18 September 2013
EH-101-05
Professor T. Edwards The Singer Solution to World Poverty
In the Singer solution, Peter Singer talks about how it is wrong to live in luxury and watch someone else struggle for the basic things to survive. He argues that instead of going out spending money on necessities, help someone. He also tries to prove a point where as if you have something valuable to you, would you risk savings? Or would you help an innocent person in need?
With this study I agree with Singer, because in reality no necessity is greater than saving a life of a child or an adult. The situation with Dora and the homeless child should not have gone as it did. The right thing she should have done as soon as she found out about what the foreigners really wanted with the boy, was to report them to the authorities and get the boy into a safe place. My opinion of this situation is it does not matter how easy the money is you should not trade a child undocumented or illegally to anyone especially if the child is not yours. The second situation where Bob had to choose to save a child life on a train track or destroy his life’s savings is no better than the first. Bob obviously cares more about materialistic things than an innocent child unaware of the oncoming danger on the track. If you do not understand where the writer is coming from, maybe you should look at it as a parent’s perspective. Would you want someone to save your child from danger if you weren’t around or save their car? (Come on its Good Samaritan law) with all of that being said like the writer said if you could give or do anything to help someone in need, do it because if not you will be categorized with both Dora and Bob and you’ll never know if you will one day need the help of some just standing by.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
The author use ethos by claiming he is a utilitarian philosopher. He judges whether acts are wrong or right by their consequences. He further claimed, if the outcome of the American’s failure to donate the money, one more kid dies then there is a troubling incongruity in being quick to condemn other’s action like of Dora, who took a child to an organ peddler for cash. 4. Singer used logos by using information such reasonable estimates that $200 in donation would help a sickly 2-year-old into a healthy 6-year-old.…
- 496 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
A part of this that people may not recognize is that when the economy is weak, the poorest countries suffer the most. $1 dollar can help a hundred people in a poor country more than it can help someone in a rich or developed country. Although we have stronger affinity towards our citizens and if money was equally effective we would choose our own citizens first, when it’s 100 times more effective in impacting lives,…
- 886 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
In this persuasive essay Peter covers a lot of emotional and disturbing topics. Although he is rite, some of his comparisons are very extreme. People around the world, and Americans especially are very greedy. Whatever you problems are, somebody in a 3rd world country has it ten times worse. I noticed that Peter used a lot of Legos, Pathos, and Ethos. He gave great examples of the morally wrong decisions we make every day that effect people around the world, and we don’t even know it.…
- 295 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
He also advocates that these countries and other like them, who spend even more money on items like Britain’s supersonic transport or Australia’s opera house could and should contribute even more for worthy causes like poverty, better housing, and medical care. Singer declares that affluence people and countries should and can do more than what they do now. Later in the article, Singer states that everyone should give the poor. He supports his reasoning with several arguments.…
- 1108 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
In Peter Singer’s 1972 post titled “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, he conveys that wealthy nations, for example the United States, has an ethical duty to contribute much a lot more than we do with regards to worldwide assistance for famine relief and/or other disasters or calamities which may happen. In this document, I will describe Singers objective in his work and give his argument with regards to this problem. I will describe 3 counter-arguments to Singer’s view which he tackles, and after that reveal Singer’s reactions to those counter-arguments. I will explain Singer’s idea of marginal utility and also differentiate how it pertains to his argument. I will compare how the ideas of duty and charity alter in his suggested world. To conclude, I will provide my own reaction about this problem supporting singer’s argument. Should wealthier nations have a moral duty to relieve poorer nations if a disastrous event were to happen? I think that we all must contribute in times of need even if this means substantially modifying the way in which we live for the objective of assisting other people so long as it doesn't cause us to suffer.…
- 1300 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
Emily Andrews argues in her essay “Why I Don’t Spare “Spare Change”” that it does more harm than good to give money to beggars on the street rather than giving to an organization such as United Way to help the needy, pointing out that “one cannot be certain that one is giving to a needy individual” and that by giving to a charitable organization “ones money is likely to be used wisely.”…
