Essay

World Hunger and PovertY

The devastation caused by the lndran ()cean tsunami disaster in December 2004

prompteo

massive relief elTorts by many natrons n"i'Jing g"n"to" Oonations from many individuals'

In 2005, pans ofAlabama, Louisiana'"ani f'Ait'i'iippi *"t" A"vastated by Hurricane Katrina'

leaving many people without tood' *0"'' "r""tti"itv' u"1, ll]"1^Ylli ]"*ntlv'

in Octobcr

2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated fo tiun' oi ttt"

-Cutibboan' as well as the mid-Atlantic'

and northeastern Uni,"o stut"', "uuii 3 tuny A"utt"' d"'ttoying

home^s and businesses' and

arain leaving survivo$ without b^i" i"""tJit"t etcording to a 2008 report by the World

Bank. 1.4 bitlion of the wodd's poi"iuttn livos in extreryLp9y94y"-*rhich it defines as

not having enough income t 'n""' i"";t rnou basic neud(aFese disasters and the World

Bank's statistics call attention to the fr'ct that disease' famine' poverty'.and displacement

are

widespread evils that especially attlict ti"-""onotni"ufly aisadvantaged and may afflict those

who live in relativety *"ultny "ountri, ,. Moral reflection on hunger' poverty'

and other such

;"'t"s';;;;i; ;" i"ilowing iuestions about the obligations of those more affluent count'es

and their cltlzens:

. Are economically advantaged p:ople morally required to participate in a sclreme ol

redistribulion so lhat ".lrn"

orini 'li"urtt' go"' to p"opt" *tto are severely economically

disadvantaged? . Itso, whatbest explains this obligation?

Onc way in which we can think abcut these questions is by focusing on the widely recog-

nized duty of benelicence or ctrarrtll"Jiiln is rougt'ty thc duty to help ihose in dire

need'

1. TFIE DUTY OF BENEFI(IENCE

Lct us assume thcre is a duty of berrelicence' and let us assume furthcr tha: th" o"tl':-i

ia"lr""""l""tt fbr those who arc in a position to help others Thcrc are three questrons

we can raise about this duty. r'lr.t, ,ft*J it ,ft" guestion of scoPe-to whom is this duty

owed?Assuming {or the sake ofsir plicily that wi are concernedjust with members o[the

current worltl population *tto ut" 'l n""i oi help' does this obligation extend to distant

strangers? The second question is ut'out-t-tte ity'i /jo/ltijnt-for those who can afford to do

318

2 Thcor) Mccts Practicc 643

so, how mucb are they morally required to sacrifica? The third qucstion is about

Jlr€xBtlr-

how strong is one's obligation t" ;il;;;; ; need when doing so conflicts with other

moral duties (such as educaong to";i """ "ftifAry'{t).a1f wittr various nonmoral roasons'

for- acti on 'including the pursult t' t"r' t-o""ti* hobbies.or various artistic e'ndgav-ors?

one can imagiie'a.v"'y tt'ong auif oi b')nbficence according to which the economically

advantaged havc an uutigution to uii ;i"* "^ni"g"O i"oi"iOuaG worldwide' which requires

not only that they ru.'iti"" o g'"ut u;ou; oi *tt'ut tb"y now have inan effort to help those

in neerl. but also that this oUtigatrol toi"tf i' u' *'ong as any conJlic(ing duty they might

have. On the other huno' on" "un "utit"y i' t'"g*t '

t"t;l tog^t-t}lll:1'O"t " tuch weaker

duty of beneficence ulong on" o' to'" ol tlie Lhree dimcnsions just described'

1

i

2. THEORY UEEIqIBAClicll

)I

d d 1S

ld re

SE

ES

of llv

og- t.

rsa .rons duty ,f the

rhrce main theoreticar approaches tolh;, il:fi ] ['J:',h::l:l?l,f #[1il:J"T?:"iffin this chapter's selections: conseq moral theory. Let us consider them

in or( cr'

Consequenti alism

A purely consequentialist moral theory of Ihe sort described in chapter 1' section

2A' is

iliH*'i:'":'"i*:tffi x":strlil;*l;m6p*LH:ff IiT'::::l ^ul"i

ii*.v consequences' *:1* i r",i:1, $T:i:;:Tilf fffi?,""Til"*iifi

lll,i"".:lijj;il''J;i.lilt"l'l#fiY;,,;'";;;,iiv reads ro.ramine' Neo-Marthusians'

il$?^n";:l"irll?#ilfs$::,";f "**6r*ff

i"lffi "l1i1T"ffi :.;i

population growth will r"ua to rnuJ".' po""''if unA iuti* This analysis of laminc and

f.T':il;:"-fi [:,-;:ll;$l ]:T"i'Ji''":l;ru:;*l ::ii:fi iif; #litrijftri l: li''ff ',*1'i"'-"Hmll';;::XfiTlfi'ffi"i,'g:i:'l"l.*'whonowhave

[i;xTil"r:-#*{:lxjll*lhtlrx:"r*tp;{Ji;'^.' ir ;;0"0.il;;;;;,, ror him, the scoPe' :T[:lillil;'ffXl"il"Jii;;;;; in such. aid. :ll::'1, J:,:l:' i fi HTll+.;;lf JI;:: ::f **:.,:f '":'"tml"; l;,".",t: ""!:,"i:l;:::i,'J"il?it"lill"i;;';;;'.Ti"ipGii"'"

i" "eedliom

abroadrv consequen-

,i"ri,, p",,pJ",i'"-.{.'t'* "'1;;;'; ;l*:m:y::t*:$: :Tff,"r'fi ,[:].*Hi: il:",?;,illH"iF:ltili"r1j1*{l*i,',ffi " jJJJ#**f Y','**l'n:l: now enioY an alfluent lifb and u

stant to do

319

CHAPTER 14 ' WORLD HUNCER AND POVERTY

significance have a rnoral obligation to help thcse in need.As.singer points out' the scope'

content, and strength of the duty to help would r:quire a radical revision in how most people

currently think about their obligations to others ln need

Another broadly consequential;t approach o moral questions about world hunger and

poverty allows for the idea that rrghts in general and property rights in particular have intrin-

il" ""i ""i

i*, instrumental uuiu" (ftt'" idea that rights trav.e.9nlf. instrumental value is

p"-rtr"p, itt"'t"., common view of ights tteld by consequentialists) But' as Amartya Sen

points out in one of our setectrons, recignizing r hi intrinsic value of a right does not rule out

:;;r;il;; ;" consequences of adheri"ng to tl e right Sen's iclea is that in thinking about

"", "Uiig"fi""t a heli those in need' wJneed to cinsider both the intrinsic value of

hold-

ing somc property right as wcll as the overall value of the consequences of adhering to that

right. On this basis' Sen makes a case tbr the nroral justifica(ion of redistribution of wealth

in preventing tamine.

Ethics oJl'rina Focie DutY

According to an ethics of prima facie duty, thinliing about world hunger and poverty requres

that we consider r,.rou. "o.p".ing frirnu fu","

juties. Suppose,we grant that those living

in affluence have u duty to tt"tp ull-"uiate thc c /ils of poverty and starvation (Arguably' we

might have this duty e',en ii tnose to whom it is owed have no moral right against those who

are in a position to help.) From th; theoretical perspectivc' we have. all sorts of prima t'acie

duties-ncgative duties not to rnlure, lie' and b eak promises' as well as such positiv€ duties

as self-improvement and bcneticence' When t!' o or more of these prima facie duties conflict

in some circumstan"", *" ttuu" to J""iOe which of them is overriding and tbus which ofthem

is one's all-things-considereO ouiy in that cilcu lstance This in turn requires that we think in

detail about our crrcumstances aridcarefully \reigh the relevant strengths of our prima facie

obligations.

Kontian Moral TheotY

Kant de1'ended the claim that we have a duty of beneficence-a duty to help at least some

of those in need on at least 'orn" o""u'ion'

'E

"cause it is up to thosc who are in a position

to help to decide when and fto* to-tufntf ttti' duty-its fulnltment involves a good deal of

latitude_Kant clair"a tnut ou. Jury oib"n" i""n"" is a wide duty. (By contrast, duties to

",ft"ra i" *u i"ni", h*m and duties fo ourselv(rs to not commit suicide

are among the nanow

duties-iuties that do not inuottJin" tinO of futitua" for choice that is characteristio of our

wide obligations )' Wttut o ttt" u^i'-in-fant;s theory for the wideduty of beneficence? In her

article, Onora o'Neiff "*pruint

tituitt'" tfotanity io'tutution of Kant's fundamental moral

prin"ipt"-ttt" "ut"gorical

imperative-requir ls that wenot treat others as mere means to our

l*" "'"0, ""0

,ttu, ie positively treat others a; ends in themselves' It is this second' posrtrve

Dart of the categoricut itp"'utiut tttut' u"lord'ng to O'Neill' is the basis for our wide duty of

t"n"Ii""n"e, which she explains and defends

NOTE l. For more on the distinction bctween wide arld narrow duty in Kantian

moral theory, see chapter

1. section 2C

\-e

No ger vival 01 Inevital througt empha: Spacesl cipal ar we rep past wi forconl oufs to ing poll

Unf, used to these is a partic error be (Hardir becaust

From Ga

320

Ha RrrN . Lil(hoir Erhics G,rnnrrt HenotN

\

Lifeboat Et}ics

According to Hardin, in thinking about hunger and poverty as moral issues, it is useful to :hilk

ol them in. term.s of the merlphol of a lifeboat. 'Each

,i"t nutioi i, to oe thought of aloccupying a lifeboat full of comparativ:ty rich people, *h"r"u. "^"h

poo, natlon is thought ,"-f :: l lil:b"il conraining mostty reta ivety poor peopte. eut in ,n"J" ,"_r, rhe quesrion l:":Pj,:!1iqi:.l.do

rich passengers in one boar have ro their poorer counterparts in rhetess tortunate boats? Hardin rejects esscntially Christian and Marxist appr.oaches that wouldrequire rich nations to herp poor ones. because he thinks that their irtrmatety unrearistic approachcs to solving problems of huniler ancl poverty_problems of overpopulation_will lead to what he calls ,,the tragedy of th r commons.,, i"li"g

"n lr."",L y consequentialisr

penpec.tive, Hardin argues that given thc Jikery disastrous ov-era consequences ofrich criun-tries aiding poor countries, the moral imrlicarion is-that the aflueni oug'f,t not to t,elp people rn counrles where overpopulation cannot realistically be brought undei control.

Recommended Readfug: consequenti.rlism, chap. i. sec. Zal

No generation has viewed the problem of the sur_ vival of the human species as seriously as we have. Inevitably, we have entered thjs world of conc,:rn through the door ofmetaphor. Environmentalists hi.ve emphasized the image of the earth as a spaceship_ Spaceship Ear.th. Kennerh Boulding ( 1966) is the or n_ cipal archirect ol this metaphor. It is time, he savs. tjrat we leplace the wasteful ..cowboy economv..of the past with the frugal "spaceship economy..requir:d Ibrcontinued survival in the limited world we now see ours to be. The metaphor is notably useful in iustilv- ing pollution control measures.

Unfortunately, the image of a spaceship is al;o used to promote measures that are suicidal. One :f thesc is a generous irnrnigration policy, which is only a particular instance of a class of policies rhat are n enor because they lead to the tragedy ofthe commors (Hardin 1968). These suicidal policies are attractir e because they mesh with what we unthinkingly tal e

to be the ideals of "the best people." What is miss_ ing in the idealistic view is an insistence that rishts and responsibilities musl go together. Th" ..g"naro-ur,. attitude of all too many people results in assenins inalienable rights while ignoring or denying marchi rng responsibilities.

For the metaphor of a spaceship to be correct the aggregate of people on board would have to be under unitary sovereign control (Ophuls 1974). A true ship always has a caplain. It is conceivable that a ship could be run by a committee. But it could not possibly survive if its course were determined by bickering tribes rhat claimed righrs without responsibilities.

What about Spaceship Earth? It certainlv has no captain, and no executivc committee. rThe Unitea Nations is a toothless tiger, because theiignatories of its charter wanted it that way. The spaceihip metaphor is used only tojustify spaceship demarlils on common

F.om Carrett Hardin, ,.Living on a Lifeboat,,' Sc ience 24 (l\:/4). Re{lnted by pennjssion.

321

(A16 CHAPTER I4 ' WORLD HUNCERAND PO/ERTY

resources without acknowledging correspondilg spaceship responsibilities.

