Welcome back to EduSpots’ Book of the Month! For August, we will be reviewing Peter Singer’s “The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty”.

It is a work in applied ethics, which philosophically approaches the issue of poverty and argues for the moral obligation one has to donate to effective charities.

Firstly, Singer outlines his argument as such:
Premise 1 — “Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.”
Premise 2 — “If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.”
Premise 3 — “By donating to effective charities, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important.”
Conclusion — “Therefore, if you do not donate to effective charities, you are doing something wrong.”

He uses several thought experiments to test our intuitions in relation to the different premises and therefore the validity of the conclusion. One of the issues he effectively points out is our ethical inconsistency in the common parochial attitude, that is, our inability to relate to tragedies and suffering when we are physically distant from them. Philosopher Peter Unger devises an analogy, where one faces a choice: a runaway train is heading towards a child, but a switch can be flipped and the train will be directed instead towards the person’s Bugatti, on which they have spent their retirement funds. It seems certain that no car, “no matter how rare or valuable”, is worth a child’s life. This response helps elucidate our moral intuitions, therefore clarifying on how we should approach instances of global poverty, in which individuals’ lives are constantly at risk.

Singer’s engagement with common objections to his argument is also useful, and we will examine a few examples. The first is moral and cultural relativism — that there should not be a universal code for how people conduct their lives (and their finances). However, there are plenty of situations in which we reject moral relativism when it comes to the infliction of harm. Given the extent of suffering (in particular in relation to health and survival viz. malnutrition, treatable diseases such as malaria): extending moral relativism should be treated with much caution.

Another objection is on libertarian bases: “you leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone”. However it is abundantly clear from history that the accumulation of wealth is founded upon an unequal distribution, both domestically and internationally. From the perspective of a wealthy country in the Global North, it is impossible to claim a detachment from the underdevelopment of other countries. Climate change is a key manifestation of this inequality, and Singer asserts that “we are simply not leaving others alone” as we continue to emit greenhouse gasses, while the Global South bears the brunt of its effects.

A final objection is founded on a distorted view of reality: citizens believe that their nations are already generous in official aid. Polls reveal that many significantly overestimate the amount their country is spending on aid. As of 2018, the average country’s effort is 0.38% of GNI, while the UN target is 0.7%. Based on a 2015 poll in the US, “a majority of Americans (56%) think that the federal government is spending too much on foreign aid, but when asked how much the government should spend, they give a figure (10%) that is ten times current spending (<1%)!” This attitude is similar in many other countries, and this misconception — a gap between public opinion and actual policy — is a hindrance for countries from doing more to alleviate poverty.

Singer also emphasises the importance of creating a culture of giving and challenging notions of “self-interest”, showing that most people do have an inclination towards “doing good”, but several psychological barriers stop us from practicing it sufficiently or effectively. To make a start, he offers multiple case studies of “effective charities”, which he understands as the most “cost-effective” and “does the most good”, in hopes of guiding individuals to channel their money in an effective and realistic manner.

However, there are limitations to Singer’s framework. For starters, his approach is a utilitarian one that lies on the assumption that “utility”, or benefits, can be calculated in a rational manner, ignoring the complexity of processes of change that often cannot be reduced to a simple cost-benefit analysis. He does not discuss education throughout the book, even though it is evident that education is one of the keys to human development. Distinguishing between immediate alleviations of poverty, i.e. medication, food and shelter, and the long-term investments for change i.e. education, long term community projects on utilitarian indices ultimately appears more vague and contrived.

His discussion also rests largely on monetary funding as the source of change — while this is certainly true, the purpose of the book to elucidate how privileged individuals can play a part in global development, and to limit their role to donation perhaps underplays the capacity and potential of mobilisation.

This relates to a further issue that he briefly addresses, that is the structural causes of poverty. His argument rests on the fact that there are parts of the worlds’ population that are exponentially more privileged than the rest, and are therefore morally responsible for the alleviation of poverty to uphold the principles of equality. However, he does not seem to assign culpability to the ways in which this inequality has been cultivated and maintained. In particular, he cites the philanthropy of various billionaires such as Bill and Melinda Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and companies such as Goldman Sachs and Google, without ever confronting their complicity in global inequality and the (in)advertent infliction of harm.

He briefly rebuts this objection: “If there is no real chance of achieving the systematic change you are seeking… then rather than waste your time and resources on grand plans that will prove futile, it is better to look for a strategy that… will reduce the hardships’. Yet this is not argumentatively satisfying — he has critiqued futility thinking when it comes to donations, yet engages in the same thought pattern when it comes to other forms of change.

Singer’s book is inspiring in many ways as he traverses through examples of change generated through effective altruism and the energy surrounding the movement. It is also an engaging read that guides us through questioning our actions, our role in the global society, and effective steps we could start to take. It is an excellent read for anyone involved in or interested in EduSpots and wider fields, as we question and imagine the steps towards our collective future.

Do share your thoughts and see you at next month’s book review!!!!