Peter Singer and The Life You Can Save

I wasn’t planning on blogging about the Peter Singer talk I attended yesterday, but at the behest of my former thesis advisor, I decided to give it a shot. Here’s my post:

Peter Singer is a Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton and has written several books, including his latest, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. In his talk yesterday, he explains that as individuals who are relatively wealthy (when compared to the poor), we have a moral obligation to give to the poor. He used the following example to tease out our moral intuitions (a more complete version of his argument is available here and here):

Imagine you see a kid drowning in a pool and know that you could save the kid if you jumped in the pool and grabbed him, but if you jumped in the pool, you’d ruin your $50 shoes. Would you have a moral obligation to save the kid? Most would argue yes. But how is that different than the situation we’re faced with everyday, when we know that $50 could be the critical difference in saving a child’s life? While some philosophers argue that there is a difference between the two situations, Singer believes that the situation is virtually the same and thus concludes that we have a moral obligation to give to the poor.

When it comes to the philosophical argument, I and most people would probably agree with Singer; those of us who are relatively wealthy have some kind of moral obligation to help the poor. But where I disagree with Singer is his suggestion on how we should fulfill our moral obligations; Singer suggests that we should give money to charity (in his book and in his talk, he suggests Oxfam).

From the perspective of impact (philanthropy’s term for utility), I think his justification of giving to charity versus other available options was pretty weak. I think aid is perhaps one of the most inefficient ways of helping the poor, as William Easterley or Paul Polak or journalist Andrew Mwenda can tell you, especially when you consider the impact per $ of things like Oxfam to other programs like Kiva. (His response to this point during the Q&A was that programs like Kiva are insufficient in addressing the problem of poverty, to which I would respond, if you have the choice between giving a loan and donating to charity, with the former generating more impact, how can you donate to charity on the utilitarian principle?)

But here’s the really interesting thing that I noticed – in an audience of Stanford students interested in issues of poverty and ethics, most students seemed to be skeptical of his prescriptions. From the Q&A, many seemed to be thinking “if you want to make a difference with your money, you could have a bigger impact than donating it to a charity and, if you really want to make a difference, you could have a bigger impact by devoting your time and your career to solving these issues.” I wholeheartedly agree.

So here’s a question for all of you: what do you think of Peter Singer’s argument? and perhaps more importantly, what would you do to solve the problem of global poverty?

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