An understandable fear of decisive action leads peopletoembrace"incrementalism"-movingtoward reform in tiny stages. As we shall see, this strate ly is counterproductive in the area discussed here il it means accepting rights before responsibilities. Wht re

human survival is at stake, the acceptancc of respon ii-

bilities is a precondition to the acceptance of rights if the two cannot be introduced simultaneously.

LIFEBOAT ETHICS

Before taking up certain substantive issues let us lo lk at an alternative metaphor, that ofa lifeboat. In dev'rl-

oping somc relevant examples the following numeri- cal values are assumed. Approximately two{hilds of the world is desperately poor, and only one-th rd is comparatively rich. The people in poor countr es

have an average per capita GNP (Gross Natiotral Product) of about $200 per year; the rich, of ab('ut $3.000. (For the United States it is nearly $5'0001'er year.) Metaphorically, each rich nation amounts tr) a

lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. The pt'or of the world are in other, much more crowded li c- boats. Continuously, so to speak, the poor lall out of their lifeboats and swim lbr a while in the waLcr

outside, hoping to be admitted to a rich lifeboat, or

in some other way to benefit from the "goodies" on

board. What should thc passengers on a rich lifebr)at

do? This is the central ploblem of "the ethics oi a lifeboat."

First we must acknowledge that each lifeboal is

effectively limited in capacity. The land of evory nation has a limited carrying capacity. The exlct limit is a matter for argument, but the energy crur ch

is convincing more people every day that we hi'vc

already exceeded the carrying capacity of the la rd. We havc been living on "capital"- stored petrole rm and coal-and soon we must live on income alonc

Let us look at only one lifeboat-ou$. The ethiral oroblem is the same for alt, and is as follows. H:re we sit. say 50 people in a lileboal. To bc generous, lct

us assume our boat has a capacity of l0 more' mak- ing 60. (This, however, is to violate the engineering principle of the "salbty factor." A new plant disease or a bad change in the weather may decimate our population if we don't preserve some excess capac- ity as a safoty factor)

The 50 ofus in the lifeboat see 100 others swim- ming in the water outside, asking for admission to the

boat, or lor handouts, How shall we respond to their calls? There are sevcral possibilities

One. We may be tempted to lry to live by thc Christian ideal of being "our brother's keeper," or by the Marxian ideal (Marx 1875) of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Since the needs of all are the same, we take

all the needy into our boat, making a total'qf 150 in a boat with a capacity of 60. The boat is swampcd, and everyone drowns. Complete justice, complet€

catastrophe. frro. Sinca the boat has an unussd cxcess capaclty

of 10, we admitjust l0 more to it. This has the disad- vantage of getting rid of the safety factor, for which action we will sooner or later pay dearly Moreovcr, wric& 10 do we let in? "First come, first served"?The best 10? The neediest 10? How do we discininate? And what do we say to the 90 who are excluded?

Iiree. Admit no more to the boat and preserve the small safety factor'. Survival of the people in the life-

boat is then possible (though we shall have to be on

our guard against boarding parties).

The last solution is abhorent to many people. It is

unjust, they say. Let us grant that it rs. "I fcel guilty about my good luck"' say some. The

reply to this is simplet Get out andyieldyour place lo

orrel,r. Such a selfless action might satisfy the con-

science ofthose who are addicted to guilt but it would

not change tbe ethics of the lif'eboat. The needy per-

son to whom a guilt-addict yields his place will not himself feet guilty about his sudden good luck (lf he did he would not climb aboard ) The net rcsult

of conscience-stricken people relinquishing their unjustly held positions is the elimination of their kind of conscience from the lifeboat. The lifeboat' as it were, purifies itself of guilt The ethics of lifeboat persist, unchanged by such momentary aberrations.

I

I

mak- enng

;easc

: oul' apac-

wim- to the , therr

'y fte ,I," Or each

to his e takc 150 in mped, nplete

.pacitY

disad- which teoverj "? The inate? :d?

rve the he lifc- rbeon

)le. It is

ne. The 2lace to

he con- t would )dy Per- will not uck. (If )t result rg their of their lifeboat, )s of the mentary

This then is the basic metaphor within whicl wc must work out our solutions. Let us enrich the in ase step by slcp with subsrantive additions from the rcal world.

HAnr)rN . Lileboat Ethics 647 Each American would have more than eight people to share with. How could the lifeboat possibly keep afloat?

All this involves extrapolation of current trends into thc l'uture, and is consequently suspcct. Trends may changc. Cranted: but the change will not neces_ sarily be favorable. If-as seems likely-the rate of population increase falls faster in the ethnic group presently inside the lifeboat than it does amons those now outside, the future will lurn out to be euen-*orse than mathcmatics predicts, and sbaring will be even more suicidal.

RUIN IN THE COMMONS

The fundamcntal enor of the sharing ethics is lhat it leads to the tragedy ofthe commons. Under a system of private propefly the man (or group of men) who own property recognize their responsibility to care for it, for if they don't they will eventually suffer. A farmer, for instance, if he is intellig€nt, will allow no morc cattle in a pasture than its canying capacity justifies. Ifhe oyerloads the pasture, weeds take ovel erosion sets in, ahd the owner loses in the lons run.

But if a pasture is run as a commons open-to all, the right of each to use it is not matched by an oper_ ational responsibility to takc care of it. It is no use asking independent herdsmen in a commons to act responsibly, for they dare not. The considerate hcrds- man who reliains from overloading rne commons suffers more than a selfish one who says his needs are greater. (As Leo Durocher says, ,,Nice guys finish last.") Christian-Marxian idealism is countemroduc_ tive. That it sounds nice is no excuse. With distri_ bution systems, as with individual morality, good intentions are no substitute lbr good performance,

A social system is stable only if it is insensitive to errors. To the Christian-Marxian idealist a selfish person is a sort ol "error." Prosperity in the system of the commons cannot survive enors- lf everyone would only restrain himself, all would be well; but it takes only one less than everyone to ruin a sys- tem of voluntary restraint. In a crowded world of less

REPRODUCTION

The harsh characteristics of lifeboat ethics are heir:ht- ened by reproducrion, parricularly by reproduc.ive differences. The people inside the lifeboats of the wealthy nations are doubling in numbers every g7 years; those oubide are doubling every 35 years, on the average. And the relative difterence in prosperity is becoming grcater

Let us, for a while, think primarily of the U.S. lif.e_ boat. As of 1973 the United States had a popuiat on of 210 million people, who were increasing by 0.liZo per year, that js, doubling in number every g7 yea.s.

Although the citizens of rich nations are out_ numbefed two to one by the poor, let us imagine an equal number o1'poor people outside our lifeboat-_a mere 210 million poor people reproducing at a quite different rate. If we imagine these to be the con- bined populations ofColombia, Venezuela, Ecuad rr, Morocco, Thailand, Pakistan, and the pbilippin,:s, the average rate of increase ofthe people ,,outside,. is 3.3Ea Wr year. The doubling time of this populati,)n is 2l years.

Suppose that all these countries, and the Unit,)d States, agreed to live by the Marxian ideal,,,to ea,:h according to his necds," the ideal ofmost Christians rs well. Needs, ofcourse, are determined by population size, which is aflected by reproduction. Every nation regards its rate ofreproduction as a sovereign right, lf our lileboat were big enough in the beginning it mig rt be possibf e to livefor a while by Christian-Marxii n id,eals. Might.

Initially, in thc model given, thc ratio of non- Americans to Americans would be one to one, But consider what the ratio would be 87 years later. By this time Americans would have doubled to a populir_ tion of420 million. The other group (doubling evely 2l years) would now have swollen to 3,540 milliorr.

323

648 CIIAPTEII I4 ' WORLD LII.INCER AND POVERTY

than perfect human beings-and we will never know any other-mutual ruin is inevitable in the commons. This is the core of the tragedy of the commons. . .

WORLD FOOD BANKS

In the international arcna we have recently heard a proposal to create a ncw colnmons, namely an inlcr-

national depository of food reserves to wbich nations

will contribute according to their abilities, and fiom which nations may draw according to their needs. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug has lent the Prestigc of his name to this proPosal.

A world food bank appeals powerfully to our humanitarian impulses. We remember John Donne's

celebrated line, 'Any man's death diminishes me." But before we rush out to sec ibr whom the bell tolls let us recognize where the greatest political push for

international granaries comes from, lest we be disil-

lusioned later. Our experience with Public Law 480

clearly reveals the answer. This was the law that moved

billions of dollals worth of U.S. grain to food-short, populationJong countries during the past two decades

When PL.480 lirst came into being, a headline in the

business magazine Forbes (Paddock 1970) revealed

the power behind it: "Feeding the World's Hungry Millions: How it will mean billions for U.S business."

And indeed it did. In the years [960 to 1970 a total of $7.9 billion was spent on the "Food for Peace" program, as PL.480 was called. During the years of 1948 to 1970 an additional $499 billion were exlracted liom American taxpayers lo pay for

other economic aid programs, some of which went for food and fbod-ploducing machincry. (This figure

does not includc military aid.) That PL. 480 was a give-away program was concealed Recipient coun-

tries went through the motions of paying for PL. 480

food-with IOU's. In December 1973 the charade was brought to an end as far as India was concerned

when the United States "forgave" India's $3.2 bil-

lion debt (Anonymous 1974). Public announcement of the cancellation of the debt was delayed for two

months: one wonders whY. . . .

What happens if some organizations budget for cmergencies and others do not? If each organization is solely responsible for its own well-being, poorly managed ones will suffer. But they should be able to learn from experience. They have a chance to mend

their ways and learn to budget for infrequent but cer- tain emergencigs. The weather, for instance, always varies and periodic crop failures are certain. A wise and competent government saves out of the produc- tion ofthe good years in anticipation ofbad years that

are sure to come. This is not a new idea The Bible

tells us that Joseph taught this policy to Pharaoh in

Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Yet it is literally true that the vast majority of the governments of the world today have no such policy. They lack either the

wisdom or the competence, or both. Far more diffi- cult than the transfer of wealth from one country to another is the transfer of wisdom between sovereign powers or between generatlons.

"But it isn't thcir tault! How can we blame the poor people who are caught in an emergency? Why

must we punish them?" The concepts of blame and punishment are inelevant. The question is, what are

the operational consequences ofestablishing a world

food bank? lf it is opcn to cvcry country every time a need develops, slovenly rulers will not be motivated to take Joseph's a{vice. Why should they? Others will bail them out whenever they are in trouble.

Somecountrieswill makedeposits in the world food

bank and others will withdraw from it: there will be almost no overlap. Calling such a depository-transler

unit a "bank" is stretching the metaphor of bdnt beyond its clastic Iimits. The proposers, of coursc, never call attention to the metaphorical nature of the

word they use.

THE RATCHET EFFECT

An "international food bank" is really, then, not a true bank but a disguised one-way transfer devica for moving wealth liom rich countl ies to poor. In the

absence of such a bank, in a world inhabited by indi-

vidually responsible sovereign nations, the populati0n

'.324

FI(

ol of D

tior an(

tol ov( apt tne ula:

ryir Inl soo tbe (Ha ibra

prun c

- whic dem

-brat( thriq and r achi( contr

lnv( sucl wit] thec mus whe warl bles

t for ation

cofly

)le to

rend t car-

ways

wise oduc- 's that Bible roh ln erally of the 1er thc : diffi- rtry to ereign

ne the ? why ne and hat are

r world ' time a )tivated Others

le.

rld fbod will be

tlansfer f bank course,

-e of thc

/ "O^vcrp_oputation": \ _ ___* ,,Emergency \ safety factor exhausted /

TIGURE I4.I

ol' each nation would repeatedly go through a cy'le

of (he sorl shown in Figure 14 l. P2 is greater than P,. either in absolute numbers or becausc a deterio.a-

tion of the food suppty has removed the safety fac or

and produced a dangerously low ratio of resourt es to population. P2 may be said to tepresent a state ol

overpopulation, which becomes obvious upon lho

appearance of an "accident," c.g ' a ctop failure lf

the "emergency" is not met by outside help' the p('p-

ulation drops back to the "normal" level-the "car- rying capacity" of the environmcnt-or even bek 'w' ln the absence ol population control by a sovereirln,

sooner or later the population grows to P2 again i nd

the cyclc repeats. Thc long-term population cu ve

(Hardin 1966) is an iregularly fluctuating one, eqrril-

ibrating more or less about the carrying capacity

A demographic cycle of this sort obviously involves great suffering in the restrictive phase, cut

such a cycle is normal to any independent coul.'try

with inadequate population control. The third cent rry

theologian Tertullian (Hardin 1969) expressed \'! hat

must have been the recognition of many wise n)en when he wrote: "TIle scourges of pestilence, famrne,

wars, and earthquakes have come to be regarded irs a

blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serv() to

prune away the luxuriant growth of the human ra(e " Only under a strong and farsighted sovereigr)-

which theoretically could be the people themsel"es'

democratically organized -<an a population cqt'ili-

brate at some set point below the carryrng capa( lty'

thus avoiding the pains normally caused by perit'dic

and unavoidable disasters For this happy state t(' be

achieved it is necessary that those in power be abl: to

contemplate with equanimity the "waste" of surltlus

It^ nr)r N ' Lifcboat Ethics

food in times ofbountiful harvests. It is essential that

those in power tesist the temptation to convert extra

tbod into extra babies. On the public relations level

it is necessary that the phrase "surplus food" be replaccd by "safelY factor."

