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Peter Singer in his paper Famine, Affluence and Mortality believe that people of higher wealth should be morally obligated to donate more to humanitarian causes than what is considered normal in western cultures. It’s Singers premice that if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance we ought to do it. Singer makes some good points throughout his paper such as the drowning child example, where if you’re not sacrificing anything of moral significance, why not help? In this paper, I argue that we have a moral responsibility to help those in need if it does not affect our everyday way of life. I will be evaluating this claim from Singer using Acemoglu and Robinson’s book Why Nations Fail and responding to an objection of Singers claim.
In Acemoglu and Robinson’s book Why Nations Fail, they do a good job of outlining why certain nations prosper and why others fail. They argue that there is an abundance of reasons why a nation fails such as geography, climate, religion, economy, and most importantly the political institutions. They talk about how inclusive nations tend to be more successful than those who are exclusive. Institutions are ‘inclusive’ when many people have a say in political decision-making, as opposed to cases where a small group of people control political institutions and are unwilling to change. This leads you back to Singer, and how he says we should be donating our wealth to countries such as Bengal. This leads us to the question, “Why should we be donating our money to exclusive countries?” This causes us to be skeptical of donating money to a country that is not politically stable and doesn’t have proper infrastructure. Singer does not talk much about where the money is going to be spent, and if it’s going to be used properly. Relief is considered a short-term solution to a much bigger problem. Yes, the relief will help in the short term, but over time it will simply delay the even bigger problems. You can mask the issues, but until you have an inclusive institution you will inevitably fail over time.
An objection to be made to this on Singers behalf could be even though it masks the problem, why let these people suffer? This goes back to Singers example of the drowning child and giving up something insignificant to save a life. Singer states, “Nearly 10 million children die every year from avoidable, poverty-related causes. And it wouldn’t take a lot to save the lives of these children. We can do it. For the cost of a pair of shoes, perhaps, you could save the life of a child. […] There’s some luxury that you could do without.”(1) Relating this to Acemoglu and Robinson, why would you not save a life if it didn’t impact you in a significant way? Yes, it may mask the issue, but that doesn’t mean we should let innocent people suffer for something they can’t control. If everyone who is relatively well-off donated money to these countries, we would be better off.
Going back to Acemoglu and Robinson’s thesis that economic prosperity depends on the inclusiveness of economic and political institutions. I feel as though this statement undermines Singers claim for the most part. Yes, we should not let people suffer because of these political institutions, but we are masking a bigger issue. In Why Nations Fail they do a great job outlining why certain nations are successful and why others fail. When you’re donating to causes that send money to a country with poor political institutions you’re just masking the bigger issue. This has less to do with money and more to do with political institutions of the country. In Chapter 1 of Why Nations Fail, they give an example of Nogales, in which half lies in Mexico and the other in Arizona. In the Arizonan half, the average income is $30,000 U.S dollars, the majority of adults are high school graduates, the roads are paved, there are law and order, and most live until over 65. In the Southern half, the average income is three times less and everything else is similarly worse. It all comes down to the economic and political institutions that help run the country as if you don’t have proper institutions, you will fail no matter how much money you throw at the problem.
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