Feeding the Hungry, Lifeboat Ethics and Pejoristic Systems
Imagine that two thirds of the world nations are poor while only a third are rich. In the modern world, nations comprising the one third include the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavian countries and several others. On the other hand, two thirds of the world poor people come from Africa, the Caribbean, South America and parts of Asia.
Imagine once more that each of these nations is a lifeboat. Each lifeboat has only capacity for its citizens and not any more. Assuming that the lifeboat has a capacity for only 50 individuals and maybe an additional allowance of 10 more seats included by the lifeboat engineer to act as a safety factor. The lifeboat, therefore, has 60 seats, but they cannot all be filled because if anything happens to the boat, the whole population may drown and die.
Lastly, imagine that people from poor nations or those from lifeboats owned by poor countries are jumping into the waters due to the problems in their lifeboats. They swim and come across lifeboats owned by the rich countries. They are a hundred of these poor people seeking to be allowed to board the life boat. If it were you, would you allow them in?
I presume most of you would let them in because you are good people. Furthermore, the lifeboat has ten more seats which can be occupied even though it would jeopardize the safety of the boat. But there are a hundred of these people but only ten seats, and a second problem arises; who should be let in and who should not? How do we discriminate? Should we pick the healthy people, intelligent people, strong people, or the first to come?
The scenario described above was provided in extensive detail by Garret Hardin in 1974 in what he called the life boat ethics. It is a good metaphor that calls to question contemporary issues of charity, Marxism, and in a more recent case, feeding the hungry. In a viral tweet, Elon Musk was confronted by Dr. Eli David who quoted a CNN article that claimed 2% of Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger. The alleged 2% is equal to $ 6 Billion of Musk’s wealth. David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program chimed in the conversation and was confronted by Musk who asked him to describe in clear detail how the $6 Billion would be used to feed the hungry, and if satisfied Musk would sell his Tesla stock and give them the money.
Interesting as it may sound, this post is not about that altercation, but rather if it’s ethical to feed the hungry, most of whom come from poor nations. Garret Hardin observes that there are several ways in which the life boat scenario could go wrong. Of course, some people in the rich lifeboat may feel guilty of their privilege and choose to relinquish their seats. However, as Hardin argues, the poor person who gets the seat after it has been given to him would himself not feel guilty for being lucky to get the seat. In that case, even if everybody was to give away their seat, soon the boat would end up with the initial 50 individuals, none of whom would feel guilty for their luck, and the lifeboat dilemma would continue.
Even more serious is the problem of reproduction. Forget about the life boat and let’s think about the real world now. Currently, rich and developed countries tend to have very low fertility rates. For countries like South Korea, fertility is quickly approaching zero. On the other hand, countries in Africa have very high fertility rates. For example, Kenya had a fertility rate of 3.52 in 2020 while Korea had a fertility rate of 1.1. Therefore, Kenya’s population is bound to grow at three times the population of South Korea in future.
Fertility lends us an important clue in the way we think about the life boat and also the way we think about feeding the hungry. Let’s assume that South Koreans were to feed Kenyans. The total population of Korea is 51 million compared to Kenya’s 53 million in 2020. Roughly speaking, one Korean only needs to feed one Kenyan because the ratio is approximately 1:1. However, Kenya’s population growth is bound to grow 3 times faster than that of Korea as previously shown. Therefore, in future one Korean will need to feed three Kenyans instead of the one person he needs to feed now. That reveals an inconvenient truth; with the tremendous increase in population among poor nations, even if rich people were to feed the hungry in these nations, higher fertility and increased populations among the poor would only increase the number of mouths rich nations have to feed. Think back to the lifeboat, would the rich people’s boat be able to accommodate all the poor people wanting to board their boat?