But wise sovereigns secm not to exlst ln tne poor

world today. The most anguishing problems are crc-

ated by poor countries that are governed by rulers

insufficiently wise and powcrlul. If such countries can draw on a world food bank in times of "emer-

gency," the population cycle of Figure 14 1 will be ieplaced by the population escalator of Figrre 14'2'

The input of lbod from a tbod bank acts as the pawl

ofa ratchet, preventing the population from retracrng

its steDs to a lower level. Reproduction pushes th€

population upward, inputs lrom the world bank pre-

vent its moving downward. Population size cscalates,

as does the absolute magnitude of "accidents" and

"emergencies." The process is brought to an end only

by lhe total collapse ofthe whole system. producing a

catastrophe of scarcely imaginable proportions'

Such ale the implications of the well-mcant sharing o[ food in a world of irresponsiblc tepro- duction.,..

To be generous with one's own possessions is one

thing; to be generous with posterity's is quite another'

This, I think, is the point that must be gotten across to those who would, from a commendable love of

distributive iustice, institute a ruinous system of the

commons. . . ..

If the argument of this essay rs correct, so long as

there is no true world govcrnment to control rcproduc-

tion everywhere it is impossible to survive in dignity

if we are to be guided by Spaceship ethics Without

P2

P,

)n, not a :r device or. In the I by indi rpulation

325

CHAPTER 14 . WORLD HUNGER AND POVI RTY

P3 ------> "Pmg1 '66qY l I

--l --------t- L,merqencY +, I

(lnput from world food bank)

FIGURE 14.2

a world government that is sovereign in reproductivr:

matters mankind lives, in fact, on a number of sov' creign lifeboats. For the foreseeable future survival demands that we govern our actions by the ethics of.r lifeboat. Posterity will be ill served if we do not.

REFERENCES Anonymous. 1914. WaLl Sffeet Journal 19 Feb. Boulding, K. 1966. The economics of the comin-I

spaccshipearth. InH. lafieLl, ed. Etlvitonment.rl Quatily i I

a Crowittg Econom;, Johns Hopkins Ptess' Baltimore

(And so on . , .)

t Pa

- r- "Emergcncy"

-+-^1i I tlnput from

P"

1 Pl

(lnput from world food bank)

world food bank)

Hardin, G. 1966. Chap.9 in Biology: lts Principles 1ttd

Inlrlications,2nd ed. Frccman. San Francisco

-.

1968. Thc tragedy of the commons. Science 162:1243-1248.

-.

1969. Page 18 in Population, EvoLution, and

Bi h Conrrol,2nd ed. Frceman, San Francisco. Marx, K. 1875. Critique of the Golha program, PaEe

388 in R. C. Tucker, ed.'l'he Marx-Engels Reade, Notton,

N.Y, 1972. Ophuls, w. 1974. The scarciiy society. Harper's 248

(148't): 41 -52. Paddock, W C. 1970. How green is the gteen revolu'

tion? B ioscience 2O- 89'7 -9O2.

I

1.

READING QUESTIONS l. What arc the problems with the metaphor ol Earth as a space$hip according to Hardin? 2. Explain Hardin's lifeboat metaphot and the hree possible responses that we might take toward the

ethical problems it suggests. 3, why does Hardin reiect lhe first response tc the ethical lifeboat Problem? How does he respond to

those who claim that the third possibility is rnjust? 4. why does Hatdin think that an internalional food bank is an implausible solution to the problem of

world hunger and poverty? what is the.'ratchet effect" and how does it 6gure into his objections

and proposed solution to the problem?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS L Consider whether Hardin's lifeboat metaph )t represents a plausible underslanding of the way the

nations of the world can or do operate. Are there any ways in whicb the metaphor could or should

be modiRed?

326

S'NcI'rr ' Thc LiliYou Can Savc

ls Hardin correct to as$ume that the implcm( ntation of something like an internetional food bank

would result in a vicious cycle of oveipopulation accompanied by emergency scenajios? Consider

some ways that a world food bank coukj )perate more successfully in order to p'event such

disasters.

651

Persn SlNcen

I he Lile Iou \-an Jave

ts and

iience

4, And

. PaEe {orton,

|s 248

revolu-

ln this excerpt from his 2009 book, ?fte Lift You Can Save, Singer presents a basic argument

ior ttre claim that in not donating to human aid organizations, those in a financial position

io ao .o t" acting immorally-an argumcnt he originally advanced in. his influential 1972 articte,

,.famine,;.itluence, and Morality." In the following selection, Singer presents recent

"*firi"uf o*u uiout poverty and affluence' and he also resPonds to various obiections

to his

basic argument that he has encountered ovt)r the years'

Recimmended Reaiing: consequentiali ;m, chap l' sec 2A'

I, SAVING A CHILD

On your way to work, you pass a small pond On hot

davs. children sometimes play in the pond, which is only

about knce-deep. The weather's cool today, though. ard

the hour is early, so you are surprised to see a chi d

sDlashing about in lhe pond. As you get closer' yt u

sce that lt is a verv voung child, just a loddler' who s flailins about, unable to stay upright or walk out of tlLe

pond. You lool for the parcnts or bahysitter. but thcre rs

no one else around. The child is unable to keep his her Ll

above the water for more than a few seconds at a tiltlg'

lfyou don'twadein andpullhim out, heseems likely o

drown- Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin tlre

new shoes you bought only a few days ago' and get yo rr

suit wet and muddy. By thc time you hand the child

From peter Singer, Ths Life yu Can Save (New Yorkl Ranc om House, 2009). Reprinted with pemission of tho

author

over to someon€ responsible for him, and chaDge your

clothes, you'll be late for work. what should you do?

I teach a course called Practical Ethics When we start

talking about global poveny. I ask my students what

they think you should do in this situation Predictably,

they respond that you should save the child "What

about your shoes? And being late for work?" I ask them. They brush that aside. How could anyone con-

sider a pair of shoes, or missing an hour or two at

work, a good reason for not saving a child's life?

In 2007, something resembling tbis hypotheti- cal situation actually occuned near Manchester' England. Jordon Lyon, a ten-year-old boy' leaped

into a pond after his stepsister Bethany slipped in'

He struggled to support her but went under himself'

327

652 CHAPTEII I4 ' WORLD HUNGERAND POVERTY

Anglers managed to pull Bethany out, but by then

Jordon could no longer be seen. They raised the

alarm. and two police community support officers

soon arrived; they refused to enter the pond to find

Jordon. He was later pulled out, but attempts at rcsus-

citation iailed. At the inquest on Jordon's death, the

olhcers' inaction was defended on the grounds that

they had not been traincd to deal with such situ-

ations. The mother responded: "If you're walking down the street and you see a child drowning you

automatically go in that water. . .You don't have to

bc trained to.iump in after a drowning child "l I think it's sal€ to assume that most people would

asree with lhe mother's statement But consider tliat, according to UNICEF, nearly 10 million chil-

dren under five years old die each year lrom causes

rclated to poverty. Here is just one case, described

by a man in Ghana to a researcher fl om the World

Bank:

Take the death ofthis small boy this morning, for exam-

ple. The boy died of measles. We all know he could

have been cured at the hospital But the parents had no

money and so the boy died a slow and painful death' nol

of meastes but out of PovertY'z

Think about something like that happening 27,000 times every day. Some cbildren die because

they don't have enough to eat More die, like that

sm;ll boy in Ghana, from measles, malaria, and

diafrhea, conditions that either don't exist in developed nations, or' if they do, are almost never fatal. The children are vulnerable to these dis- eases because they have no safe drinking water'

or no sanitation, and because when they do fall ill' their Darents can't affbrd any medical treatmenl'

UN[CEF, Oxfam. and many other organizalions

are working to reduce poverty and provide clean

water and basic health care, and thcse efforts are

retlucing the toll lf the relief organizations had more money, they could do more' and more lives

would be saved. Now think about your own situation Bydonating

a relatively small amount of moncy, you could save

a cbild's life. Maybe it takes more than the amount

needed to buy a pair of shoes-but we all spend money on things we don't really need, whether or

drinks, meals out, clothing, movles' concerts, vaca-

tions, new cars, or house renovation ls it possi- ble that by choosing to spend your money on such

things rather than contributing to an aid agency' you

are leaving a child to die, a child you could havc

saved?

PovertyTodaY

A few years ago, the World Bank asked researchers to listen to what the poor are saying. They wore able

to document the experiences of 60,000 women and

men in seventy-three countdes Over and over, in

different languages and on different continents, poor

people said that poverty meant these things:

. You are shon of food for all or part of the year, often cating only one meal per day' sometlmps

having to choose between stilling your child's

hunger or your own, and sometimes being able

to do neither. . You can't save money. tf a family member falls

ill and you need money to see a doctor, or if the crop fails and you have nothrng to eat' you

have to borrow from a local moneylender and

he will charge you so much interest as the debt continues to mount and you may never be free

of it. . You can't afford to send your children to school'

or if they do start scbool, you have to take thern out again if the harvesl is Poor'

. You iive in an unstable house, made with mud or thatch that you need to rebuild every two or

thrce years, or aiter severe weather' . You have no nearby source of safe drinking

water. You have to carry your water a long way'

and even then, it can make you ill unless you boil it.

But extreme poveny is not only a condiiion of unsat'

isfied material nceds. It is oflen accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness Even in countries

thalt are dimocracies and are relatively well governed'

respondents to thc World Bank survey described a

range of situations in whicb they had to accept humil'

iation without protest. If someone takes what little

yor not yot vad

pro

Yolr wol sno

hav nee

itati fam Ing Bar inte mor ton latit per ther Tha thar is n' 't .9 abor

no\4

b", , mill gro\ 'Asir 198 mill whe ts tn redu ther, Chit regll

'distr

the , Afri' .r Ir may tnes

328

l I

vaca-

lossl- such

vou have, and you complain to the police, they ma /

not listen to you Nor will the law necessarily prote( t

you from rape or sexual harassment You have a per-

vading sense ofshame and failure because you cann( t

provide lor your childrcn Your poveny traps you' an I

vou lose hopc ol cvel cscaping frorn a life of harl

work for which, at the end, you will have nothing to

show beYond bare sulvival l

Tbe World Bank defines extremc poverty as n('t

having enough income to meet the most basic human

needs for adequate food' water, shelter' clothing' sart-

itation, healtlr care, and education Many people are

familiar with the statistic that 1 billion people are li"-

ins on less than one dollarper day Thatwasthewor d

Ba'nk's poverty line until 2008, when better data ('n

international price comparisons enabled it to make a

more accurate calculation of the amount people ne(:o

to meet their basic needs On thebasisof this calc-t-

lation, the World Bank set the poverty line at $l il5

oer dav, The number of people whose income pl ts

ir'"rn ,nd". this line is not 1 billion but 1 4 billicn'

That there are more people living in extreme povet ly

than we thought is, ofcourse, bad news' but the ne\vs

is not all bad. On the same basis, in 1981 there w(re

1.9 billion people living in extrcmc poverty' That was

about four in cvery ten people on the planet' whercas

now lewer (han one in four are extremely poor'

