accessed 28 Mar. 2023.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Psychology Today". Encyclopedia Britannica,

21 Nov. 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Psychology-Today. Accessed 28 March 2023.

“Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor.” DigitalGeorgetown Home,

https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/768908. Accessed 28 Mar. 2023.

Osoro AA. A question of dignity. Impact of rapid population growth on developing

countries. Kenya Nurs J. 1991 Jun;19(1):14. PMID: 1960918.