The Life You Can Save: How To Do Your Part To End World Poverty

“We can liken our situation to an attempt to reach the summit of an immense mountain. For all the eons of human existence, we have been climbing up through dense clouds. We haven’t known how far we have to go, nor whether it is even possible to get to the top. Now at last we have emerged from the mist and can see a route up the remaining steep slopes and onto the summit ridge. The peak still lies some distance ahead. There are sections of the route that will challenge our abilities to the utmost, but we can see that the ascent is feasible.”

Singer employs a metaphor to show that human beings are finally in a position to end absolute poverty and its adjacent ills. For all of human history up to this point, that possibility was out of reach. Eliminating poverty will not be easy, Singer writes, but it is feasible. The clearing above the clouds signifies the clarity with which humanity can progress if it has the courage and intelligence to do so.

“This suggests that when prompted to think in concrete terms, about real individuals, most of us consider it obligatory to lessen the serious suffering of innocent others, even at some cost (even a high cost) to ourselves.”

Singer contends that most people believe that the welfare of others is more important than their own material comfort. People’s behavior on a concrete, individual level reflects this belief, but on an abstract and anonymous level, they fail to act on it. In Part 2, Singer will show how this discrepancy stems from human nature and how it can be overcome.

“First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care  are bad.

Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening,

without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.

Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death          

from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything

nearly as important.

Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing

something wrong.”

This syllogism is the basic argument around which Singer orients the entire book. The book consists of a series of presentations of this argument, defenses against counterarguments, considerations of impediments to implementing the conclusion, and arguments for the necessity of that conclusion. Singer wants his readers to accept the moral and logical truth of his claims, which he here presents in their simplest and clearest form.

“Giving to strangers, especially those beyond one’s community, may be good, but we don’t think of it as something we have to do. But if the basic argument presented above is right, then what many of us consider acceptable behavior must be viewed in a new, more ominous light. When we spend our surplus on concerts or fashionable shoes, on fine dining and good wines, or on holidays in faraway lands, we are doing something wrong.”

This claim follows on the heels of Singer’s presentation of his fundamental argument. It suggests that even though the argument may seem like common sense to many people, those same people are not acting on the reality of those propositional truths. The daily life of the average middle-class Westerner, filled with small pleasures and punctuated by unnecessary vacations, is immoral.

“You’ve probably already had this thought: You’ve worked hard to get where you are now, so haven’t you earned a right to enjoy it? This seems both fair and reflective of our basic economic values. Yet, when thinking about fairness, you might also consider that if you are a middle-class person in a developed country, you were fortunate to be born into social and economic circumstances that make it possible for you to live comfortably if you work hard and have the right abilities.”

Singer notices that people often defend their middle-class lifestyles against his altruistic moralizing with appeals to fairness. They believe they worked hard for their earnings and therefore deserve to spend them as they see fit. Singer asks the reader to expand their sense of fairness. It is unfair that some are born in countries with infrastructure that supports social mobility while others may be forever trapped in poverty based solely on geographical chance.

“In their dealings with corrupt dictators in developing countries, international corporations are akin to people who knowingly buy stolen goods, with the difference that the international legal and political order recognizes the corporations not as criminals in possession of stolen goods but as the legal owners of the goods they have bought.”

Singer here pulls back the curtains on the affluence of the Western world—particularly the United States. It lends credence to the aforementioned idea that the distribution of wealth is unfair. It is unfair not merely by chance but rather because of the active corruption of political leadership and international corporations. In short, wealth is stolen from some nations and transferred to others.

“If we pause to think about it, we know that ‘the mass’ is made up of individuals, each with needs as pressing as ‘the one,’ and our reason tells us that it is better to act to help that individual plus an additional individual than to help just the one, and even better to help those two individuals plus a third individual, and so on. We know that our deliberative system is right, yet for Mother Teresa as for many others, this knowledge lacks the impact of something that tugs on our emotions the way a single needy person does.”

The difference between the emotional response system and the deliberative system is crucial, Singer believes, for understanding the psychology of giving. People do not give in the most rational or effective way possible because their giving is based in emotional responses; the unfairly suffering individual victim triggers sympathy in a way the mass of persons subject to similar plights do not.

“Patterns of behavior that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce may, in today’s very different circumstances, be of no benefit to us or to our descendants. Even if some evolved in­tuition or way of acting were still conducive to our survival and reproduction, however, that would not, as Darwin himself recognized, make it right. Evolution has no moral direction. An evolutionary understanding of human nature can explain the differing intuitions we have when we are faced with an individual rather than with a mass of people, or with people close to us rather than with those far away, but it does not justify those feelings.”

Singer discusses the psychological factors that prevent more giving to those in absolute poverty. In this quoted passage, Singer combats the naturalistic fallacy—that is, the idea that the way things currently are dictates how things should be. Singer believes that regardless of their evolutionary basis or intuitive appeal, explanations of the failure to give do not morally legitimize the situation.