South Asia is still the region with the largest nu n-

ber ofpeople living in extreme poverty' a total of 600

rnillion, including 455 million in India Econonttc

gro*tftiut, tto*"u"r, reduced thc proportion of Sorl|"h

isians living in extreme poverty from 60 percent tn

fSgf ,o +Z lercent in 2005' There are another 380

million extremcly poor people in sub-Saharan Afri:a'

where halfthe populadon isextremely poor-and t rat

is the same percentage as in 198I The most drami'trc

reduction in poverty has been in East Asia' althotLgh

there are still more than 200 million extremely p )or

ihin"r", "nd

smaller numbers elsewhere in the rcgion. The remaining extremely poor people are

aiit.iUoteO around the world, in Latin America tnd

the Caribbean, the Paciflc, the Middle East' N('rth

Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia a

In resoonse to the "$ 1 25 a day" ngure' the tho! ght

tuu .roi, your mind thal in many developing cr un- tries. it is possible to live much more cheaply lhan

STNGER ' Thc LlfcYou Can Savc 653

in the industrialized nations Perhaps you have evcn

done it yourself, backpacking around the world' liv-

inn on les, than you would have believed possible

SJyou may imagine that this level of poverty is less

"*tieme than it would be if you had to live on that

amount of money in lhe United States, or any indus'

trialized nation. Ifsuch thoughts did occur to you' you

should banish them now' because theWorld Bank has

already made the adjustment in purchasing power:

lts figures refer to the number of people existing on

a rlaiiy total consumption of goods and services-

whether earned or home-grown-comparable to the

amount of goods and services that can be bought ln

the United Statcs for S 1.25'

In wealthy societies, most Poverty is rolatrve Peoole feel poor becausc many of the good things

thev sce advenised on (elevision are beyond lhcir

Uuin"t-Uu, lhey do have a television ln the Uniled

Staties, 9? percent of those classified by the Census

Bureau as'poor own a color TV' Three quarters of

them own a car Three quarters of them have alr-

conditioning. Three quarters of them have a VCR or

ovO orut"i. All have access to health care s I am

not quoti;g these figurcs in order to deny that lhe

poor in the Unjtcd States face genuine difficulties

fr*".th"l"rr, for most, thes€ difficulties arc of a dif- lerent order than rhose of the world's poorest

pcople'

The 1.4 billion people living in extreme Poverty are

poor by an absolute standard tied to the most baslc 'hurnanneeds.

They are likely to be hungry for at least

part of each year. Even if they can get enough food

io fill their stomachs, they will probably be malnour-

irn"a t"""ur" their diet lacks essential nutricnts ln

children, malnutrition stunb growth and can cause

oerrnanent brain damagc' The poor may not be able

lo affbrd to send their children to school Even rnini-

mal health cate setvices are usually beyond their

means.

This kind of poverty kills Life expectancy rn rlcn

nadons averages seventy-eight years; in the poorest

nations, those officially classified as "least devol-

op",l," it i. b"lo* fifty.6 In rich countries' fewer than

one in a hundred children die before the age of five;

in the poorest countries, one in five does And to the

UNICbF figure of nearly 10 million young children

dying every year from avoidable' poverty-related

/, you

have

rchers

e able rn and rer, in i, pool

l year, 3times

:hild's g able

:r falls r, or if it, you er and re debt be free

;chool, e th€m

th mud two or

rinking rg way,

)ss you

f unsat- :d by a )untries ,verncd,

:ribed a i humil- Lat little

329

651 CHAPTER I+ ' WORLD IIUNGEIT AND POVERTY

causes, we must add at least another 8 nlillion older children and adults.?

AflluenceToday

Roughly matching the l 4 billion pcople living in extreme poverty, there are about a billion ]iving at a level of affluence never previously known except in the courts of kings and nobles. As king of France,

Louis XIV the "Sun King," could alford to build the most magnificent palace Europe had ever seen, but

he could not keep it cool in summer as effectively as most middle-class people in industrialized nations

can keep their homos cool today. His gardeners, for

all their skill, wcrc unable to produce the variety of fiesh fruits and vegetables that we can buy all year-

round. If he developed a toothache or tbll ill' the best his dentists and doctors could do lbr him would makc

us shudder, But we're not iust better off than a Frcnch king

who lived centuries ago. We are also much better off

than our own greatgrandparents. For a start, we can

exDect to live about thirty years longer A century ago, one child in ten died in infancy Now, in most

rich nations, that figur€ is less than one in two hun-

dred.8 Another tolling indicator of how wealthy we

are today is the modest number of houls we must work in order to meet our basic dietary needs Today

Americans spentl, on average, only 6 percent of their income on buying food. If they work a forty- hour week. it takes them barely two hours to eam enough to feed themselves for the week. That leaves

lar more to spend on consumer goods, entertalnment,

and vacations. And then we have the supenich, people who

spend their money on palatial homes, ridiculously

large and luxurious boats, and private planes Before

the 2008 stock market crash trimmed the numbcrs,

there were more than 1,100 billionaires in the world,

with a combined net wonh of $4 4 trillion 9 To catcr

to such peoplo, Lufthansa Technik unveiled its plans

for a private configuration of Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner In commercial service, this plane will seat up to 330 passengers. The private version will carry 35, at a price of $150 million. Cost aside, there's

nr)thing like owning a really big airplane carryrng a

srnall nurnber of people to maximize youl personal contribution to global wanning. Apparently, there are already several billionaires who fly around in pr ivate commercial-sized airliners, from 747s down.

Llrry Page and Sergey Blin, the Google cofounders, r( po edly bought a Boeing 767 and spent millions li ting it oul for their private use.r0 But for conspicu- o rs waste of money and resources it is hard lo beat Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-Amerlcan telecommu-

n cations enlrepreneur who paid a reported $20 mil-

lirn tbr eleven days in space. Comedian Lewis Black srtid on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show that Ansari did

it because it was "the only way she could achieve her

life's goal offlying over every single starvlng person

on earth and yelling 'Hey, look what I'm spending nrY money on !"'

While I was working on this book, a special adver-

tising supplementlell outofmy Sunday edition ofTfre

It ew York Times: a sixty-eight'page glossy magazine

filled with advertising for watches by Rolex, Patek

Philippe, Breitling, and other luxury brands. The

a Js didn't carry price tags, but a puff piece about the

r,:vival ofthe mechanical watch gave guidance about

tlre lower end of the range. After admitting that inex- pensive quartz watches are extremely accurate and

frnctional, the article opined that there is "something

engaging about a mechanical movement." Right, but

l^ow rnuch will it cost you to have lhis engaging some-

tlring on your wrist? "You might think that getting

i rto mechanical watches is an expensive proposition'

t-ut there are plenty ol' choices in the $500-$5000 rrnge." Admittedly, "these opening-price-point mod'

els are pretty simple: basic moYement, basic time

r isplay, simple decoration and so on." From which

\/e can gather that most of the walches advertised : re priced upward of $5,000, or more than one hun-

r red times what anyone needs to pay for a reliable,

i ccurate quartz watch. That there is a market lbr such

t,roducts-and one worth advertising at such expense

tJ the wide readership of The New York Times--ts r nother rndicarion oI lhe affluence of our society

ll

If you're shaking your head at the excesses o[ the superrich, though, don't shake too hard. Think

rrgain about some of the ways Americans with aver-

irge incomes spend their money. In most places in the

United glasses

a penn.

$1.50 c concetl lnto prr still bul 3r billi many o fee at h dollars, said yes or glass Dr Tim erment- 14 perct food tht of date. aged or Accordi in the l.l Deborat owns m( not worl ure may and won which w

Most hesitate r do it at cr sands of things w, they werr our oblig

2. IST

Bob is savingl which l pnde ar ing anc market

yrng a rsonal

there rnd in down- lnders, illions rsprcu-

io beat )mmu- l0 mil- iBlack ;ari did ;ve hel person

ending

Ladver-

r of The

rgaz lne

, Patek ls. The )out the e about at inex- ate and nething ght, but g some- getting

,ositlon, ,-$5000 nt mod- ;ic time n which vertised rne hun- reliable, for such expense lmes-rs :iety.rr esses of C. Tbink ith aver- )es in the

United States, you can get your recommended r:isht glasses of warer a day out ol the tap for less tian a penny, while a bottle of water will sct you rack $1.50 or more .12 And in spite of the environm,:ntal concerns raised by thc waste of energy that loes into producing and fansporting it, Americans are still buying bottled water, to the tund of more than 3l billion liters in 2006.13 Think, too, of rhe way many of us get our caffeine fix: you can make coi- tbc at home for pennies rather than spending t rree dollars or more on a lattc. Or have you ever casuaily said yes to a waiter's prompt to order a second soda or glass of wine that you didn't even finish? r& hen Dr. Timothy Jones, an archaeologist, led a U.S. 11ov_ erment*funded study of food waste, he found that l4 percent of houschold garbage is perfectly good food that was in its original packaging and not out of date. More than half of this food was drypr ck_ aged or canned goods that keep for a long tinc. According to Jones, $100 biliion of food is war ted in the United States every year,14 Fashion desipner Deborah Lindquist claims that the average wol tan owns more than $600 worth of clothing that she has not worn in the last year,ls Whatever the actual ls_ ure may be. it is fair to say that almost all of us, r,Jn and women alike, buy things we don,t need, somr of which we never even use.

Most of us are absolutely certain that we wouk n't hcsitate to save a drowning child, and that we world do it at considerable cost to ourselves. yet while th,ru- sands of children die each day, we spend moncy on things w€ take for granted and would hardly notic,: if they were not there. Is that wrong? Ifso, how far dr)es our obligation ro th€; poor go?

lrNc!R ' Thc Lileyou Can Savc

comfortably ailcr retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks lhe Bugatti near the end of a rail_ way siding and goes for a waik up the tfack. As he does so, he sees that a runaway traio, with no one aboard, is rolling down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he secs the small figure ofachild who aDDears ro be absorbcd in playing on the tracks. Obliuious io rhe runaway train, the child is in great danger Bob can,t stop the train, and the child is too fa. away to hear his warning shout, but Bob can throw a switch that will dive.t the train down the siding where his Busatti is parked. If he docs so. nobody will be kilted, bur th; train will crash through the decaying barrier at the end ofthe siding and destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning thc car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch.

The Car or the Child?

Philosopher Peter Unger developed this variation on the story of the drowning child to challenge us to think furlhcr about how much we belicve wc shoutd sacrifice in order to save the life of a child. Unser,s story adds a factor often crucial to our thinkins Jout real world poveny: uncertainty about the outcome ot our sacrifice. Bob cannot be certain that the child will die if he does nothing and saves his car perhaos at the lasl moment rhe child will hear the train and leao to safety. ln the same way, most of us

"un ,urnron

doubts about whether the money we give to a charity is really helping the people it's intended to help.

In my experience, people almost always respond that Bob acted badly when he did not throw the switch and destroy his most cherished and valuable possession, thereby sacrificing his hope of a finan- cially secure retirement, We can,t take a serious risk with a child's life, they say, merely to save a car, no matter how rare and valuable the car may be. By implication, we should also believe that with the simple act of saving money for retirement, we are acting as badly as Bob. For in saving money for retirement, we are effectively refusing to use that money to help save lives. This is a difficult imolica- tion to confront. How can it be wrong to save for a comfortable retircment? There is, at the verv least. something puzzling here.

2, IS ITWRONG NOTTO HELP?

Bob is close to retirement. Hc has invested most of ris savrngs tn a very rare and valuable old car, a Busa ti. which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is ris pride andjoy. Not only does Bob get pleasurefrom dr v- ing and caring for his car, he also knows that its risils market value means that hc will bc able to sell it and U vc

331

656 CHAPTER I4 . WORLD HUNCEIT AND POVERTY

Another example devised by Unger tests the level

of sacrifice we think people should make to alleviate

suffering in cases when a life is not at stake:

You are driving your vintage sedan down a country lane when you are stopped by a hiker who has seriously

injured his leg. lle asks you to take him to the near- est hospital. lf you rellse, there is a good chance that he will lose his leg. On the other hand, if you agree to take him to hospital, he is likely to bleed onto the seats,

which you havo recently, and expensively, restored in

soft white leather.

Again, most people respond that you should drive

thc hiker to the hospital. This suggests that when prompted to think in concrete terms, about real indi- viduals, most of us consider it obligatory to lessen the serious suffering of innocent others, even at some

cost (even a high cost) to ourselves 16

The Basic Argument

The above examplcs reveal our intuitive belief that we ought to help others in need; at least when we can see them and when we arc the only person in a position to save lhem. But our moral intuitions are not always reliable, as we can see from varia-

tions in what people in different times and places find intuitively acceptable or objectionable. The case

lbr helping those in extreme poverty will be stronger if it does not rest solcly on our intuitions. Here is a logical argument from plausible premises to the same conclusion.

