The Solution to World Poverty: Are we just as guilty as Bob?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ค. 2020
- In this video, I discuss Peter Singer's arguments regarding world poverty. In particular, I focus on the Bob's Bugatti experiment that is intended to gauge our moral intuitions. If you are interested, read Singer's, "The Singer Solution to World Poverty," to get closer look into Singer's thoughts. You can find the PDF online. Follow me on Instagram: @consciousphilosophy
Sources: Peter Singer: The Singer Solution to World Poverty."
I don't own any of the photos or artwork shown in this video.
Very thought provoking, Subscribed. One moral difference I can think of regards the nature of charity: by endlessly giving to charity, do we lessen the desire of the recipients of charity to help themselves and become more independent? then again, we are talking about children specifically, but are children entirely exempt? if so at what age? what about the responsibility of the parent who maybe had more kids than they could afford, or the responsibility of the nation of which these people are a part. By giving all we have to charity, are we just encouraging weakness in others and/or a cycle of bad behavior? This is of course perhaps mitigated by the specifics of the charity, if its a hand up as much as a hand out, etc.
We do not truly care about people outside our own tribe.
Incredibly interesting, truly.
Thanks, Ryan! We discussed Singer in Chwang's class, remember? He is a great thinker.
Very thought provoking. And if you're a Christian, you have the added idea that one day, you will be judged on how you conducted yourself (including how you have used your talents/resources).
Singer has a very zero-sum mentality. It's not the only perspective. I think it's not even the most persuasive as a paradigm.
Have you read Factfulness, by Hans Rosling? It would shock people to realize how drastically we've cut world hunger in the last 20 years - that places we assume are still broadly dying of starvation, are coming into developed economies. The stats are astounding, and I wont make up off the top of my head what they were - but it is truly astounding the way the state of the world has improved and we are simply unaware of how much better things have gotten. One I remember is that a woman in Africa is now as likely to survive childbirth (one of the measures of a developed country) at a similar rate as a woman in 1950's America. --
of course the question is, how has this come about? Is it because we've been donating money to poor people at drastically higher rates in the last 20-30 years than we realized? no.
Much of the shift has actually been China specifically -- why did China go to from being a starving country to a thriving economy? (not to say everyone in China is well off, but hunger is no longer an issue.). It's not because we gave china a bunch of money. It's because China opened its borders in the late 70's and early 80's to a market economy and began interacting in the world market. As a result, wealth was created for them also. In fact, there's more than enough to go around. It's true that America lost a lot of production-line jobs. But companies in America were struggling to fill those roles anyway - because it turns out, as America became more educated, people don't want to work on assembly lines. And it's true that China went through a really tough period of sweat-shop standard production. But people were desperate for those jobs, and mostly saw them as a considerable net positives in comparison to starving. And now the sweat-shop stuff has drastically improved, to the point where new companies actually dont even look to go to China anymore to set up production. The country itself is moving away from manned production as the economy has so improved and is no longer a work-bench economy. China is competing with the US for GDP. Not because we handed them money, but because allowing individuals to be masters of their labor actually works.
Hans Rosling argues that we have proven time and again that the earth has more than enough resources to feed its people times over, and that places that are not prospering are doing so largely because of war or corruption. Venezuela being a perfect example. --a country swimming in natural resources and oil, and its citizens are starving in the street because the government is so corrupt and their socialist policies have bankrupt the country.
Even places like Africa, where there aren't abundant resources, are growing economies at a record rate. Ghana being a perfect example. They have no particular natural resources to speak of, but even in the last 10-15 years their economy has absolutely boomed. --not that people know, but it's absolutely true.
Perhaps the insufficient-resources method is the wrong way to look at the problem. And guilting people out of hard-won pleasures isn't the solution. I absolutely think we need to give willingly and support those less fortunate both at home and abroad. That the world is a better place when we do so. But the fatalist/insufficient-resources mentality is not the solution. We don't need to just feed 2yr olds till their 6. We need to support countries that seek to stabilize their economy and create transparent and fair governance so fathers can work hard and feed their own families, and families can live from their own labor, not handouts from someone else.
Great response, I will check the book out. That being said, there are still children all around the world starving; and we are capable of ending such starvation. If X spends money on new watches, cars, shoes, and so on, when Y could have received a plate of food with some of that money, is X committing an immoral action? Perhaps one counter to your position is that we could speed up the process of curing world hunger if we did donate some of our money. The issue is that no one wants to donate; we would rather persist in our unnecessary spending, instead of saving lives. Important to note, I am stating what I believe Peter Singer would possibly argue back towards your counter; I personally think your response was strong!
Donate money to support tubal ligation services.