The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty,   ISBN:9781400067107

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Well, I asked for it. I ordered it! I knew what I was getting into. I already knew the subject. And yet¡­I experienced the blow-to-the- gut speechlessness, the gasping for spiritual air, which we face on the rare occasions in our lives where truth is so stark, so absolute, so incontrovertible, that we need to undergoseismic shifts before we can respond. Like the Grinch, whose heart actually grew four sizes, we humans, set in our routines and habits of thought, can actually be staggered and changed. Reading this book has staggered me.

On the first page of the preface, Singer delivers an ice-water dose of perspective: "What if I told you that you, too can save a life? Even many lives? Do you have a bottle of water or a can of soda..? If you are paying for something to drink when safe drinking water comes out of the tap, you have money to spend on things you don¡¯t really need. Around the world, a billion people struggle to live on less than you paid for that drink."

Singer's outstanding, discomfiting book is not a polemic. It explores issues of why loving, giving, altruistic people do not tend to give to the world¡¯s poorest people. Factual discussions of sociological studies of human responses in a myriad of situations shed light on the complexity of our inadequate responses. He explores which charities make best use of funds, and the actual cost of saving a life. Much of it is written in a matter-of-fact tone, but with a brick-by-brick amassing of overwhelming evidence which builds the watertight case that each of us, and "we" collectively, are failing THE ethical and moral litmus test of our time, and that we MUST change, and CAN eradicate extreme poverty.

My belief is that world poverty exists because people like us find it acceptable. We don't approve of poverty, but at some level, "out of sight is out of mind," and we tacitly accept. We are complicit in allowing people to go to bed hungry, drop out of school, and die young. What if we weren't?

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I was prepared to hate this book, because I have found Singer's writings to be arrogant, sanctimonious, and preachy. There are shades of this attitude in this book, as when he says "with the simple act of saving money for retirement, we are effectively refusing to use that money to help save lives. ... 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." (pp. 14, 15) He later sums up his position as "in order to be good people, we must give until if we gave more, we would be sacrificing something nearly as important the bad things our donation can prevent." (p. 140) In other words, according to Singer, as long as there is poverty, we must give until either there is no poverty, or we are on the verge of being poor; as long as there is preventable child mortality, we must give until either there is no more preventable mortality, or our own children are on the verge of succumbing to preventable disease; as long as there is polluted water, we must give until either water is clean throughout the world, or we are on the verge of using polluted water ourselves.

Now, I know insufferable, sanctimonious people who have some bizarre morality or other, they try to live it themselves, and they are contemptuous of those who do not share their values, or who do but fail to live up to it. Indeed, I know more of these people that I care to know, and I do not give them an inch. I assure such people that I have as much contempt for them as they for me, and self-righteousness is almost as venal a sin as selfishness and cruelty. Thus my being prepared to hate this book.

But in fact, Singer recognizes that there is something in his moral theory that is deeply at odds with human nature. For instance, he agrees that good parents prefer the well-being of their children to that of abstract poor children around the world. It is human nature, Singer agrees, to prefer the health of one's own to that of unknown others. He also agrees that while most of us will risk considerable harm and personal loss to help a stranger drowning in a lake, but would not think of providing equal help to unknown poor individuals around the world. Singer thus makes the reasonable pitch that, given human nature, we should at least give 5% of our income to cure poverty, and he asserts that this will indeed cure poverty around the world.

Peter Singer comes across in this book as a humble, caring person, suggesting a course of action that, while far short of fully moral, does not impose draconian measures upon us. The least we could do is to give the 5%, one is tempted to conclude. If you agree with Singer, I encourage you to do just that. However, there are serious problems with Singer's argument, and it is not clear to me that his approach is the approach most likely to cure world poverty.

There are two big problems with Singer's argument. The first is that his moral theory is severely compromised, and hence not to be believed. One obvious property of a correct moral theory is that it be internally consistent. Singer's inconsistency lies in holding that a fully moral person sacrifices his children on behalf of all children in the world, while recognizing that being a good parent involves preferring the well-being of your children to the well-being of all children. This internal contradiction undermines his whole argument, because there must be some correct morality in which we trade off our personal desires against the needs of others, and Singer has no criterion whatever for determining how that tradeoff should be made. All he says is that saving the life of a child is more important that drinking an expensive soft drink, and 5% of your income is the minimum you should give to charity. What if I just disagree with these off-the-cuff valuations? Certainly most Americans disagree in practice, since even those who contribute considerably to charity prefer to fight local poverty, breast cancer, helping co-ethnics, or saving the whales to combating world hunger. In short, because Singer's ethic is internally inconsistent, it is wrong, and we need not accept any part of it. I do not accept any part of it, personally.

The second problem with Singer's argument is that he has an incorrect model of world poverty. Poverty in third world countries is mostly caused by the corruption and exploitative behavior of the powerful. Poverty in the modern world is not generally the product of neglect, but rather the result of the rich and powerful lining their pockets at the expense of the less powerful. Singer envisions poverty as a "trap" that we can catapult people out of, as though being poor is like being at the bottom of a deep hole, in need of a ladder to make it to freedom. "We can enable [the poor] to join the worldwide community," he claims (p. xii) "if only we can help them get far enough out of poverty to seize the opportunity." What he does not realize is that in many places in the world, improving the position of the poor simply increases the incentive of their exploiters to grab from them even more than usual.

