Let the poor help themselves

Ok, so I finally finished my English paper tonight and submitted it... It freaking sucked. I had no time to make sure it wasn't just rambling, so it was one big ramble about letting poor people help themselves. Here is a copy if you would like to read it.

Taking Care of Our Own

“Does everyone on earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources?” (Hardin 360).

One of the largest conflicts between morality and science is the one given the least amount of debate in the public forum. Should we allow human beings to die? To what extent are we morally obligated to preserve the lives of others? They are questions that are now thought to be ridiculous, as the human mentality has shifted from pragmatism to humanitarianism. Attempting to help the poor is a dangerous, unethical practice.

Arrogant human beings have created the popular beliefs that man is somehow above all other animals, and therefore more noble and deserving of all other species. Few would argue that in the animal kingdom all resources ought to be equally divided to assure a long life to all animals. In fact, human practice is to eliminate members of a specific population of animals as it nears it carrying capacity. Nonetheless, the belief remains widespread that all men are entitled to an equal share of the earth’s resources.

Thomas Malthus wrote in An Essay on the Principle of Population, “The constant effort towards population, which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions.” (313). As Malthus illustrates, man tends to increase much faster than resources. Most would agree that there is a limit to the number of people the world can sustain. Despite this knowledge, many continue to justify efforts to help sustain those who cannot provide for themselves. This assistance to the poor violates one of the most basic laws of nature.

Charles Darwin wrote about natural selection, which most of us know as survival of the fittest. Darwin argued that the animals most fit for survival (i.e. faster, smarter, stronger) are favored by nature. If this is so, why can we not say the same for humans? Man is careful to monitor the number of animals and control the population. When a population grows too big for the resources of the environment, hunting licenses are issued and animals are killed. Rarely is effort made to import food to change the region to be more suitable for the animals. When the human race is faced with the same dilemma, the problem becomes the environment rather than the species to which it is home. The thought of allowing humans who cannot be supported by their own forces to die is instantly considered inhumane. Humans have the mentality that they have a right to live. Man finds himself incapable of abstaining to intervene on behalf of those who cannot provide for themselves, but has no such problem acting against other organisms to benefit the species as a whole.

One major problem of assisting the poor is that they take much more than they could ever give. Thomas Malthus wrote that man’s reasoning, “Asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for whom he cannot provide.” (312). Aiding the poor appears to take this consideration out of the mindset of those who reproduce in poor countries. Garrett Harden establishes this argument in his essay, Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor, by using a metaphor of a lifeboat in the decision to aid the poor. He compared the rich people to those inside of a lifeboat, and the poor people to others drowning outside of the lifeboat. He wrote, “The people inside the lifeboats are doubling in numbers every 87 years; those swimming around outside are doubling, on average, every 35 years, more than twice as fast as the rich.” (361). This shows the negligence of the poor in choosing to bear offspring that cannot easily be supported. Hardin draws from this information that, “since the world’s resources are dwindling, the difference in prosperity between the rich and the poor can only increase.” (361).

Noting the dilemma, we must wonder what the proper solution is. Should we attempt to increase the availability of resources to a level that will easily sustain rich and poor alike? Sadly, many have chosen this option as desirable. Proponents of helping the poor often argue that since the rich can afford to do it, they should do it. Nothing is said of the poor’s ability to change life patterns to benefit themselves. One who suggests that poor people should remain poor is labeled conceited by society. It is much easier for the rich to give of what they have to help the poor than it is to accept that the poor must do something to help themselves. Again, were it any other animal, it would be commonly held and believed that the animal that could not provide for itself must inevitably die. By simply being more conservative in reproduction, changing location, or working a little harder, some of the problems of those considered poor might be lessened or even solved, but to acknowledge that poverty may be fault of the individual is politically appalling.