Other than reproduction, Hardin also argues that the tragedy of the commons is also a huge problem when it comes to feeding the hungry. Let’s assume that you own a water well in your home. As a wise and responsible person, you not only draw water from the well but also ensure that the well is properly maintained, children don’t play around it, and that it is continuously cleaned. You have a sense of duty because it is your well. On the contrary, think about a well owned collectively by the community. You try to be responsible but other people either over-extract the water, throw in objects, destroy the walls around the well and so forth.
The reason for that behavior is because nobody has sovereign authority over the well, so everybody does as they please with it. That is the tragedy of the commons, where everybody uses it but nobody takes care of it. If you are a good guy, you’ll eventually lose because your sense of responsibility only causes you anguish and desperation as everybody else misbehaves. Eventually you let it go. A good example is fisheries in the oceans and the air we breathe. These resources are commons because there is no sovereign authority that regulates them. Of course nations have tried to control them but pollution continues and over fishing goes on. In the commons, the selfishness and lack of responsibility of one person or nation dissuades the others from being responsible and selfless. That said, I wonder how climate change will be solved.
So how does feeding the hungry fit the tragedy of the commons? One solution that has been proposed to help solve world hunger is the creation of the International Food Bank. Hardin summarizes the idea of the food bank easily saying, “it’s an international depository of food reserves from which nations will contribute according to their abilities and draw from it according to their needs.” Therefore, people from rich countries like South Korea, Europe, and the United States will contribute because they are wealthy enough, as countries from poor nations like Kenya draw from it because they are poor and in need.
However, Hardin observes that previous attempts at charity in the United States only led to the profiting of a few individuals instead of the people it was intended to help. The reason, he argues, is because there is little accountability that follows such initiatives. An initiative that starts as a charity ends up as a way for a few individuals to milk tax payers. Elon Musk is, therefore, right to ask for justification of how $6 Billion of his wealth will be used.
Another problem that Hardin observes is the stupidity and lack of foresight exhibited by leaders from poor countries. In one of the most interesting passages in the text he says that, “far more difficult than the transfer of wealth from one country to another is the transfer of wisdom between sovereign powers or between generations.” He believes that poor countries should know better to accumulate food when there’s surplus. For example, Kenya has periods of surplus food and those of scarcity. The cycle is almost predictable but no leader has ever had the foresight of stocking surplus food to be used during famines. When the famine eventually comes, starvation ensues.
Hardin, therefore, leads us to an interesting question. If an International Food Bank was created where rich nations contribute to it as poor nations draw from it, will leaders of poor nations have enough wisdom to control their populations? Even worse, will these poor nations ever wake up and grow their own food? Imagine you created a bank account for your poor uncles. Every month you deposit some money after which your uncles come and withdraw it. Under what circumstances will your uncles feel the agency to wake up and work for their own money? What if instead of working hard, you noticed your uncles were marrying more wives and getting more children? Those questions lead Hardin to argue that, “the food bank is not really a bank but a one-way method of moving wealth to poor countries.”
Those observations lead us to a conclusion called the ratchet effect. Hardin argues that if leaders of poor countries fail to control their populations in any meaningful way, then with the International Food Bank, their populations will increase and with it more mouths to feed. He says that, “it is essential for those in power resist the temptation to convert extra food into extra babies.” However, due to the lack of wisdom and foresight by leaders from poor nations, it is unlikely they will do it. The population of a country like Kenya would grow to 3 times its current size and with it, more hunger and more poverty. In the meantime, the emergencies that come with famines will continue until a critical level is reached and the whole enterprise collapses and the population is diminished to its earlier levels. Our attempts to feed the poor will have failed, as the increased populations of these countries bring more problems to the world stage that will need solving. Such interventions like the International Food Bank, and any other system that can be relied upon to make matters worse without the intervention of responsible sovereign leaders, is what Hardin calls a pejoristic system.
After reading about the metaphor of the life boat, do you think the world needs to feed the hungry amongst us? Should Elon Musk give the World Food Program the $ 6 Billion?
Hardin, G. (2019). From life boat ethics. In Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning, theory, and contemporary issues, edited by Lewis Vaughn, 5th edition.
