Is “Sea with Lifeboat” a better metaphor than a “Spaceship” for Earth?
The problem with sharing resources can be illustrated by food. There’s currently enough food to feed all of the Earth’s 6.2 billion people, yet while we have surpluses here in the U.S. millions of people in Sudan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, etc. go hungry. Suppose we created a Global Food Bank, where the nations with a food surplus would put in their excess, and the nations with a food deficit would withdraw as much as they needed. It could theoretically be done, because there’s enough to go around. But Hardin foresees that there would still some big problems: The Poor, Hungry Nations will always be taking out. Since they are given food, they would have no reason to improve their status, no motivation to build their economies and develop better food production for themselves, or to limit their population growth. So, their lives will never really improve. The Rich, Well-Fed Nations will always be putting in. But they will have to use up and pollute their own resources (water, soil, fertiliz