- 762 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Peter Singer immediately encourages acceptance of his first moral standpoint with his comment: “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (413). At first, what he is asking seems very straight forward, but on closer examination, he is asking for a complete shift in our thinking and our existence. He supports this with the idea that distance makes no difference in our moral obligations. The old adage that charity begins…
- 662 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In the article "The Singer Solution to World Poverty" Peter Singer talks about whether we should save poor children or not by donating money. In his article, Singer helps us realize our response for the deaths of children in poor families by asking the reader to consider hypothetical situations and put these moral issues into real life. In the long run, simply donating money to poor countries do not solve the problem. In my opinion, we should help the poor children to make their own living, by spending…
- 1124 Words
- 5 Pages
Powerful Essays -
The real-world application of Singer’s argument is no doubt difficult to implement, but that cannot be considered a fault due to unreasonable demand. Personal discomfort is to be expected, as Singer’s view on moral obligations and global poverty is uncompromisingly utilitarian. Nevertheless, a minor monetary inconvenience for the affluent should be considered relatively insignificant when compared to the incalculable value of a human life. As there are no major inconsistencies to be seen in Singer’s argumentative framework as a whole, there is merit in accepting his position on the moral obligations towards the global…
- 1239 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Singer begins his essay with a simple question, “What is a human life worth?” (578). “Singer suggests that most people would be unwilling to a value on the life another human”. Singer continues the topic by writing about some of the charitable beliefs of Bill Gates and how it was that Gates developed some of those values over time, which was in part due to hearing about a viral infection that kills around five hundred million children each year. Singer then goes on to give a statistic that around a billion people must survive on the equivalent of “less than one U.S. dollar per day” and that “more than ten million children die every year . . . from avoidable, poverty-related…
- 821 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Singer has a goal that he presents in his argument. He argues basically, that these people who are living wealthy should help other countries in need. He puts forward two main reasons. First, that people should not be dying from inadequate medical care, hungar, or deficient housing. Secondly, if someone is in a position to help prevent a bad state of affair, then they should help, but without sacrificing something of equal importence.…
- 806 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher and professor at Princeton University asks his students the simple question of whether they would save a drowning child from a pond, while wearing they’re bran new pair of expensive shoes. The response was aggressive and passive “How could anyone consider a pair of shoes, or missing an hour or two at work, a good reason for not saving a child’s life?” ¹ Singer continued to argue that “ according to UNICEF, nearly 10 million children under five years old die each year from causes related to poverty.” ² Is not saving a child drowning in a pond right in front of you the same thing as a child half way across the world dying in poverty? Peter Singer’s response would be a big yes, he explains his way of thinking in his book “The Life you can Save” it is like the ten commandment of how to end world poverty.…
- 1227 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
3. The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one’s own rational self-interest and one’s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one’s own happiness. What might the social and political outcome be if that approach were implemented? As far as a political outcome is concerned, I feel that this approach has already been implemented. Politicians only care about themselves and what they can get out of the deal, as power and greed take presence before the people…
- 572 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Audience “Need to know” Statement: We should help the poor because they are fellow human beings. We cannot turn a blind-eye. We are all interdependent.…
- 1079 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
At the age of five, Enrique’s mother, a woman struggling with poverty and two children to feed left him, and his seven year old sister in mexico to find work in America and support them. Eleven years later he set out to find his mother leaving behind his life in mexico and a pregnant girlfriend. it took him eight attempts a journey of 122 days and 12,000 miles across the mexican border. Although once in he was soon deported. Enrique is one of the other estimated 15,000 parentless children because of deportation. Not only is a path to citizenship an ethical obligation of the United states but contrary to the popular belief immigrants actually benefit the U.S. economy by complimenting contrary jobs. which brings me to contention one.…
- 1352 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays