In Garrett Hardin's essay, Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor, Hardin describes the wealthy population of the world as being in a single lifeboat that is almost filled until buckling while the poor population of the world treads water below. Hardin's essay gets his readers to feel the natural instinct to survive. The lifeboat metaphor that Hardin uses relieves the wealthy population of their moral obligations to the less fortunate, but in addition, puts all of the blame and cause of the depletion of earth's resources on the poor. As much as his argument may make sense, there are some flaws in his way of thinking. Alan Durning, who noticed that major flaws with Hardin's essay, wrote on what he thought about the topic that Hardin has brought to his attention. In Durning's essay, "Asking How Much Is Enough," he argues that it is not overpopulation that is depleting the earth's resources, but overconsumption of the resources by the wealthy population. The arguments in Durning's essay makes the reader realize that the way Hardin uses the metaphorical lifeboat to persuade his readers into thinking the same thing as he does and shows that Hardin wrongly places the blame of all of earth's financial stability problems on the poorer population. .
Hardin uses the metaphorical lifeboat in his essay to give his readers perspective of how limited the resources are on earth by reminding them how much limited space they have onboard the boat. He gives us a visual that only 60 people can be inside the boat at once, but if the capacity of people on the boat goes even one person over the full capacity limit, then the whole boat will buckle and no one will survive. But Hardin wants us to imagine that if there are 50 people in the boat, then how do those 50 people determine who they are going to let onto the boat? He wants to get his readers to start thinking that they are not required or obligated to let anymore on the boat and he highly advises not to otherwise they would lose the "safety factor" of their boat (508).