Intro

• Fundamental principle: All lives are equally valuable.
• Two goals with this book: 1) Get us to think about our obligations to those in extreme poverty. 2) Get us to choose to give more of our income to help the poor.
• Offers an alternative perspective to private philanthropy than Winners Take All, suggesting that it really is the ethical responsibility of each person to do the most good they can, and that donating to non-profits is often the most effective way to do so. Singer cites the multitude of flaws with governmental aid programs (that we individually have little control over changing) and the lack of evidence for systemic changes that can actually address extreme global poverty. Regardless, both Singer and Giridharadas emphasise the same ultimate point: the rich can't keep getting richer and still save lives.

1. Saving a Child

• Scenario: Walking past a pond on the way to work and see a small child drowning. You could easily save her, but you'd get your fancy clothes dirty, and be late to work. What to do? Obviously save the kid.
• But this is analogous to us not donating to non-profits that provide clean water, mosquito nets, other resources to children living in poverty that face treatable and preventable death.
• Gapminder Misconceptions Study (Hans Rosling) → extreme poverty rates have fallen immensely, ~80% of children have been vaccinated, only 9% of them live in low-income countries (vs medium and high). People don't know this! Hopelessness at reducing poverty → don't even try.

2. Is it Wrong Not to Help?

• Scenario: Child playing in train tracks, train approaching, you can flip a switch to divert the train to instead crash into your prized car. Do you do it?
• Analogous to saving for our retirement rather than donating — uncertainty if the child will die doesn't make it okay to take the risk, so why does uncertainty about whether your donation will actually save a life?
• What if it's not death at stake? Injured hiker asks for a ride to the hospital; will lose a leg if you don't, but he'll get your car all dirty...
• Thinking ethically = Golden Rule: if saving her child's life from malaria is the most important thing to a mother in Africa, it should rank highly to you, as well.
• Not enough to save one person— you still have money left after that, and after that...
  • My thought: Economics, though? Won't the loss of all the consumer industries lead to unemployment, and lack of wealth overall that can be used to help people? Where is the line?

3. Common Objections to Giving

• "It's up to each person"— this accepts moral relativism, which also would allow people to do terrible crimes if they "think it's okay," can't sometimes accept that principle and sometimes not
• "Having abundance drives capitalism, hard work should be rewarded"— you weren't born into capitalism by virtue of hard work; just as easily could have been born in a low-income country where it wouldn't matter how hard you work
• We actually are harming the poor: best example is climate change, carbon emissions hurt poor the most; other environmental degradation
• "The US gives so much already!" — Foreign aid = only .7% GDP; many other countries do more; we (and those countries) drastically overestimate the amount of aid our country gives.
• "Philanthropy won't solve root causes." — if you have a better, proven idea for systematic change that will work, go for it. If not, philanthropy.
• "If I give now, I'll have less to give later."— Actually suggested that cost of solving problems of global poverty rise exponentially compared to wealth accumulation. Unless you have the skill/talent of Warren Buffet, this doesn't make sense.
• "If all Americans give away all their money, the economy will collapse and no one will have anything to give!" — Precisely because so few give enough, we need people to give more. If enough people ever do start doing this to affect the economy, we can reconsider (a large number of people giving a little would also work, just less likely). Also, bringing the global poor into the economy will create new opportunities.
• "People should preferentially help family and friends." — We can provide for our loved ones and give to the poor; balance is very difficult to strike. Also: distinguish between what is and what ought to be: we do value our own people more than strangers, but this doesn't not giving, ethically.

4. Why Don't We Give More?

• Obviously, we favor our own interests. But we also donate blood, and would probably save the child... so why don't we donate to the poor? Five reasons:

1. The Identifiable Victim: info on one single child leads to max giving; even just providing additional general info on scale of problem, or another specific child reduces amount. Even knowing the receiver who will be helped has already been selected, without specific details, leads to more giving. May be because images and concrete facts play into System 1 (Kahneman) thinking, vs abstractions, words that engage System 2.
2. Parochial thinking: disproportionate focus on problems within our borders. Disasters and poverty far away and affecting strangers engage our emotions less, are less televised, etc. → Americans donate less than to local, smaller problems.
3. Futility: donate more if you think you can help a greater proportion of people over a greater number.
4. Diffusion of responsibility: less likely to help if we aren't the only ones responsible (like bystander effect)
5. Sense of fairness: willingness to help decreases if we feel like we're doing more than other people

• These intuitions all make sense evolutionarily, but that's doesn't justify following them: evolution has no moral direction!