“Similarly, today when people give large sums with a lot of fanfare, we suspect that their real motive is to gain social status by their philanthropy, and to draw attention to how rich and generous they are. But does this really matter? Isn’t it more important that the money go to a good cause than that it be given with ‘pure’ motives? And if by sounding a trumpet when they give, they encourage others to give, that’s better still.”

Singer, as a utilitarian, strongly emphasizes the consequences of giving (and giving to the right place) and de-emphasizes the motive for the gift. If the goal is to lift people out of malnourishment and absolute poverty, it is irrelevant why people give (except insofar as that information can be used to encourage more gift-giving in the future). Some may consider it unseemly to make donations publicly rather than anonymously, but they shouldn’t, Singer writes: Public giving encourages others to give as well.

“There is plenty of other evidence all around us that people act from motives other than self-interest. They leave tips when dining at restaurants to which they will never return, sometimes even in towns they don’t expect to ever visit again. They donate blood to strangers although that cannot possibly increase their own prospects of getting blood if they should ever need it. They vote in elections when the chance that their vote will tip the balance is vanishingly small. All this suggests that the norm of self-interest is an ideological belief, resistant to refutation by the behavior we encounter in everyday life.”

In the United States, according to Singer, there is a tacit ideological belief in the self-interested nature of every individual. Singer points to many instances in which this belief falls apart. He then uses a distinction between broad and narrow self-interest: If self-interest is construed broadly, then everything is self-interested, but broad self-interest would not be a lamentable moral problem because it inevitably leads to charitable giving. People have this altruistic impulse, and it would be culturally beneficial to reinforce it rather than to downplay its existence.

“Unfortunately, the exposure of inefficient or downright fraudulent charities often hurts donations to more effective groups. You may well not want to offer your hundred dollars if there’s some chance that only twenty-three of them will be used effectively.”

Singer discusses Charity Navigator, a website that published a list exposing charities with the highest administrative costs. This had the adverse effect of harming broader charitable contributions. This exposure of inefficient groups may feed into the feeling of futility Singer tackles in Chapter 4. Charitable contribution decreases when people feel that the aid agencies responsible for relieving extreme poverty are corrupt.

“Eventually, they realized something that seemed to them quite extraordinary: The reason they were not getting the information they wanted from the charities was that the charities themselves didn’t have it […] If the information didn’t exist, then both individual donors and major foundations were giving away huge sums with little idea what effect their gifts were having. How could hundred of billions of dollars be spent without some evidence that the money is doing good?”

Karnofsky and Hassenfield’s research revealed the need for statistical information regarding effectiveness of charitable contributions. For Singer, this is a serious moral issue because altruistic contribution is only good if it is effective. Acquiring evidence of the effectiveness of various agencies is crucial for maximizing the value of giving.

“In 1967, the year WHO began a concerted effort to wipe it out, smallpox was still killing 2 million people a year. Twelve years later, it was gone, banished to two highly secure laboratories.”

This is one of the many figures that Singer includes in order to combat futile thinking and make clear just how successful properly organized aid campaigns can be. The elimination of smallpox, at one point a major global threat, indicates the value of such efforts. It also serves as a reminder of achievements often forgotten and unacknowledged.

“The money would have come out of the budget for the project, with the result that microcredit could be extended to only half as many villages as would otherwise be possible. Oxfam did not go ahead with the randomized trial. This is an understandable decision, but it would probably pay, over the long term, for organizations to set aside some money specifically for proper studies of the effectiveness of their programs. It is better to help only half as many people, but be sure that you are really helping them, than to risk helping no one, especially if a successful project can then be scaled up to reach many more.”

Singer discusses a difficult moral question facing aid agencies like Oxfam. Sometimes they have the money to conduct studies that would provide valuable data on the effectiveness of their aid. However, conducting these studies takes funding away from actual aid. In the long run, this may pay off, so Singer is an advocate of such studies. As a utilitarian, his goal is to alleviate as much suffering as possible, even if that means more have to suffer in the short term than would otherwise be the case.

“Before we had that well, our children used to die. Now they do not.”

Singer tells the story of a philanthropist who visited a village to which he donated enough for the drilling of a well. The well water created a very significant social change, summarized in this simple statement from one of the villagers. The blunt and straightforward statement—that children died and now they don’t—contrasts starkly with the financial calculations and figuring throughout the chapter. Its impact reveals that on the other end of financial and philanthropic maneuvering lie extremely important and identifiable gains.

“If you have a spare $450 and are thinking about whether to spend it on yourself or to use it to help others, it won’t be easy to find anything that you need nearly as much as a fourteen-year-old girl with a fistula needs an operation. If you have only $50, you can make the same comparison between what the money means to you and what it could mean to someone who is unable to see because of an easily removable cataract.”

The abstract imperative, as expressed in the second premise of Singer’s central argument, is that people have a duty to rectify the ills of extreme poverty as long as it doesn’t require them to sacrifice something of equal or greater value. In Part 3, Singer presents specific data about the precise costs of various projects and operations that can help real people. Here Singer reiterates his fundamental ethical point but colors it with particular, individualized content. This usefully draws on the psychological effect of the “identifiable victim” in order to prompt the reader to action.

