Do wealthy countries have an obligation to assist poor people in developing countries?
In this essay I am going to argue that wealthy countries have an obligation to assist poor people in developing countries. To prove this I am first going to explain the basic view points on this question and then move on to argue for each. I will go through arguments that there is an obligation and choose the strongest as my main argument and then go through and reject an argument against there being an obligation.
First I will start by explaining the basic views of Cosmopolitanism. This is the view that distributive justice, the redistribution of money from the wealthy to the poor, should be spread worldwide and not just in one nation. This can come in …show more content…
The main argument being Garrett Hardin and his Lifeboat Ethics. This means he uses an example of a lifeboat in order to argue his point. He says imagine if you are on a lifeboat with a capacity of 60 with 50 on it already and it passes 150 drowning people. You obviously cannot let them all on otherwise the boat would sink and then everyone will drown. He then goes on to say that we do have room for 10 people so which people do we let on? the best, the neediest or the first ones to get there? This seems an almost impossible decision to make so maybe we should not let anyone on. However, even letting an extra 10 people on the boat will remove our safety factor. This means we do not let anybody else on the boat which means that some people feel guilty about their good luck. Hardin simply says to the people feeling guilty that they should get out and yield they’re place to someone else, but the person who takes their seat will not feel guilty as otherwise they would not have climbed aboard. So them giving up their seat simply leads to less people with a guilty conscience. This example means that Hardin believes we should not help other people in other countries as we simply cannot afford it. With the population growing faster in developing countries then in already developed countries makes the matter is even worse. The need of these countries and ability of developed countries to give aid is determined by the size of their population and if one is growing faster then the other it is therefore destined for disaster. A counter to this argument from population is Goldstein who argues that eventually population growth will begin to slow as the country gets much closer to being fully developed. This means then that we should help them with aid until it is able to look after it’s own
In this essay I am going to argue that wealthy countries have an obligation to assist poor people in developing countries. To prove this I am first going to explain the basic view points on this question and then move on to argue for each. I will go through arguments that there is an obligation and choose the strongest as my main argument and then go through and reject an argument against there being an obligation.
First I will start by explaining the basic views of Cosmopolitanism. This is the view that distributive justice, the redistribution of money from the wealthy to the poor, should be spread worldwide and not just in one nation. This can come in …show more content…
The main argument being Garrett Hardin and his Lifeboat Ethics. This means he uses an example of a lifeboat in order to argue his point. He says imagine if you are on a lifeboat with a capacity of 60 with 50 on it already and it passes 150 drowning people. You obviously cannot let them all on otherwise the boat would sink and then everyone will drown. He then goes on to say that we do have room for 10 people so which people do we let on? the best, the neediest or the first ones to get there? This seems an almost impossible decision to make so maybe we should not let anyone on. However, even letting an extra 10 people on the boat will remove our safety factor. This means we do not let anybody else on the boat which means that some people feel guilty about their good luck. Hardin simply says to the people feeling guilty that they should get out and yield they’re place to someone else, but the person who takes their seat will not feel guilty as otherwise they would not have climbed aboard. So them giving up their seat simply leads to less people with a guilty conscience. This example means that Hardin believes we should not help other people in other countries as we simply cannot afford it. With the population growing faster in developing countries then in already developed countries makes the matter is even worse. The need of these countries and ability of developed countries to give aid is determined by the size of their population and if one is growing faster then the other it is therefore destined for disaster. A counter to this argument from population is Goldstein who argues that eventually population growth will begin to slow as the country gets much closer to being fully developed. This means then that we should help them with aid until it is able to look after it’s own