Peter Singer on how to lift the world out of poverty

Peter Singer, the utilitarian philosopher and not the guy with book on robots, has a new book called The Life You Can Save arguing that we’re morally obligated to try to do more to fight poverty.  The short version of the argument is that if we were wearing a rather nice outfit and saw a child drowning, assuming we could safely swim we’d jump in and save the child.  The fact that this might ruin clothes worth a few hundred dollars would be correctly seen as a secondary consideration.  How is saving children from poverty related death any different?

Tyler Cowen engages Singer in a terrific bloggingheads TV that really gets at the point of the medium.  Cowen accepts most of Singer’s premises but throws out a few more challenging possible conclusions and also questions the most effective methods for helping.  I think the argument about the merits of anti-colonialism can be a bit misleading, some countries may have been worse off after colonialism ended, but I think they typically would have been better off if it never happened at all.

Instead, I thought the most interesting question was about the merits of giving to individuals rather than giving to charities.  I think that gets to the question of what the level of local institutional capacity.  So, if you’re responding to a natural or manmade disaster, this might be an effective way to get the money there fast.  In other cases, I think the direct aid Cowen favors would probably be less effective as without institutional protections the recipients might prove easy prey for local ne'er-do-wells.  That said, with charitable giving, I think we tend to err against trusting the recipients, so experimenting some on the other side is probably worth it.  That said, there’s been a lot of work on assigning aid through local councils and the like, so there are compromise choices available.

Comments

[Laura]

Perhaps I've become skeptical, but there are too many people, and just not enough money to go around.

Why not take some of the money you'd give to poor people and offer cash incentives for people to have fewer children, or pass out condoms?

[Greg Sanders]

Well, there are some charities that do just that. I think donating to them would be consistent with Singer's vision. That said, I suspect that it's relatively difficult to directly alter the birthrate. Key downward drivers are urbanization and female empowerment. The former is happening about as fast as can be managed, if not faster. The latter has other perks as well, but runs up against existing power structures and thus is more difficult.