Just a thought

I don’t normally ask that you read all the way through my articles, but I hope for this one u at least make it to the third paragraph, jsut a little article we discussed about.

Excerpt from One World by Peter Singer, in the Chapter “One Community”

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 disused 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 further down the track he sees the small figure of a child playing in a tunnel and 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 since the barrier at the end of the siding is in disrepair, 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 . But for many years to come Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents .
Bob’s conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong. But then, we too have opportunities to save the lives of children.We can give to organizations like UNICEF and Oxfam Australia. How much would we have to give one of these organisations to have a high probability of saving the life of a child threatened by easily preventable diseases?In its fundraising material, the US Committee for UNICEF says that a donation of US$17 will provide immunisation `to protect a child for life against the six leading child-killing and maiming diseases : measles, polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, and tuberculosis’, while a donation of US$25 will provide `over 400 packets of oral rehydration salts to help save the lives of children suffering from diarrheal dehydration’ . But these figures do not tell us how many lives are saved by the immunisation or rehydration salts, and they do not include the cost of raising the money, administrative expenses, and delivering aid where it is most needed. Unger (an expert) called some experts to get a rough estimate of these costs and the number of lives likely to be saved and came up with a figure of around US$200 per child’s life saved. Assuming that this estimate is not too far astray, 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 at least US$200 to one of the organisations listed above.Unless, that is, there is some morally important difference between the two situations. What might that be? Is it the practical uncertainties about whether aid will really reach the people who need it? Nobody who knows the world of overseas aid can doubt that such uncertainties exist. But Unger’s figure of US$200 to save a child’s life was reached after he had made conservative assumptions about the proportion of the money donated that will actually reach its target . One genuine difference between Bob and those who can donate to overseas aid organisations but don’t is that only Bob can save the child in the tunnel, whereas there are hundreds of millions of people who can give US$200 to overseas aid organisations.
The problem is that most of them aren’t doing it.Does this mean that it is all right not to do it?There will always be another child whose life you could save for another US$200 .Are we therefore obliged to keep giving until we have nothing left?At what point can we stop? Consider Bob. How far past losing the Bugatti should he go?Imagine that Bob had got his foot stuck in the track of the siding, and if he diverted the train, then it would amputate his big toe before going on to ram his car. Should he still throw the switch?What if it would amputate his foot? His entire leg?Or is this situation different ? If so, how?Only when the sacrifices become very significant indeed would most people be prepared to say that Bob does nothing wrong when he decides not to throw the switch. Of course, most people could be wrong;But consider for yourself the level of sacrifice that you would demand of Bob, and then think about how much money you would have to give away in order to make a sacrifice that is roughly equal to that. It’s almost certainly much, much more than US$200. For most people who are comfortably off, it could easily be more like $200,000. When Bob first grasped the dilemma that faced him as he stood by that railway switch, he must have thought how extraordinarily unlucky he was, to be placed in a situation in which he must choose between the life of an innocent child and the sacrifice of most of his savings. But he was not unlucky at all. We are all in that situation.…

We should feel a greater sense of urgency to eliminate poverty. A useful symbolic figure would be 1 per cent, and this might. indeed be closer to what it would take to eliminate, rather than halve, global poverty.
We could therefore propose, as a public policy likely to produce good consequences, that anyone who has enough money to spend on the luxuries and frivolities so common in affluent societies should give at least 1 cent in every dollar of their income to those who have trouble getting enough to eat, clean water to drink, shelter from the elements, and basic health care. Those who do not meet this standard should be seen as failing to meet their fair share of a global responsibility, and therefore as doing something that is seriously morally wrong. This is the minimum, not the optimal, donation. Those who think carefully about their ethical obligations will realise that-since not everyone will be giving even 1 per cent-they should do far more. But if for the purposes of changing our society’s standards in a manner that has a realistic chance of success, we focus on the idea of a bare minimum that we can expect everyone to do, there is something to be said for seeing a 1 per cent donation of annual income to overcome world poverty as the minimum that one must do to lead a morally decent life. To give that amount requires no moral heroics . To fail to give it shows indifference to the indefinite continuation of dire poverty and avoidable, poverty-related deaths.