Peter Singer's Sticky Situation: The Singer Solution To World

Adam Erickson
Singer’s Sticky Situation

Peter Singer thinks we are too selfish with our money. In “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, he proposes a solution to poverty in other countries. Singer believes that money that might otherwise be used for luxury goods should be donated to charities that help save lives in poorer countries. He believes that this decision increase overall happiness more than the purchase of a luxury good, like new shoes, would. While Singer’s argument raises an important moral point, it leads to a very dangerous moral precedent that could leave the problem worse off than before. Singer’s argument should be taken in a limited scope to help determine right action; otherwise, it becomes a radical doctrine.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are in a lifeboat. The lifeboat has a limited capacity, say 60 people, and there are 50 people in it now. You are not aware of the capacity of the lifeboat. These 50 people in the boat represent rich Americans, or those with the means to donate to overseas charities. Outside of the boat swimming in the water there are some 100 people hoping to get in. Those are the relatively poor people in need of aid. As those people with means, we must make a decision on what to do. If we operate as Singer believes, we would sacrifice the small chance that the boat will become overcrowded in order to add another person and save a life. However, if we treat all lives as equal and try to add everyone, eventually the boat will capsize and everyone will receive the equal result of death. In order to be helpful to those swimming in the water, we must maintain our position in the boat. This extends to our wealth and donations. In order to maintain our position of being able to help those in need, we must in some way maintain our wealth and our lives of living above necessity. Certainly we assist those who are outside of the boat with the extra capacity that we have, but we do so in measure and not to an extreme. This also raises the question of who to choose to help, which Singer’s morality does not help us with. If
It is clear that this application of Singer’s argument is in the present. It does not make a general principle to be followed for the future. As it stands right now, if money used for a luxury purchase went to a child in need it would help overall utility. There are problems with that situation in the long-term, however. The consumption of luxury goods is part of what drives our economy and why Americans are well-off in the first place. If Singer’s argument applied to income and donation was followed by every American, the size of our consumption and economy would shrink drastically. This would affect our industries that are already in place, people’s jobs, and the like, essentially sending us into a recession or depression. Adopting this as a general principle, or a principle for the future as a consistent action again brings us back to the lifeboat problem. It would forces us into an economic collapse and a loss of our privileged wealth. In order to help others we need to stay in the boat, and adopting Singer’s argument to its end does not allow us to do so. I realize that these may be empirical questions instead of philosophical questions, but they rise to importance in “applied ethics”