“No one really knows whether poverty on a global scale could be overcome by a truly substantial amount of aid provided without political interference. It’s never been tried. The political and bureaucratic constraints that encumber official aid make private donations to effective nongovernmental agencies all the more important. The worst that can be said about aid with any certainty is that in the past, a lot of official aid has been misconceived and misdirected and has done little good.”

Singer challenges critics who claim that aid is ineffective by arguing that they do not have the proper data to assert this. Historically, most aid has come through official, political channels, and that aid is often “misconceived” because it’s generally not unconditional: The political authority dispensing the aid often wants something in return. The effectiveness of the aid was therefore not of sole or even primary concern.

“If Farmer doesn’t spend as much time as he would like with his family, it is because he is driven by the thought: ‘If I don’t work this hard, someone will die who doesn’t have to.’ He just cannot accept the fact that people are dying of diseases for which treatments exist. To him, that’s a sin. ‘One can never work overtime for the poor,’ he has said. ‘We’re only scrambling to make up for our deficiencies.’”

Singer refers here to Paul Farmer, the cofounder of Partners in Health, an organization that brings modern medical treatment to those who wouldn’t otherwise have access to it. He understands the tensions between duties to the family and the duty to those in great need. Implicitly understood, by both Singer and Farmer, is the exceptional moral importance of relieving the suffering of those in dire circumstances. The conundrum is the difficulty this causes for family life.

“That is why the conflict that Farmer and Kravinsky feel so acutely—between being an ideal parent and acting on the idea that all human life is of equal value—is real and irresolvable. The two will always be in tension. No principle of obligation is going to be widely accepted unless it recognizes that parents will and should love their own children more than the children of strangers, and, for that reason, will meet the basic needs of their children before they meet the needs of strangers. But this doesn’t mean that parents are justified in providing luxuries for their children ahead of the basic needs of others.”

Singer does not choose a side between the competing duties of parenthood and care for the children of strangers. Instead, he opts to put limits on them both. A person should not neglect their own children for the children of the poor, as doing so would not meet the psychological needs of their own child. On the other hand, one should not neglect the suffering and poverty of children in need in order to buy one’s own children unnecessary luxuries. The duties are in tension, and they are both real.

“Is the fact that other people are not doing their fair share a sufficient reason for allowing a child to die when you could easily rescue that child?”

Singer asks a rhetorical question to which the answer, intuitively, is no. However, those who argue that affluent persons are only morally required to do their fair share are implicitly asserting that, once that condition is met, it is acceptable for an easily rescued child to die. Singer uses this question to bring home the point that fairness is not what matters in this context. In might be unfair that some people do not contribute to alleviating the problem, but the problem persists, and because it is so serious, it must be addressed even when that means some must do far more than is fair. 

“Many people get great pleasure from dressing stylishly, eating well, and listening to music on a good stereo system. I’m all for pleasure—the more the better, other things being equal […] The problem is that other things are not equal. We are living in the midst of an emergency in which about 15,000 children die every day, mostly from preventable causes and treatable diseases, millions of women are living with fistulas that could be repaired, and millions of people whose sight could have been saved, or can be restored, are blind.”

Singer, as a utilitarian philosopher, hopes to maximize the total amount of pleasure in the world but also to minimize the amount of suffering. The problem in enjoying luxuries is not inherent in the pleasant experience but rather in the fact that those pleasures come at the expense of those suffering and often dying from great hardships. The suffering of those in extreme poverty, then, counts for far more in the moral equation than the potential comfort and happiness brought about by luxuries.

“At first glance, we might think that there should not be a gap between what we believe we ought to do and what we advocate. That overlooks the fact that for moral rules to be widely accepted and acted upon, they have to be attuned to our evolved human nature, with all its quirky relics of our tribal past.” 

At the end of the book Singer proposes a much laxer standard of giving than readers might have expected. That is because Singer’s primary argument develops the idea of an ideal standard. However, given the discussion of human nature and a person’s duty to their own family members, that moral ideal might not be practically implementable on a wide scale. It is perfectly legitimate, Singer concludes, to hold oneself to the ideal standard while advocating a realistic approach, especially when the realistic goal still far exceeds the present reality.

“Hence praise and blame, at least when they are given publicly, should follow the standard that we publicly advocate—that is, the standard which can be expected to have the best consequences—rather than the higher standard that we might apply to our own conduct […] If you have gone beyond the usual moral standards, we should praise you for doing so, rather than blame you for not doing even more.”

If the standard for praise were the ideal, then it would be exceedingly rare for anyone to receive praise. The only praiseworthy people would be moral saints. Instead, Singer writes, we should appreciate and praise all those who meet or exceed the basic standard of 5% of total earnings. Since praise and blame are socially useful for changing behavior, they should be consciously used in that way—that is, to encourage more giving rather than making praiseworthy standards seem unreachable.