5. Creating a Culture of Giving

• Amount we give depends on our "reference group," more likely to give if we think others in our "group" are, too. Also more likely to give a similar amount as them. Suggests its actually a good thing to be very open about large donations → will cause other people to give more, too!
• Giving pledges, forming communities, the actual Giving Pledge for rich people (goal of shifting the norm for people to give more, sooner, and smarter)
• Effective altruism movement
• Individual commitments like giving 10% of your income; 5% of every sale you make; etc.
• Social media: can help ideas go viral, but not always effective... Ice Bucket Challenge → tons of money for ALS, relatively rare disease affecting mainly people in high-income countries; money has not led to breakthrough cures or preventatives. $ for research is more effective when directed towards diseases affecting low-income countries.
• Tech can also be used to form stronger connections between people and the conditions of poverty and disease— "virtual refugee camp," blindness simulator, etc.
• Corporate capitalist orgs can include philanthropic initiatives, "nudge" employees to give more
• Norm of self interest (that we are suspicious of altruism) → self fulfilling prophecy, bc people not willing to give; unless we expand concept of self interest to include things like "it makes me feel good to help people" as self-interested

6. How much does it cost to save a life?

• Important to evaluate charities/non-profits on more than just overhead vs program costs, bc administrative things can greatly improve effectiveness.
• GiveWell → lots of research into actually how effective charities are
• Top causes: malaria prevention, vitamin A supplementation to prevent blindness and other treatments/surgeries to treat blindness, food fortifications for kids, mass media to change health behaviours, repair and prevention of fistulas (childbirth injury)

7. Improving Aid

• Many critics of foreign aid efforts (William Easterly); it's been basically ineffective. But, figures for how much aid has been given are misleading/inflated: much goes to countries we invaded (Afghanistan, Iraq), and products are required to be US-made, which is much more expensive. Easterly also ignores work of NGOs completely.
• Must continuously evaluate effectiveness of aid, especially when scaling, and act on the results! Sometimes the best thing to do is to quit and try something else.
• Ideal to use RCTs for assessments of aid interventions — orgs from MIT (JPEL) and Yale pioneering many of these methods
• There are changes to government aid that can make it more effective, but individual aid can be much more easily directed in the best way

8. Your Child and the Children of Others

• Are there times when our duty to others supercedes our duty to our family?
• Clearly, makes sense to provide for basic needs for your children first. But what about putting your child's life at risk to save many, many more?
• More relevantly: should you send your child to an expensive private school, when you could be donating that money to save the lives of others?
• Risk of death from donating a kidney is lower than that of playing NFL football...
• Story of Paul Farmer and PIH, internal struggle over obligations to family and humanity/all lives
• Cannot set impossibly high standards, however — must be realistic to draw more people in
• Idea that it is completely fine to provide for your own family, but once they are okay, we must expand the circle of family — argument in favor of taxing inheritances (or not leaving fortunes for your children)
• Still, difficult to define "okay," and having committed, loving parents is essential to raising healthy, good kids. And sometimes "indulgent" investments in things like private universities open doors for them to do more good in their lives.

9. Asking Too Much?

• So, if being a good person = giving until what you have to give up is equal to the good that you would be doing, how much should we give?
• If there is an obligation on the affluent as a collective to solve poverty, is the obligation of the individual just to do our "fair share?" Consider child in pond scenario: would it be okay to leave four other kids drowning if there were four other adults with you that didn't save a kid?
• If Americans donated just half the amount they spent on alcohol in a year, they'd cover their "share" to raise people above the extreme poverty line (just a very basic thought experiment, but gives a sense of scale)
• Different conceptions of fairness, makes any absolute answer impossible...

10.  A Realistic Standard

• Again, this varies — can't hold everyone to the highest standard bc human nature works against it, but can excuse ourselves bc human nature
• Morality = sliding scale, not black or white! People like Gates can be praised
• Suggestions @ website for % of income to give
• Another idea: donate the same amount you spend on any "luxury" item
• Also, giving can just make you happier/more fulfilled