Basic Concepts

The key question: Can we meaningfully speak of distant people as having rights against us or of our having obligations to them?

1. The welfare rights of distant people:

1.1. Negative and positive rights

1.1.1. A negative right—a right not to be interfered with in some specific manner.

1.1.2. A positive right—a right to receive some specific goods or services.

1.2. In personam and In rem ringts

1.2.1. In personam rights—rights that hold against some specific nameable person or persons

e.g. The right to have a loan repaid or the right to receive one’s just earnings are typical in personam rights.

1.2.2. In rem rights—rights that hold against everyone who is in a position to abide by the rights in questions.

e.g. A right to liberty is usually understood to be an in rem right.

1.3. Legal and moral rights

1.3.1. Legal rights—rights that are enforced by coercive sanctions.

1.3.2. Moral rights—rights that ought to be enforced either simply by non-coercive sanctions or by both coercive and non-coercive sanctions

1. An Environmentalists’ argument:

The earth is like a “spaceship.” Since we all share life on this planet, no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources.

2. Problems:

                2.1. They confuse the ethics of a spaceship with those of a lifeboat.

2.1.1. A true spaceship would have to be under the control of a captain. Spaceship of Earth certainly has no captain.

3. A lifeboat metaphor (by Garrett Hardin):

3.1. people in rich countries (1/3) sit in a lifeboat; people in poor countries swim in the ocean outside of each lifeboat. Poor people would like to get in the lifeboat.

3.2. The limited capacity of any lifeboat

　

Adrift in a Moral Sea

2. We have several options:

2.1. take all the people in water into our boat.

Consequence:the boat swamps, everyone drowns.

2.2. admit just ten more to our boat.

Question:which ten do we let in?

Consequence: we will lose our 'safety factor.'

2.3. let no more to the lifeboat.

Consequence:we, who are in the boat, feel guilty of our good luck.

　

Multiplying the Rich and the Poor

1. The ratio of population:

1.1. Americans: 87 years doubling to a population of 420 million.

1.2.The others: 21 years doubling to a population 354 billion.

2. Americans’ burden:

2.1.Each Americans would have to share the available to resources with more than eight people.

3. The needs and population:

3.1.The needs are determined by population size.

　

The Tragedy of the Commons

1. An argument against ‘Spaceship Ethics’:

1.1.The fundamental error of spaceship ethics is that it leads to “the tragedy of the commons.”

1.1.1.Under a system of private property, the men who own property recognize their responsibility to care for it, for if they don’t they will eventually suffer. If a pasture becomes a commons open to all, the right of each to use it may not be matched by corresponding responsibility to protect it.

1.1.2. In a crowded world of less than perfect human beings, mutual ruin is inevitable if there are no controls. This is the tragedy of the commons.

1.1.2.1. For example: the air and water have become polluted because they are treated as commons.

Population Control

1. Population Control--the Crude Way:

2. Poor countries’ responsibility:

2.2. Poor countries undergo a 2.5 % increase in population each year; rich countries, about 0.8%. If poor countries received no food from the outside, the rate of their population growth would be periodically checked by crop failures and farming. In the short run, a world food bank may diminish that need, but in the long run it actually increases the need without limit.

　

1. Dora’s case

1.1. To save a boy or to keep a TV

1.2. The average family in the US spends one/third of its income on things that are no more necessary to them than Dora’s TV.

1.3. The ethical distinction between 1.1 and 1.2

2. Bob’s case

2.1 To save a child or to save a vintage car

2.2. People able but unwilling to donate to oversees aid

2.3. Questions: Is unwilling to donate right?

Are you obliged to keep giving until you have nothing?

How much we ought to give in a real world.

　

2. Basic needs

2.1. A person’s basic needs are those, which must be satisfied in order not to seriously endanger her health or sanity.

2.2. The right to life (as positive): a right to receive those goods and resources that are necessary for satisfying her basic needs.

The right to life (as negative): the right would require that everyone who is in position to do so not interfere in certain ways with a person’s attempts to meet her basic needs.

2.3.Justifying the right to life: Question: if one’s basic needs have not been met, would a person’s right to life require that others not interfere with him/her taking the goods he/she needs from the surplus possessions of those who already have satisfied their own basic needs?