First premise: Suffering and death from lack offood'

shelter, and medical care are bad

Second premise: Ii it is in your power to prevent somelhing bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.

Third premise: By donating to aid agcncies, you can

prevenl suffering and dealh from lack of food, shelter'

and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly

as important. Conclusion: 'Ihcrefore, if you do not donate to aid

agencies, you are doing somcthing wrong.

The drowning-child story is an application of this

argument for aid, since ruining your shoes and being

lrLte tbr work aren't nearly as important as the life of a chitd. Similarly, reupholstering a car is not nearly a.; big a deal as losing a leg. Even in the case ofBob and the Bugatti, it would be a big stretch to sug- gest that the loss of the Bugatti would come close to r valing the significance of the death of an innocent netson.

Ask yourself if you can deny the premises of the afgument. How could suffering and death from lack

cf food. shelter, and medical care not be really, realJy

l-.ad? Think of that small boy in Ghana who died of nrcasles. How you would feel if you were his rnother cr fatheq watching helplessly as your son suffers and

grows weaker?You know that children often die from

tlris condition. You also know that it would be cur- able, if only you could afford to take your child to a hospital. In those circumstances you would give up almost anything for some way of ensuring your child's survival.

Putting yourself in the place ofothers, like the par-

€nts of that boy, or the child himself, is what thinking

ethicatly is all about. It is encapsulated in the Golden Ilule, "Do unto others as you would haYe them do r nto you." Though the Golden Rule is best known to

r rost westemers liom the words of Jesus as reported ty Matthew and Luke, it is remarkably universal, t eing found in Buddhism, Confucianism' Hinduism,

I.llam, and Jainism, and in Judaism, where it is found

i r Leviticus, and later cmphasized by the srge HillellT "he Golden Rule requires us to accept that the desires r,[others ought to count as if they were our own. Ifthe (Lesires ofthe pa-rents ofthe dying child w€re our own, ,ve would have no doubt that their suffering and the

tleath of their child are about as bad as anything can lre. So if we think ethically, then those desires must r ount as i[ lhey were our own' and we cannot deny rha( lhc sulTering and death are bad.

The second premise is also very difficult to rqect'

lrecause it leaves us some wiggle room when it comes

lo situations in which, to prevent something bad, we ,vould have to risk something nearly as important as

rhc bad thing we are preventing. Consider, for exam'

l)le, a situation in which you can only prevent the rleaths of other children by neglecting your own chil-

rlren. This standard does not require you to plevent

rhe deaths of the other children.

'1

delib with( ably know as im to de( to fin, about

Rescu

throwi ofa cl the on ferent The ar the dr( at youl need, i toana means reasoni

3. C( GIVII\

Charity found tl audiencr seen tt ir rnterestir prevalen by stude Justice a a school reading f cle that I ing out a and asker Seider, th researchir to others, sections o

332

fe of early

'Bob sug-

)se to ocent

cf the

r lack really ied ot rother rs ano

e fiom Je cur- hild to d glve g your

he par-

rinking Golden

rcm do lown to

eported

riversal,

nduism, is found Hillelli

l desires rn.Ifthe cur own,

; and the

hlng can

res must not deny

to relect, r itcomes

I bad, we lortant as

for exam- .event the own chil- lo prevent

"Nearly as important" is a vague term. That s deliberate, because I'm confident that you can (o without plenty of things that are clearly and inargrt- ably not as valuable as saving a child's life. I don't know whatyoa might think is as important, or near y

as important. as saving a lifc. By lcaving it up lo y( u to decidc what those things are, I can avoid the ne( d to find out. I'll trust you to be honest with yourself about it.

Analogies and stories can be pushed too fir Rescuing a child drowning in liont of you, at d throwing a switch on a railroad track to save the li b

of a child you can see in thc distance, where you a e the only one who can save the child, are both dil- ferent fiom giving aid to pcople who are far away. The argument I have .just presented complemenls the drowning-child case, because instead of pullit'g at your heartstrings by focusing on a single child n need, it appeals to your reason and seeks your asse'lt

to an abstract but compelling moral principle That means that to reject it, you need to find a flaw in tlrc

reasoning... .

3. COMMON OBJECTIONS TO GIVING

Chadty begins at home, the saying goes, and l"re found that friends, colleagucs, students, and lectufe

audiences exDress thatresistance in various ways.I' ie

seen it in columns, lefters, and blogs too. Particula ly

interesting, bccause they reflect a line of thought prevalcnt in affluent America, were comments ma' le

by students taking an elective called Literature artd

Justice at Glcnnview High (that's not its real nam(;), a school in a wealthy Boston suburb. As part of t re reading for the course, teacllers gave students an ar:i-

cle that I wrote for 7he New YorkTimes in 1999,lay' ing out a version of the argument you havejust rel d,

and asked them to write papers in response.lE Sc,rtt Sejder, then a gladuate student at Harvard Universrty

researching how adolescents think about obligations

to others, interviewed thi(y-eight students in t\vo sections of the course and rcad their papers.lg

S'Ncr:R ' The LifeYou Can Savt

Let's look at some of the objections raised by these varied sources. Perhaps the most fundamental

objection comes from Kathryn, a Clennview student who believes we shouldn't judge people who retuse to grve:

There is no black and white universal code for every- one. It is better to accept that everyone hos a differcnt tiew on the issue, and all people are entitled to follow their own belieJs.

Kathryn leaves it to the individual to determine his or her moral obligation to the poor. But wbile circumstances do make a difference, and we should

avoid being too black-and-white in our judgments, this doesn't mean we should accept that everyone is entitled to follow his or her own beliefs. That is morat relativism, a position that many find attractive

only until they are faced with someone who is doing something really, really wrong. If we see a person holding a cat's paws on an electric grill that is gradu- ally heating up, and when we vigorously object he says, "But it's fun, see how the cat squeals," we don't just say, "Oh, well, you are entitlod to follow your own beliefs." and leave him alone. Wc can and do try to stop people who are cruel to animals, just as

we stop rapists, racists, and terrorists. I'm not saying that failing to give is like committing these acts of violence, but if we reject moral relativism in some situations, then we should re.iect it everywhere.

After reading my essay, Douglas, another Glennview student, objected that I "should not have the right to tell people what to do." ln one sense, he's

conect about that. I've no right to tell you or any-

ooe else what to do with your money' in the sense that that would imply that yot have lo do as I say. I've no authority over Douglas or over you. On the

other hand, I do have the right of free speech, which

I'm exercising right now by offering you some argu- ments you might consider before you decide what to

do with your money. I hope that you will want to lis- ten to a variety of views before making up your mind

about such an imponant issue. If I'm wrong about that, though, you are free to shut the book now, and

there's nothing I can do about it. It's possible, of course, to think that morality is

not relative, and that we should talk about it, but that

658 CHAP'TER 14 ' WORLD HUNCER AND POVERTY

the light view is that we aren't under any obligation

to give anything at all. Lucy, another Glennview High

student wrote as follows:

IJ someone wants lo buy a new car, they slrould. If some"

ohe wants to rcdecorate their house, they slxould' 1nd if rhey need a suit. |cl it. 'they wor| for lhetr moncy 1nd they have the tilht to spen.l it on then$elves....

Lucy said that pcople have a right to spend the

money they earn on themselves. Even if we agree with that, having a riSrt to do something doesn't set-

tle the question of what you shoukl do lf you have a right to do something, I can't justiflably lbrce you

not to do it, but I can still tell you that you would be

a fool to do it, or that it would be a horrible thing to

do, or that you would be wrong to do it. You may

have a right to spcnd your weekend surfing, but it can

still be true that you ought to visit your sick mother'

Similarly, we might say that the ch have a right to spcnd their money on lavish parties, Patek Philippe

watches, privatejets, luxury yachts, and space travel'

or, for tbat matter, to flush wads of it down the toilet'

Or that those ofus with more modest means shouldn't

be forced to forgo any of the less-expenslve pleasures

that otfer us some reliel from all the time we spend

working. But we could still think that to choose to do

these things rather than use lhe money to savc human

lives is wrong, shows a deplorable lack of empathy,

and means tbat you are not a good person - Libertarians |esist the idea that we have a duty

te help others. Canadian philosopher Jan Narveson

articulates that Point of view:

We are ce ainly resPonsible for evils we itlfict otr oth'

e$, ro ttl.^fier whetc, and we o1'9e those people cotn' pensation ..Neverlheless, I have seen no Plausible ateumcnt that we owe somclhinS asafid erofgeneral dity, to those to whorn we have done nothing wrong'ztl

There is, at first glance, something attractive about

the political philosophy that says: "You leave me

alone. and I'll leave you alone, and we'll get along just fine." It appeals to tlre frontier mentality, to an'ideal

of life in the wide-open spaces wherc cach of

us can carve out our own territory and live undis-

turbcd by the neighbors. At first glance, it seems perfectly reasonable. Yet there is a callous side to a

philosophy that denies that we have any responsibili-

lier to those who, through no faull oltheir own, are in

ner d. Taking libertarianism seriously would require

us o abolish all state-supported welfare schemcs for those who can't get a job or are ill or disabled, and all itate-funded health care for the aged and lbr those

who are too poor to pay for their own health insur-

anr e. Few people really support such extremc views'

M(,st think that we do have obligations to those we

car, help with relatively little sacrifice--certainly to

thc se living in our own country, and I would argue tlrat we can't justifiably draw the boundary there. But

if I have not persuaded you of that. there is another lin : of argument to consider: lf we have, in fact, been at cast in part a cause of the poveny of the world's po,)rest people-if we are harming the poor-then evr:n libertarians like Narveson will have to agree thi t we ought to compensate them. . . . There are many

ways in which it is clear, however, that the rich have

ha|rned the poor. Ale Nodye knows about one of th( m. He grew up in a village by the sea, in Senegal,

in West Africa. His father and grandfather were fish-

enncn, and he hied to bc one too But after six years

in which he barely caught enough fish to pay fbr the

fuol lbr his boat, he set out by canoe for the Canary

Islands, from where hc hoped to become another of

Europe's many illegal immigrants lnst€ad, he was

arrested and deported. But he says he will try again'

ev )n though the voyage is dangerous and one of his

cousins died on a similar trip. He has no choice, he

sa rs, because "there are no fish in the sea here any-

m,:re." A European Commission report shows that Nodye is right: The fish stocks from which Nodye's

tarher and grandfather took their catch and fed their

fa nilies have been destroyed by industrial fishing llc cts thal come from Europe, China, and Russia and

sc I their fish to well-fed Europeans who can aflord

to pay high prices. The industrial fleets drag vast nets

acfoss the seabed, damaging the coral reefs wherc

fish breed. As a result, a major protein source forpoor

pe ople has vanish€d, the boats are idle, and people

w ro used to make a living lishing or building boats

ar: unemployed. The story is repeated in many other

ct astal areas around the world ?r

Or consider how we citizens of rich countries olrtain our oil and minerats. Teodoro Obiang' the

dictator country

Exxon lr cial salar of 550,0 He ownr Malibu, Cape To and Bent Iive in ex ty-nine a one mou in twelve Guinea i. almostas Congo er this, irs t was surel not the p€ more that for each , ofAngola expectanc d ies befor Internatio is currentl

In their ing coun0 people wh ference th; recognlzef session of goods thel profitable tors, and f other raw I ity. But fol disaster. TI wealth tha of tha nati( nch deposr than other resources. sale of the r tive for any and seize p

,ribili-

are in

)quire es for l, and ' those insur- views. )se we inly to argue

re. But rnothel' :t, been ,vorld's

-then) agree e many :l\ have one of

ienegal,

:re fish- ix years r fbr the CanarY

other of he was

y again' re of hts roice, he

rere any- ows that Nodye's fed ther rl fishing ussia and an afford , vast nets

:fs where e for Poor rd peoPle ling boats lany other

countries biang, the

dictator of tiny Equatorial Cuinea, sells most ol his country's oil to American corporations, among tlrem Exxon Mobil, Marathon, and Hess. Although his , rffi- cial salary is a modest $60,000, this ruler ofa cou rtry of 550,00O people is richer than Quecn Elizabet)r II. He owns six private jets and a $35 million house in Malibu, as well as other houses in Maryland and Cape Town and a fleet of Lamborghinis, Ferr;rris, and Bentleys. Most of the people over whom he r rles live in extreme poverty, with a life expectancy of for- ty-nine and an infant mortality of eighty-seven per one tlrousand (this means that more than one child in twelve dies beforc its first birthday).?2 Equat(,rial Guinea is an exhome case, but other examples arc almostasbad.In 2005, the Democratic Republic o the Congo exported minerals worth $200 million. F om this, its total tax revenues were $86,000. Somconc was surely making money from these dealings, but not the people ofthe Congo.23 In 2006, Angola rr ade more than $30 billion in oil revenue, about $2,500 for each of its 12 million citizens. Yet the majt rity ofAngolans have no access to basic health care; life expectancy is fbrty-one years; and one child in bur dies before r:eaching the age offive. On Transpar€ncy International's corruption perccption index, Anllola is currently ranked l47th among 180 countries.

In their dealings with corrupt dictators in deve op-

ing countries, international corporations are aki r to people who knowingly buy stolen goods, with the dif- ference that the international legal and political o.der recognizes thc colporations not as criminals in l)os- session of stolen goods but as the legal owners oj the goods they havc bought. This situation is, of colrsc, profitable for corporations that do deals with dicta- tors. and for us, since we use the oil, minerals, and other raw materials we need to maintain oul pros ler- ity. But for resource-rich developing countries, it is a disaster. The problem is not only the loss of immt nse

wealth that, used wisely, could build the prosp( rity of the nation. Paradoxically, developing nations ,vith

rich denosits of oil or minerals arc often worsc off than otherwise comparable nations without tl ose resources. One reason is that the revenue from the sale ofthe resources provides a huge linancial in,:en- tive for anyonc tempted to overthrow the governnrent

and seize power. Successful rebels know that if they

srrcrr. . Thc LilnYou Can Savc

succeed, they will be rewarded with immense per- sonal wealth. They can also reward those who backed

their coup, and they can buy cnough arms to keep themselves in power no matter how badly they rule. Unless, of course, some of those to whom they give the arms are themselves tempted by the prospect of controlling all that wealth.. .Thus the rcsources that should benefit developing nations instead become a curse that brings conuption, coups, and civil wars.2a If we use goods made from raw materials obtained by these unethical dealings liom resource-rich but money-poor nations, we are harming those who live in these countrics.

One other way in which we in the rich nations are harming the poor has become increasingly clear over the past decadc or two. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda put it plainly, addressing the developed world at a 2007 meeting of the African Union: "You are causing aggression to us by causing global warming....Alaska will probably become good for agriculture, Siberia will probably become good for agriculture, but where does thal leave Afr-ica?"25

Strong language, but the accusation is diflicult ro deny. Tw()-thirds of lhe greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere have come liom the United States and Europe. Without those gases, there would be no human-induced global warming problem. Africa's confibution is, by comparison, extremely modest: less than 3 percent ofthe global emissions from burn- ing fuel since 1900, somewhat more if land clearing and methane emissions from livestock production are included, but still a small fraction of what has been contributed by the industrialized nations. And while every nation will have some problems in adjusting to climate change, the hardship will, as Museveni suggests, fall disproportionately on the poor in the regions of the world closer to the equator. Some sci- entists believe that precipitation will decrease nearer the equator and increase nearer the poles. In any case,

the rainfall upon which hundreds of millions rely to grow their food will become less reliable. Moreover, the poor nations d€pend on agriculture to a fal'grcater

degree than the rich. In the United States, agricuiture

represents only 4 percent of the economy; in Malawi it is 40 percent, and 90 percent of the population are subsistence farmers, virtually all of whom are

CHAPTER I4 ' WORLD HUNCERAND POVER'TY

deoendent on rainfall. Nor will drought be the only problem climate change brings to the poor' Rising

sea levels will inundate fertilc' densely settled delta resions that are home to tens of millions of people

in Egypt, Bangladesh, India' and Vietnam Small Pacific Islancl nations that consist of low-lying coral

atolls, like Kiribati and Tuvalu, are in similar danger,

and it seems inevitable that in a few decades they will

be submerged.26 The evidence is overwhelming that the green-

housc gas emissions of the industrialized nations have harmed, and are continuing to harm, many ol

the world's poorest people-along with many richer

ones, too. If we accept that thoso who harm others must compensatc them, we cannot deny that the

industrializcd nations owe compensation to many ol

the world's Poorest people. Giving them adequate

aid to mitigatc the consequences of climate change

would be one way of paying that compensation'

In a world that has no more capacity to absorb greenhouse gases without the consequence of dam-

aging climate change, the philosophy of "You leave

me alonc, and I'll leave you alone" has become almost imDossible lo live by, lbr it requires ceasing to

As 7o of CNI

l.l 1.0

0.9

0.8

o;7

put any more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere

Otherwise, we simply are not leaving others alonc'

America is a Senerous natiotr. As Americans' v/e are

alrea.ly Sieing more than out shnre of Joreign aid

thn>ugh our laxes. lt,l't that sullcient?

Asked whether the United States gives more' less'

or about lhe same amounl of aid. as a Pcrcentagc of

its income, us other wcallhy countries. only onc in

twenty Americans gave the correct answer' When

my st;dents suggest that America is generous in this

regard, I show them figures from the website of the OECD, on the amounts given by all the organiza- tion's donor members Thcy are astonished to find

that lhe united s(ates has. lbr many yea6, becn at or

near the bottom of the list of industrialized countnes

in tcrms o[ lhc proportion of national income given

as foreign aid. In 2006, the United States fell behind

Portugal and ltaly, leaving Greece as tbe only indus-

lrialized country lo give a smaller percentage of iis

national income in foreign aid The avemge naiion's

clfort in that year came to 46 cents of every $100 of

sross national income, while the unitcd states gavs

inly | 8 cents of every $ 100 it earned'

UN 'l arget 0.7

I stat( poor

to d, their a gJr

keet Gon defle pove

liom lnstil

tion, erty, pove

are e and order erty . rcduc afy c put y, prom systel is litt you a a stra some

Gir

Ia food c a drou tobel short can m in fror States, tive! f< need t( money other n

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0

Average countrY effort 0.46

"-J{Cu.s!r-.-"."r"""Js.-"d"{df $."i"".t"J

IIGURE l4.l Ollicial Aid as a Percentage of Gross Nationr I Income (2006)27

336

here.

ne.

'e afe n aid

less,

ge of ne in Vhen n this )f the rniza- r find lator ntnes glven ehind ndus- of its

rtion's t00 of ; gave

Philanthropic reqtonses undermine real Dol;.tical change,

Ifthose on the right fear that I am encouraginjl the state to seize their money and give it to the wodd's poor', some on the left wory that encouraging thc rich to donate to aid organizations enables them to salve their consciences while thcy continue to benefit liom a global economic system that makcs them rich and keeps billions poor.28 Philanthropy, philosopher Paul Gomberg believes, promotes "political quieti ;m," deflecting attention from the institutional causcs of poyerty----essentially, in his view, capitalism- and from the need to find radical alternatives to t lesc institutions.29

Although I believc wc ought to give a larger por'- tion of our income to organizations combating l)ov- erty, I am open-minded about the best way to corrbat poverty.3o Some aid agencies, Oxlam tbr exan ple, are engaged in emergency relief, development aid, and advocacy work for a fairer global econcmic order. If, after investigating the causes ofglobal y,ov- erty and considering what approach is most likely to reduce it, you really believe that a more revolut on- ary change is needed, then it would make senss to put your time, energy, and money into organizat ons promoting that revolution in the global economic system. But this is a practical question, and if tlrere is little chance of achieving the kind of revolu ion you are seeking, thcn you need to look around fbr a strategy with better prospects of actually hclJ,ing some poor people.

Givhg people monel or food breeds dependency.

I agree that we should not be giving mone) or food directly to the poor, except in emergencies ikc a drought, ea tbquake, or flood, where food may nced to be brought in to stop people from starving in the sholt tcrm. In less tlirc situations, providing lrod can make people dependent. If the food is shipred in from a developed nation, for cxample the Un ted States, it can destroy local markets and reduce incen- tives for local farmers to produce a surplus to sell. We need to make it possiblc for people to earn their (,wn

money, or to produce their own food and meet tlreir other needs in a sustainable manner and by their r wn

Srrcrn ' The LiliYou Can Savc 661

work. Giving them money or fbod won't achieve that. Finding a form of aid that will really help people is crucial, and not a simple task, but as we'll see, it can be donc.lr

Cash is the seed cotn ofcapitalian. GivitTS it away \t,iu reduce future Etuwth.

Gaetano Cipriano contacted me after read- ing one of my articles becausc he thougbt that as an entrepreneurial capitalist, he could offer a helpful perspective. The grandson of immigrants to America, he owns and runs EI Associates, an engineering and construction firm based in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey, that has assets of around $80 million. "Cash is the seed corn of capitalism" is his phrase. Gaetano told me that he deploys his capital to the best of his ability to promote profits and enduring growth, and that giving more of it away would be "cutting my own tlrroat." But he does not spend extravagantly. "I do not live in a splendid house," he told me. "I have no second home. I drive a 2001 Ford Explorer with 73,000 miles. I belong to a nice squash club, and have four suits and two pairs of black shoes. When I take vacations they are short and local, I do not own a boat or a plane." While he does give to charity, he does it "at a level which is prudent and balanced with sustainable growth." If he were to give much more money away, it would have to come out of sums that he now rcinvests in his business. That, in turn, would reduce his future earnings and perhaps the number of people he is able to employ, or how well he can pay them. It would also leave him with less to give if, later in life, he decides that he wants to give more.

For similar reasons, we can agree that it's a good thing Warren Bullett did not give away the first mil- lion dollars he earned. Had he done so, he would not have had the investment capital he needed to develop his business, and would never bave been able to give away the $31 billion that he has now pledged to give. Ifyou are as skilled as Buffett in investing your money, I urge you to koep it until late in life, too, and then give away most of it, as he has donc. But pcople with lcss-spectacular investment abilities might do better to give it away sooner . . .

CHAPTER 14 . WORLD HUNCERAND POVERTY

lyhat if you took every penny you ever had and gave it to tl& poor ofAfrico... ? What h)e ,,eould have is no econony, no ability to generate new wealtlt or help anybody,

This objection comcs from Colin McGinn, a profbs- sor ofphilosophy at the University of Miami.32 Ir isn't clear whether Mccinn's "you" is you, the individual reader, or the group an American Southerner might refer to as "y'all." Ifyou finsert your name], took every penny you ever had and gave it to the poor of Africa, our national economy would not notice, Even if every reader ol'this book did tbat, the economy would barely hiccup (unless the book's sales exceed my wildest dreams). If everyone in America did it, the national economy would be ruined. But, at the moment, there is no cause for worry about the last possibility: there is no sign of it happening, and I am not advocating it.

Because so few pcople give significant amounts, the need for mor€ to be given is great, and the more each one of us givcs, the more lives we can save. If everyone gave significantly more than they now give, however, we would be in a totally different situation. Thc huge gulf between rich and poor means that if everyono werg giving, there would bc no necd lor them to take every penny they ever had and give it all to Africa. As you'll sce bcfore the end of this book, quite a modest contribution from everyone who has enough to live comfortably, eat out occasionally, and buy bottled water, would suffice to achieve the goal of lifting most of the world's extremely poor people above the poverty line of $1.25 per day. If that modest contribution were given, we would no longer be in a situation in which 10 million children were dying from poverty every year. So whether a small number of people give a lot, or a large number of people give a little, ending large-scale extreme poverty wouldn't cripple our national economy. It leavcs plenty of scope for entrcpreneurial activity and individual wealth. In the long run, the global economy would be enhanced, rather than dimin- ished, by bringing into it the |.4 billion peoplc now outside it, creating new markets and new opportuni- tics for trade and investment.

Peoplc do have special rclationships utith their fanilies, their comntunities, and their counlries.

',-his is the standatd equipment of humanit!, and ttost people, in all of human history, have seen t othing wrong with it.tl

Alan Ryan, phiLxophet and w1nlen oJ New Colkqa, Otford

It is true that most of us care more about our family and friends than we do about shangers. That's natural, and thcre is nothing wrong with it. 1]ut how far should preference for family and frields go? Brendan, a Glennview High student, thought that instead of going to aid for the poor, morrey "can be better spcnt helping your family and friends who need the money as well." [f fam- ify ,rnd friends really need the money, in anything remotely like the way those living in extrcme pov- erty need it, it would be going too much against the grain of human naturc to object to giving to them beft're giving to strangers. Fortunately, most mid- dle-class people in rich nations don't have to make this choice. They can take care of their families in an (ntirely sufficient way on much less than they are now spending, and thus have money left over that can be used to help those in extreme poverty. Adn)ittedly, saying.iusl. where the balance should be sLruck is difficult. . . .

l-iernan, another Glennview High School student, madc a poinr similar to Alan Ryan's.

