In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes philosopher Peter Singer to the program to discuss the 10th anniversary of his book, The Life You Can Save. Roberts questions Singer’s plea to all of us with disposable income to overcome our nature of caring most for those close to us and to see foreign children suffering as a moral issue to act on. Why should we do this? Singer claims, “because it is a bad thing [for children to die]”. The simplicity of this argument leads Roberts to ask many intriguing questions about Singer’s intentions and methods for how we might address world poverty and save more children. The questions below only scratch the surface of what to ponder from this provocative episode. We hope to hear your thoughts.
1- What might be missing from the drowning child analogy that would equate that dilemma to helping unknown poor children in foreign countries? Do you agree or disagree with the sufficiency of Singer’s answer to the question of ‘why should we?’ (He answers, ‘because it is wrong not to do it’).
2- Singer suggests our need to develop an ethic that can go beyond what is natural for us- standards that can be justified in terms of reason. Does he discount Adam Smith’s social and political implications of the synthesis of self-interest, our care for community and for society?
3- The Life You Can Save can be downloaded in digital or audio format at zero cost; the website connects viewers to curated charities and donation programs. Do you believe digital ease will significantly increase contribution to the effective altruism movement? Will the income-based giving table take off? Why or why not?
4- Roberts is concerned about the Hayekian knowledge problem, while Singer feels strongly that we have better scientific methods to assess what does work to help those living in extreme poverty. When poverty reduction is achieved in the next decade or more, will the acquisitive mix of economic growth, engineered development, private or institutional aid matter to us in hindsight? Explain.
5- Russ considers, “it’d be a weird thing to be working most of your life to devoting your labor to others that you don’t know. And that would be a strange and interesting world.” Do you agree or disagree? What other ways might we realize “the becoming use of one’s own”?
READER COMMENTS
Fasih
Feb 21 2020 at 8:37pm
1) Two clear differences between the drowning child analogy and helping unknown children overseas. First, a phenomenon called diffusion of responsibility. You don’t feel responsible for donating to someone unknown–someone else can do it–whereas you’re the only one who can save the drowning child. Second, the waste of resources. Foreign nations might be corrupt; your donations may be squandered. On the other hand, you’re self-reliant in the drowning child scenario.
Sean
Feb 25 2020 at 11:30am
I don’t think the drowning child analogy is a good one. Giving to charity provides a temporary reprieve but as you discuss in the podcast there isn’t much evidence of it’s effectiveness for lifting people out of poverty. So perhaps a better though experiment would be would be to jump in to save the drowning child every month or every year. A further extension to the thought experiment is would your decision change if it’s always the same child?
Perhaps it’d be be better to create conditions to stop children from falling into the pond in the future. It’s not clear that donations would do that as they are akin to just jumping in and pulling the child out of the water. What has been proven to be effective is free trade which could be thought of as teaching the children to swim or more migration which would be letting the children leave the area where there are so many ponds to fall into.
Max Sacher
Feb 25 2020 at 5:42pm
Case(1a) A sprinkler fails to go off and a house burns down
Case(1b) A dam fails to break and a house burns down
Case(2a)I fail to save a drowning child
Case(2b)I fail to save a child living in Africa
Is the sprinkler as responsible for its failure as the dam? Singer seems to think so, which intuitively feels wrong. We need to distinguish when our failure to act causes us to be responsible and when it doesn’t. I think our failure mattering depends on our knowledge/ability to act/other metaphysical properties. Thus there is a clear distinction between case(2a) and case(2b), I know the child who is drowning, I can do something about it. If I was blind and deaf and couldn’t hear or see the child we wouldn’t think I am responsible. We stand in the same position to poor children in foreign countries. If someone were to come to our door and tell us “Johnny is dying and needs your help” then your failure makes you responsible, otherwise our metaphysical distance means we are not responsible and we should instead help those in our community.
Al McCabe
Mar 2 2020 at 6:50pm
1. A well dressed economist was walking by a pond and saw a child drowning. He thought he would save the child despite it destroying $100 worth of his clothing. But then he remembered the “Save the Child” commercial on TV, that a child overseas could be saved for just $10.
So the let the child drown in front of him, saving $100 in clothing costs, and sent a $100 check to the TV show and felt so proud how he saved 9 more children that day.
2. Where did all these hundreds of millions of people get lifted out of poverty? In Africa that gets all the NGO money, or in countries that are developing an industrial era economy? Might be a clue there.
Jerry
Apr 16 2020 at 10:19pm
Thank you for presenting the podcast. Mr Singer, your argument started off in away that lead me to not want to attempt to understand your point of view. Nothing personal, I am pretty sure your heart and thoughts would support the opening assertions you made. It actually is my lack of understanding what you were saying and as the host did not question you for clarification of your words, it was difficult for me to listen to the cognitive distortions that were made.
I am all for heavy support and interventions on behalf of children.
Been awhile since I listened, something like this was said “Everybody would want to save the child”. The word everybody implies an all encompassing belief that is held by the speaker and everyone else. There is confusion on the part of the speaker, everyone else not so much.
Possible reading, David Burns “Feeling Good” or the father of cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck wrote many books, as did his daughter at the CT institute.
https://www.verywellmind.com/aaron-beck-biography-2795492
Hope this helps to clarify the thinking presented to our advantage of motivating and educating on behalf of children.
Rajeev Arora
May 14 2020 at 9:09am
[6:36 PM, 5/14/2020] Krati: What might be missing from the drowning child analogy that would equate that dilemma to helping unknown poor children in foreign countries? Do you agree or disagree with the sufficiency of Singer’s answer to the question of ‘why should we?’ (He answers, ‘because it is wrong not to do it’).
To answer the above question I would like to compare the thought experiment put forth by Singers to the actual on-field experience.
To which we have two points
1 the party acting in thought vs the party acting in actual
2.Increasing Capabilities vs the Faith in capabilities
In the thought experiment, we are the ones acting that we ourselves would be saving the child – Let’s call we – the First party that is acting. In actual we always do not directly indulge with the people suffering and provide aid, moreover, we are not even able to actually see or feel the difference, if any, that was made by our contribution.
Now what I think is that in the thought experiment, we were actually able to see the child drowning and knew that our actions will have an effect, definitely, and actually felt the temptation to act. While in actual case what happens is that we entrust a second party to act on our behalf.
Though Singer makes an argument that it does not make much of a difference if the child is drowning overseas, but to that i think most of the viewers in the mean time have developed a kind of immunity, on which we will dwell later in this answer.
Another thing to note is that Singer does not adequately address the doubt that “compared to the benefits that it provides when it, or some of it, does get through to those who need our help, that we would still be saving lives at a small cost to ourselves – even if aid organizations were much less efficient than they actually are.” With ongoing scams and frauds, people have lost faith in the system and they prefer doing it (ethical practice) where they physically witness the benefit because that gives them a sure short return that their money has been put to use.
This loss in faith has also acted as a fuel to their immunity towards such organizations. Only if there were a certain definitive way where person in the act could himself verify the gain, then his views would have hold much more ground.
Singer convincingly argues for the ethics on the grounds that we are now more aware and have more capabilities. However, as I mentioned earlier capabilities can be comparable of worth or no worth depending upon the returns they provide.
What good is the use of such a capability if it only serves the purpose of fuelling the already filled tanks (people who already have access).
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