Tragedy of the Commons and Resource Allocation

Life Boat Ethics

The appalling moral dilemmas of the present situation are reflected in the "lifeboat model" of Garrett Hardin. If we have a lifeboat with 20 people in it and enough food for only ten to survive until land is reached and if they all share the food, none will survive, and for every one thrown overboard up to ten, the better the chances the rest will survive. ... The most probable solution, unfortunately, is that the most powerful will survive. If indeed we are in this scenario in the world (and we cannot be sure that we are not), the inference is that the powerful temperate zone will simply let the tropics sink. The abandonment of the European empires may indeed be a prelude to an abandonment of responsibility. Independence might be construed as simply prying the clutching of the old colonies off the gunwale of the lifeboat.

Boulding, 1978