I(";iving what we don't need to the poorl would make the vorld a bette4 more equal place. But itis like a little kid b ting a pack oJ c.ttrdy, keeping one piece, antl giving tl e rest away. ltjust doesn't happen.

t he issue raised by all these remarks is the link betr,r ecn what we humans are (mostly) like, and what we (,aght to do. When Brendan O'Grady, a philoso- phy student at Queen's University in Ontario, posted a blr'g about this issu€, he got the following response fron another Canadian philosophy student Thomas Simrnons:

Ofcourse I do not want people lo die, but ljust feelgen- erally unattached to them. I have no doubt that ifl were t( take a ftip to placcs whcre people arc starving then I night think ditferently, but as it stands now they are jlst too far removed. ln not making these donations,l arn implicitly valuing the afffuence of my own life over

rhe b:

I do.,

Whel his posit but rath( just to e describir tobeisa are sayin

commun to save tl ies, but it peffpecri. ancestors

NOTES I. BBC

co.ukl2lhit. 2. Deel

Rademach( Can Anyon Oxford Uni

3, This i in ibid., p. i

4. Work Billion Liv( Against Por go.worldbar

on price dat food prices tne number which the p Martin Rav Than We Tt Against Pov World Bank

Server/tW3P 9/Rendered/t

ror turth{ Sanjay Redd) Poor," wwrv. Ravallion,..H and Pogge," v

5. Robert Poverty in Ar #17 13 Q{nq.

338

ut 's.

th rd lt, )r, 1y

n- ng

he )m id- Lke

ln ley

:ty. uld

: the , kid ,Lng

link vnat

fso- sted )nse mas

gen-

were then y afe )ns, I : Over

the basic sustenance of many others. And, well, I sues ; I do. Am I immoral for doing so? Maybc.r.

When O'Crady queried this, Simmons clari{iet his position: "I don't intend to make a moral defense but rather just reveal my personal feelings_that is. just to explain how I feel." The distinction between describing how things are and saying how they oughl to be is also relcvant to what Kiernan and Alan Ryan are saying. The fact that we tend to favor our families. communities, and countries may explain our failure to sav€ the lives of the poor beyond those boundar_ ies, but it does notjustify that failure from an ethical perspective, no matter how many generations of our ancestors haye seen nothing wrong with it.

NOTES l. BBC News, Seprember 21, 2007, hnp://news.bbc.

co.rk/Zhiluk_news/england/manchester/70064 I 2.stm_ 2. Deepa Narayan with Raj patel, Kai Schafft, Annc

Rademacher, and Sarah Koch-Schulte. Voices of the poor: Can Antonc Hcar Us./ publjsherl for the World Bank hv Oxford University Press (New york.2000), p.36.

3. This is a compilarion of rhings said by the poor, cited in ibid.. D.28.

4. World Bank Press Releaso, ,,New Data Show 1.4 Billion Live on l,ess Than US$l .25 a Day, But progress Against Poverty Remains Strong," August 26, 200g, huD:// go.worldbank.org/ ToTEVOV4Eo. The esrimate is ba;cd on price data from 2005, and docs not reflect increaseli in food prices in 2008, which arc likely to have increased the number below the pove.ty line. For the reseaich on which th€ press release is based, see Shaohua Chen and Maflin Ravallion, '"The Developing World Is poorer Than We Thought, But No Lcss SuccesslLrl in the Fieht Againsr Pove(y." Policy Research Working paper 40i3, World Bank Development Research Group, August 200g, www.wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContent Scrver/lW3P/f B/2008 t08t26too0 I 58349

-20080826 I I 323

9/Rendered/PDF/WPS4703.pdf. For furtier discussion of World Bank shtistics, see

Sanjay Reddy and Thomas Pogge, .,How Nor to Connt the Poor," www.columbia.edu,/-sr793/count.pdf, and Martin Ravallion, "How Nol to Count the poor: A Reply to Reddy and Pogge." www.columbia.edu/-sr793/wbreply.pdf.

5. Robert Rector and Kirk Anderson, ..Understandine Poveny in America." He.itage Foundation Backsroundei fi | 7 I 3 (2004), ww\r.hcritage,org/Rcscarch/We llarelhsl:- I 3.

\rNGF.R . Thc Lifcyou Can Save 661

cth. Rector and Anderson draw on data available from the 2003 U.S. Census Burcau report on poverty and on various orner government reports,

6. United Nations, Office of the High Representative for the L€ast Developed Countries, Landlockedbeveloping Counrries and the Small lsland Developing States,'anJ World Bank, World Bank Development Data Group, "Measuring Progress in Least Devcloped Countries: A Sratisricat profite' (2006). rahles 2 a;d l, pp. l4_t5. Available at www.un.org/ohrlV.

7. United Nations Development program, Hutnan Development Report 2000 (Oxfofd Untversity press, New York, 2000) p. 30; Human DeveloDmeht llenon 20Ol (Oxtotd University press. New york. 2001) pp. 9-12, p.22; andWotld Bank, World Deeetonment Renin 2000/2001, overview. p. J, \, ww. worldbank.o tgpovcttyl wdrpoverty/report/overview,pdf, for the other fi gures. The Hunan Development Reports arc available atlltp://hdr. undp.org.

8. James Rifey, Rising Life E pecrancy: A Clobal girlory (New Yo.k: Cambridge University press, 2001); Jeremy Laurance, ',Thirty years: Diffbfence in Lif.c Expectancy Between the World's Rich and poor peooles.,, T'he Independent (lJK), September 7, 2007.

9. "Billionaires 2008," Forbes,March 24,ZWg, www. forbes.con/forhes/2008i/01 24l080.hrm L

10. Joe Sharkey, ..For the Super_Rich, lt's Time to Upgrade the Old Jumbo," The New york Trnas, October t't,2uk.

I I . "Watch Your'Iime," SpecialAdvertising Supplement to The New york Times, Ocrobcr 14, 2007. The passage quoted is on p. 40.

12. Bill Marsh,'A Battlc Between the Bottle and the Faucet:' The New yorkl'imes, ]uly 15,2ffi7.

13. Pacific Institute, ..Bortled Warer and Energy: A Facl Sheet," www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/ botr led_water/bottled water_and_energy.html.

14. Lance Cay, "Food Waste Costing Economy gl00 Billion, Study Finds," Scripps Howard News Service, August 10, 2005, www.knoxstudio.con/shns/story. cfm?pk=cARBAcE-08- I 0-05.

15. Deborah Lindquist, ,,How to Look Good Naked.,, Lifetime Netwofk, Season 2, Epjsode 2, July 29,2009. As relayed by Courtney Moran.

16. Peter Unger, Liviflg High and Letring Die (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

17. For funher discussion see peter Singef Ifie Expanding Circle (Oxfordt Clarendon press. lggl). pp. 136, 183. For futher examples, see www.unification. nerws/theme015.htm.

339

564 CHAPTER I4 ' WORI-D HT]NGERAND POVERTY

18. Peter Singer, ''fhe Singer Solution toWorld Poveny," The New York Tines Sunday Mogazine, September 5, 1999.

19. Clennview High School is Seider's lictional name

for the school, and the names of the students are also pseudonyms.

20. Jan Narveson, "'Wo Don't Owe Them a Thing!' A Tough-minded but Soft-heartedView of Aid to the Faraway Needy:'The Monist,86:3 (2003), p. 419.

21. Sharon Lafraniere, "Europe Takes Aliica's Fish, and Boatfoads of Migrants Follow," The New york Titues, January 14, 2008, and Elizabeth Rosenthal. "Europe's App€tite for Seafood Propels Illegal T.ade," Ihe New Yotk 'f imes, J anuuy | 5, 20O8,

22. See LeifWenar, "Property Rights and the Resource C\t$e:' Philosophy & Public Affairs 36:l (2N8), pp.2 32. A more detailed version is available on wenat's websitel www.wenar.staff .shef.ac.uk/PRRcwebpage.html.

23. P^rl Collie\ Tlrc Bouon Billion (New lork: Oxford University Press, 2007).

24. See teonard Wantchckon, "why Do Resource Dependent Countries Have Authoritarian Governments?" Jounvl o.f African Finance and Eco\omic Developmetut 5:2 (2002), pp. 5?-771 an earlier version is available at www. yale.edu/lcitner/pdf/1999- | I .pdf. See also Nathan Jenser and Leonard riy'antchekon, "Resource Wealth and Political

Rcgimes in Africal' Compamtive Political Studies, 3'l (2004), pp. 816-84 | .

25, President Museveni was speaking at the African Union summit, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, February 2007, and

the speech was reported in Andrew Revkin, "Poor Nations

to Bear Brunt a6 WorldWatms:'The NeuryorkTinres, April l. 2007.

26. Andrew Revkin, op. cit., and "Reports from Four Fr,)nts in the war on warmirg:'The New york'fines, April 3, 2007; Kathy Marks, "Rising Tide of Global Warming Tlreatens Pacific Island States," The lndependen, (UK),

O( tober 25, 2006. 27. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

D( velopment (OECD), OECD Journal on Development: D(vclopment Co-operalion Report 2007, p. 134, www oe :d.orgldac/dcr The table is reproduced by kind per- mijsion of OECD. See also Srdtittical Annex of lhe 2A)7 DeveLopnenl Co-opetution Report, vJvrw.o?ad.otg da aoecd/521911893143. xls, Fig. le.

28. See, lbr example, Anthony Langlois, "Charity and Ju.tice in the Singer Solution," in Rayrnond Younis (ed) Ot the Ethical Lile (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Sc'lolars, forthcoming); Paul GomberS, 'The Fallacy of Philanthropy," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32:t (21fi2), pp.2946.

29. Gomberg. op. cit.. pp. 30. 63-64. 30. See Andy Lamey's response to Anthony Langlois's

pa )er in the volume referred to in n. 28, above. 31, Singer addresses the question of finding a form of

ai( that really works in chapter 7 of The Life You Can Save, "Lnproving Aid."

32. Colin Mccinn, as quoted by Michael specter in "l he Dangerous Philosopher:'The New Yorkdr, September 6, r999.

33. Alan Ryan, as quoted by Michael Specter in "The Di ngerous Philosophcr," The New Yorker, September 6, t9 )9.

34. http://wwwmuzakandpotatoes.corn/20081OU peler

sir ger-on-affl uence.html.

JoH;

(

I

I

c ( a

o

Jl

II

0

IT

READING QUESTIONS l. Explain what poverty and affluence are like today ac.ording to the information provided by Singer'

lncludo in your explanation the World Bank's dcfinil on of"extreme poverty" 2. Describe the two tnain thought experiments utilizerl by Singer Explain the differences between

mem.

3. What is Sjnger's basic argument for why failing to dcnatc to aid organizations such as UNICEF is wrong? Why does Singer think that it is hard to rcject cach of the premiscs?

4. Describe a few ofthe common objcctions raised agai'rst the basic argument by high school students How does Singer respond to each of these objections?

5. Explain the Libertarian view with respect to whethei we have a duty to help others. How docs

Singer arglre that wealthy nations and their citizens have caused harm to developing nations and

their Deoole'l

rh

o,

.af

Excerpted fr(

Four

\pril ning JK),

per-

f the l.org/

and nent:

AnTHUR . World Hungcr and Moral Obligation

DISCUSSION QUESTTONS L Are there any objections Singer fails to consider in response to his basic argument? Consider

responses on his behalfto any further obje itions. 2. What do people spend money on what they either don't nccd or rarely use other than those things

mentioned by Singer? What things might I eople be most easily convinced to do without? 3, How would you respond in the cases of the drowning child and the child on the train tracks?

Consider and discuss differing reactions to these two thought experiments.

y and ! (ed) )fldge allacy , 3211

glois's

crm of 1Save,

cter in tember

n '"The

nber 6,

2lpetet'

( JoHN Anlsun

World Hunger and Moral Obligation

Onc of the prcmises in Peter Singer's bar.ic argument from the previous selection states: f it is in your power to preyent something bad .from happening, without sacrificinq anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to d', so. Arthur labels this premise Singer's "greater moral evil rule," pointing out that it is m( ant to capture the idea that morality involves giv- ing equal consideration to the interests ol all, which is part of our moral code. However, as Artbur observes, such equality is only on,) part, and Singer's rule ignores other elements of our moral code including considerations c,f entitlement which inyolve both rights and desert. On the basis of considerations of entitlement, Arthur argues that our present moral code allows such considerations to qualify cor siderations of equality of intercsts. For example, our moral rights to life and to property rel)resent entitlements that we can invoke as a moral justification for not helping strangers when the cost to us is substantial.