If we evaluate the costs of attempts to provide the poor, we see that it is neither environmentally or fiscally beneficial to do so. Desire for an increased crop yield has lead to a new enterprise of developing and applying pesticides that are harmful to human health to fields across the United States. One such chemical, DDT, was so controversial that Rachel Carson took it as the subject of her book Silent Spring. Carson’s book examined the many harms to the environment and even to human beings themselves by using pesticides. In Silent Spring, Carson wrote the following, “Yet is our real problem not one of overproduction? Our farms, despite measures to remove acreages from production and to pay farmers not to produce, have yielded such a staggering excess of crops that the American taxpayer in 1962 is paying out more than one billion dollars a year as the total carrying cost of the surplus-food storage program.” (424). In addition to the fiscal costs of increasing production, she touches the environmental and physical dangers of the pesticides used to boost crop yield. Carson classifies pesticides as poisons and says, “If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.” (426).

Examining the costs of helping the poor, as Carson has, sheds a new light on the subject. People that live in rich countries are expected not only to give of their money, but also to damage the environment where they live. This leads us to the conclusion that the poor cannot be helped without also harming the very people who are doing so. The only logical reason to help the poor, then, is to redistribute wealth slowly until all resources and wealth are equitably divided between all people. As Hardin points out, “We cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates. To do so would guarantee that our grandchildren and everyone else’s grandchildren would have only a ruined world to inhabit.” (368). Hardin also warns that, “To be generous with one’s own possessions is quite different from being so generous with those of posterity.” (368). Therefore, even with purely humanitarian intentions, the poor could not be helped at the expense of our own prosperity. The question about ethics is to be answered, whom do we give from and whom do we take from? Since no one of us is in a position to decide who among many should be the recipient and who should be the giver, we cannot determine who is more deserving.

We are thus placed in the same situation we are placed in when deciding how to deal with wild animals. Before we give of our wealth and resources to people in poor countries, we must decide whether we would rather guarantee a high quality of life to our children or guarantee them a lower quality of life in a more populated world. The amount of resources and wealth are fixed. We cannot give without taking from another. Is there enough evidence to suggest that man should truly give of his own possessions to provide to another? Many cite morality or religion, which all include non-scientific abstract ideals. The prudent way to act is illustrated in the biblical story of Joseph and the famine of Egypt. “And the famine was over all the face of the earth: And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold[1] unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.” (Genesis 64:56).

The Egyptians had previously built up storage of food in preparation for a famine. This created a “safety factor” the likes of which Hardin explains in his metaphor of the boat. He assumes a boat with a capacity for 60 people, with 50 on board already. He states:

“Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it… If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our ‘safety factor,’ an engineering principle of critical importance. For example, if we don’t leave room for excess capacity as a safety factor in our countries agriculture, a new plant disease or a bad change in the weather could have disastrous consequences.” (361).

The Egyptians understood this principle well. They built their reserve specifically to have a safety factor. The Egyptians also understood that something cannot be given for nothing. In a time of dire need, they used their reserves not only to feed themselves, but also to profit from their opportunity.

Proponents of assistance to the poor argue that we should not deny them the help we can provide because they cannot help the circumstances under which they are raised. To them, my reply is, “Get out and yield your place to others.” (Hardin 361). Take upon yourself the circumstances of their poverty and allow them to live with what you have. Give of your own rather than taking from others who understand that there is no such obligation to help the poor. We must understand that, “Nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose power to do so, and so become either poor or despised.” (Machiavelli 133). Helping the poor is just that, liberality. Our power to do so is decreased in the very commission of the act. We must not destroy our safety factor by allowing more people into our boat, for, as Machiavelli would say, our space to do so becomes less each time. In accordance with Machiavelli, Hardin also warns that if we admit everyone outside the lifeboat, “The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.” (360).

Attempting to help the poor is a dangerous, unethical practice. It assumes that man is the judge of which life is more valuable, rather than nature, or chance as some would believe it. It forces man to choose between his own posterity and that of a distant stranger. As illustrated by the many authors, it is indeed harmful to rich nations to give of their own money and environment in order to advance that of the poor. The only ethical way to solve the problem is as the Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his days.” We must help the poor by refusing to help the poor. We must return to Darwinism for the answer. Nature’s laws, not man’s, ought to determine who lives and who does not. Natural selection must be applied equally to humans as it is to all other organisms on this planet. Failure to do so may give complete justice, but cannot do so without bringing complete catastrophe.

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[1] Italics added for emphasis