"The Singer Solution to World Poverty," which you can read by clicking on the link.In the essay he gives us the story of Dora,
"Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted — he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation."
"Should Dora go save the child?"he asks. To which we replied, "Of course." Then he continues, "Is there a moral difference between Dora buying a television at the cost of a child's life, and an American buying a television when he knows that the money he will spend on the television will save a child's life?"
Pretty much everyone in the class thought there was a huge difference. Encapsulated, most of us argued that we are not aiding the killing of children through our purchase the way Dora did.
Singer then gives us the parable of Bob and his Bugatti.
Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed -- but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents.
Pretty much the whole class thought Bob had done the wrong thing. Many of us said we would not be able to live with ourselves if we had committed such an act. "If you have the chance to save a child, you should," we argued.
And that's where Peter Singer gets us. He tells us that it takes only $200 to save a child's life in a third-world country and then gives us the phone numbers of two organizations that we can donate to.
If you still think that it was very wrong of Bob not to throw the switch that would have diverted the train and saved the child's life, then it is hard to see how you could deny that it is also very wrong not to send money to one of the organizations listed above.
Singer has essentially put us in the role of Bob. We are standing at the railroad switch whenever we have $200 above and beyond our needs. Every time we spend $200 on a commodity, we are letting a child die.
The reaction to Singer's idea was pretty unanimous. No one in class liked it. "What?" we were saying, "you mean that we can't buy books or a new CD or a computer game because to do so would mean that we're deliberately letting a kid die?" Most of us were unwilling to live under the weight of this moral onus.
We'll see how our discussion continues next week.