Singer understands, but then proceeds to ignore, the many differences between direct helping and third-world giving. In the direct case, you have complete control over fate of the child, whereas in the indirect case, there are many others who could take your place, there are many intermediaries who could passively or actively nullify your charity, and the forces that cause poverty could also appropriate your charity. For instance, a woman abused by her drunken husband may be capable of providing a decent life for her children and herself if she had a cow, but if she were given a cow, her husband's family would simply take it from her and eat well for a month.

The fact that poverty is caused by exploitation is perhaps why some of the most compelling forms of poverty relief takes the form of providing medical care, such as Doctors Without Borders, and fighting diseases and polluted water (as Gates' work on malaria) by experts from developed countries. Those who made you poor or keep you poor have nothing to gain from taking the eyesight that has been restored to you, or from re-polluting your water.

Singer thus sometimes seems incredibly naïve. "It seems scarcely possible," he says, "that if we truly set out to reduce poverty, and put resources into doing so that match the scale of the problem -- including resources to evaluate past failures and learn from our mistakes -- we will be unable to find ways of making a positive impact." Yet the whole world conspires to render Singer's hope futile. Even the aid agencies are populated by people who favor their personal professional reputations over combating poverty, in situations where they have no real incentive to help the needy rather than hob-knobbing with celebrities for photo shoots.

In my opinion, a case can be made for helping the poor in areas where this help cannot be appropriated by exploiters, and for supporting human rights organizations that combat corruption and supporting democratic movements around the world that undermine the objective conditions of world poverty.

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I had to read it for a class, otherwise I would have stopped at page 3. It is the kind of "Scholarism" that sets up phoney arguments then conveniently knocks them down. Gee, you wrote the question knowing how you were going to answer it, how smart you are.
Yeah, I know, he's a well recognized author, but I don't need to be told to contribute to his specific causes and that if I just gave up my Latte's I could save a life. I wouldn't give it a total zero if I could because the chapter on which organizations to give to if you want to is good. But a balanced book would have been much more effective than a long lecture on how priviledged I am.

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Peter Singer discusses reasons why people don't send money overseas to poorer countries, then shifts gears and proposes a simple solution in which wealthier Americans have a percentage of their income sent overseas. Why go to lengths to try to explain why people don't voluntarily redistribute more of their income to strangers, trusting nonprofit organizations and governments to use the money wisely and efficiently, and then not really address those reasons? Singer also ignores many variables affecting one's financial situation (e.g., how many dependents one has, where one lives, how old one is, how much debt or expenses one has, how much one already gives to other causes) and how those variables affect one's charitable contributions. Singer bases his proposal on income only. This is not a book rooted in basic economics. This book is more of an activist political policy book than a philosophical book.

The book is essentially an argument for redistributing wealth from America to other countries. It's basic premise is that if giving to someone who has less than you does not harm you, you should give to the other person. If you extend the basic argument that Singer uses in this book to its logical conclusion, you get something like Marx's principle "from each according to his ability to each according to his need". So it's only fair to quote Singer in his own book on Marx: "The principle is not original to Marx, and Marx places little emphasis upon it. He refers to it only in order to criticize those socialists who worry too much about how goods would be distributed in a socialist society. Marx thought it a mistake to bother about working out a fair or just principle of distribution. He was even prepared to allow that, given the capitalist mode of production, capitalist distribution was the only one that was 'fair'. His point was that production was what mattered, and once 'the productive forces have increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly', distribution will look after itself."

You could apply Singer's argument to reducing global poverty to any other need as well. Why not more income redistribution for global health care? More for global education? More for global climate management? Where does the income redistribution end? Singer does not address this.

If you are an uncritical fan of income redistribution ("e.g., doing something is better than doing nothing") and just want a "call to action", you will love this book. If you think a simplistic income redistribution plan has flaws, you will not find those flaws addressed in this book. In any case, it's worth reading and discussing, as are some of Singer's other books.

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We've all seen movies in which somebody is trapped in a life-threatening situation.

They cry out, "Help me - do something".

And somebody comes to the rescue.

Except, as Peter Singer argues in The Life You Can Save, if they are the poorest of the poor, crying out in destitution and need. Here, all too often their cry is not heard or is ignored, and nobody comes to the rescue.

Singer's point is that we need to do something.

The book starts off on a jarring note with a simple illustration that the author uses in the classes he teaches in Practical Ethics. Here is the situation: A child is in danger, and will likely lose his life if nothing is done. A passer by happens upon the scene. Saving the life of the child will involve minor inconvenience (being late for work) and a small financial cost (a dry cleaning bill and a new pair of shoes). What should the passer by do?

Invariably the students are indignant that the question is even asked as it seems obvious that the life of a child is precious, and that herculean effort, let alone minor inconvenience, ought to be expended to save that life.

Why then, Singer asks, do we not feel the same way about the thousands of children dying every day as a result of extreme poverty, given that the cost of saving any one of those lives is typically inconsequential.

The exploration of this moral inconsistency makes up the substance of this very good book.

In it the author examines common objections to giving, the economics and efficiency of aid, and ultimately develops a proposal for a new standard of giving. As he shows, if implemented, the well off of the world could continue to enjoy an exceedingly high standard of living, while significantly impacting, if not eliminating world poverty.

This is a convicting and a very challenging book. My youngest daughter, bound for a term of study abroad in Ghana, refuses to discuss it with me, stating only that it made her very angry.

Agree, or disagree, the author has made points that are hard to ignore.