Of course, the fact that our cunent mo al code includes such entitlements does not show that such entitlements arejustilied. Perhaps there is good reason to move to a new moral code that drops the sorts ofentitlements mentiored above and includes Singer's greater moral evil rule. In the final section of his paper, Arthur considers this proposal and argues that an ideal moral code that is genuinely workable uould include entitlements that justify the sort of rights to property that one can invoke as a moral justilication for not helping strangers when the cost is substantial.

Ilecomnended Reading: consequential sm, chap. 1, sec. 24, see especially the discussion of rule conscquentialism. Also relevant, t rc discussion of moral rights in chap. I , sec. 2D, and Rawls's principles ofiusl.ice in chap. l,sec2G.

Excerpted from "Equality, Enlitlements, and Distribution ol Income." Copyright 1984 by John Arthur Reprinted by permission.

341

{ Ala,qnrv,q SeN

PropertY and Hunger

According to Sen, staNation and famine result lrom failures of entitlements to

property that

would otherwise prouio" tt't '"'ou'"i'i"tltt" ""t"i"g to aftbrd lifc's necessities including

food. This "entitlem"nt" unulvttt 'ug!""'o " t"ai'nUti"" "t"l"ll: Tlltt

t Ueal with tam-

ine that would increase tfre entitternJits ot t"ue'"ly d"p'iued groups while reducing

the enti-

tlements ofthose in "conomi"atty aOua"nt"gJ g' otlpt wc,"ra;uch redistributive

intervention

::T#J:l.HnHffi*i ;,"';$ ;*l; l rsu ;:ti,tii::1ip:1ffi':''.1T"'" erty and hunger ofsoung"rsf on" 'niifii'uppu*t

tttot-if igttt' ttuve intrinsic value' then such

;*ffi ffi;t"i', ;", :*iin"o uo*""i'' s"'i;i:lmmT]i';'iT, Xllii"Illli,i"l,Xl'lil ffi ::JilT'l*l"Hl-"i,:'-ff*;:ffi;';' Ji,"""i""r"o' ^ consideration

or its rikerv

"""r"0"**.. tttne value of,the con"luencc;-of limiting'or "Ot'Ot'":#rt'r1t"1;il::."fi:

"t""ii"""n, t ft"fping to fulfill rnorally importi ntgoals' suct lit:^l:l

i-moortance of avoiding "u*ution

unaiu-ine i ; th-e basis for a moral claim or right not to be

hungry, which can ju'tlfy f imitrng thJpffi"y' t"tuf 3t*ts

of"the^economically advantaged'

Sen concludes by e^pto"ng tn" rr*if i'J"tical implications of recognizing this right'

Recommended Reqalng' 'ignt'-f;l'lJ"ppt*l"rt to moral issues' chap l '

sec 2D' Also

,"l"uunt i, "on."quentialism'

chap l ' sec 2A

CHAPTER t4 ' WORLD I{UNGEITAND POVERTY

University Press.

tne

the I vieu ls n( calll this utilit "sim righl But men:

and appr'

T

strar right don' erall' musl ful e have may Righ choir tives

T] as gc the ir sicall

be gr dem? viola there (merr vlew fulfill as ut of rig mora

.. ,ITlhe claims of property rights' which some would constilution talks cven of '1he right

to an adequale

defend and somc. .would o'tot"' iii' ""'' i""''""i means of livelihood"t The

"right not lo be hungry"

rers of basic moral belief tn"t -"'0"'-''i""'iirv l" hi: "f::l-9t^"1 invoked in recent discussions on lhe

influcnced one way o, u," ortr., oy uny c".il;;i;g"- obligation to help the famishcd

rl"o. fft.t call for scnsitive moral analysis respon- sive to empirrcal realities' includi.ng,cconomlc

ones

Moral claims based on intrinsically valuable rights RIGHTS: INSTRUMENTS'

are oflen usecl in political and social arguments

iittrit" rJ","a to ownership have been invoked for

;;:;.;;;il. are also other tvpes or rights which ;"";; b."en-.; as "inherent and inalienable"'

and

i;J'^::1iJ:T.:i..ill"Jli"lll'li'1il.,l"h'li" L:?T:::,::1":::.1",';ff:"J.'T#,',l,TI"yr "certain unalienablc 'igttt'"

utong *-ttich arc "life' different ways First' they can be considered to be

liberty and the pursuit of nupp'n""i:'-ftt" tnJiun valuable instrunents to achieve other

goals This rs

From Amartya sen, "Property and Hunger;' Ec onomics and PhiLosophy4

( 1988): 5?-6S Reprinted by permission of Cambridge

IJ advar share integr

RIGHTS: INSTRUMENTS'

CONSTRAINTS, OR GOALS?

350

lequate lungry" i on tne

in three )d to be

I hrs rs

)ambridge

the "instrumental view," and is well illustrat( d by the utilitarian approach to rights. Rights arc, irr that view, ol' no intrinsic importance. Violation of I ishts is nor in irself a bad rhing, nor fulfillmenr inr i-nsi_ cally good. But the acceptance ofrights promotr)s, in this view, things that arc ultimately rmporrant, [( wtt, utility. Jcremy Bentham reiected ,.natural risht i,, as "simplc nonsense." and ..nalural and imprescrirtible rights" as "rhetorical nonsense, nonsenseupon sr,ks... But he attached great importance ro righ6 as in;tru_ ments valuable to the promotion of a good soc iety, and devoted much energy to the attemDt to relbrm appropriatcly thc actual sysrem of rights.

The second view may be called the ,.constraint view," and it takes the form of seeing rights as ,ran- J/i"aizrJ on what others can or cannot do. In this \ iew rights are intrinsically important. However. hev don't figure in moral accounting as goals to 5c ggn- erally promoted, but only as constraints that ol lers must obey. As Robert Nozjck has put it in a porver_ ful exposition of this "consrrainr vicw": ..lndivid rals have rights, and there ar.e things no person or grrup may do to them (without violating their righrs)." Rights "set the constraints withjn which a so:ial choice is to be made, by excluding certain alter na_ tives, fixing others, and so on."2

The third approach is to see fulfillments of ri, hts as goals to be pursued. This',goal view" differs fiom tho instrumental view in regarding rights to be intrin_ sically important, and it differs from the constriLint yiew in seeing the fulfillmenl of rights as goals to bc gencrally promoted, rather than takins them as demanding only (and exactly) that we reirain fr rm violating the rights ofothers. In the ,,constraint view" th€rc is no duty to help anyone with his or her rig rts (merely not to hinder), and also in the ,,instrumertal

view" there is no duty, in fact, to help unless the ri;lht fulfillment will also promote some other goal sLch as utility. The "goal view" integrates the valuation of rights-their fulfillment and violation_in over all moral accounting, and yields a wider sphere of inl u_ ence of rights in morality.

I haye argued elsewhere that the goal view has advantages that the other two approaches do rot share, in particular, the ability to accommodi te integrated moral accounting including inter alia t re

sr,r . property and Hunger 6?5

intrinsic importance ofa class of fundamental rishts. I shall not repeal that argument here. But thcre is an rnteresttng question ofdual roles ofrights in the sense that some rights may be both intrinsically imponant and instrumentally valuable. For example, the right to be fiee from hunger could_not implausiblv_be regatdcd as being valuable in itsclfas we as servine as a good insrrumenl ro promorc other goals such ai secu ty, longevity or utility. Ifso, both rhe goal view and the instrumental view would have to be simulta_ neously deployed to get a comprehensive assessment ofsucharight....

The instrumental aspcct is an inescapable feature of e!ery right. since irrcspective of wheiher a certain right is intrinsically valuable or not, its acceDtance will ccrtainly have other consequences as wcil, and these, too, have to be assessed along with the intrinsic vaiue of rights (if any), A righr that is regardetl as quite valuable in itself may nevertheless bejudged to be morally rejectable if it loads to disastrous conse- quences. This is a case of the rights playing a nega- tir€ instrumental role. It is, of course, also Dossible that the instrumental argument will Dolsrerthe intrin_ sic claims of a right to be taken seriously. . . .

There are two general conclusions to draw, at this stage, from this very preliminary discussion. First, we must distinguish between (l) the intrinsic value of a right, and (2) the overall value of a right taking note inter alia of its intrinsic imporlance (if any). The acceptancc of the intrinsic importance of any right is no guarantee that its overall moral valuation must be favorable. Second, no moral assessment of a risht can be indepcndent of its likely consequences. Th-e need for empirical assessment of the effects of accepting any right cannot be escaped. Empirical ar.guments are quite central to moral philosophy.

. PROPERTY AND DEPRIVATION

The right to hold, use and bequeath property that one has legitimately acquired is often taken to be inher_ ently valuable. In fact, howevet many ofits defenses seem to be actually of the instrumental type, e.g.,

351

arguing that property rights make people more free to choose one kind of a life rather than another. But even if we do accept that property rights may have some intrinsic value, this does not in any way amount

to an overall justification of ptoporty rights, since property rights may have consequences which them- selves will require assessment. Indeed, the causation of hunger as well as its prev€ntion may materially depend on how property rights are structured. II a sel of property rights leads, say, to starvation, as it well might, then the moral approval of these rights would certainly be compromised severely. In general, the need for consequential analysis of propelty rights is inescapable whether or not such rights are seen as having any intdnsic value... .

. . . I have tried to argue elsewhere. . . that famines are, in fact, best explained in terms of failures of entitlement systems. The entitlements here refer, of course, to legal rights and to practical possibilities, rather than to moral slatus, but the laws and actual operation of private ownership economies have many

features in common with the moral system ofentitle- ments analyzed by Nozick and others.

The entitlement approach to famines need not, of course, be confined to private ownership econo- mies, and entitlement failures of other systems can also be fruitfully studied to examine tamines and hunger In the specilii context of private ownership economies, the entitlements are substantially analyz-

able in terms. respectlveiy, of what may be called "endowm€nts" and "exchange entitlements." A per- son's endowment refers to what he or she initially owns (including the person's own labor power), and

the exchange entitlement mapping tells us what the

person can obtain through exchanging what he or she

owns, cither by production (exchange with nature), or by trade (exchange with others), or a mixture of tbe two. A person has to starve if neither the endow- ments, nol what can be obtained through exchange, yields an adequate arnount of food

If starvation and hunger are scen in terms of fbil- ures of entitlements, then it becomes immediately clear that the total availability of lbod in a country is

only one of several variables that are releYant, Many

famines occur without any decline in the availabil- ity of food. For example, in the Great Bengal famine

CHAPTER I4 . WORI-D HUNGERAND POVERTY

of 1943, the total food availability in Bengal was not

l)articularly bad (considerably higher than two years (:arlier when there was no famine), and yet three mil- lion people died, in a famine mainly affecting the r ural areas, through rather violent shifts in the rela- tive purchasing powers ofdi[lerent groups, hitting tbe rural laborers the hardest. The Ethiopian famine of 973 took place in a year of average per capita fbod

irvailability, but the cultivators and other occupation

1;roups in the province of Wollo had lost their mcans ofsubsistence (through loss ofcrops and a decline of ,:conomic activity, related to a local drought) and had rro means ofcommanding food from elsewhere in thc r:ountry. Indeed, some lbod moved out of Wollo to Inore prosperous people in other parts of Ethiopia, |epeating a pattern of contrary movement of food rhat was widely observed during the lrish famines of rhc I 840s (with food moving out of famine-stricken reland to prosperous England which had greater

lower in the battle for entitlements). The Bangladesh aminc of 1974 took place in a year of peak foot)

;rvailability, but several occupation groups had lost heif entitlement to fbod through loss ofemployment

rrnd other economic changes (including inflationary rrressures causing prices to outrun wages). Other t)xamples of tamines without significant (or any) lecline in food availability can be found, and there s nothing particularly surprising about tbis fact once

t is recognized that the availability of food is only rne influence among many on the entitlemenl ofeach

)ccupation group. Even when a famine is associated

with a decline of food availability, the entitlement ,:hanges have to be studied to understand the partic- rlar nature of the famine, e,g., why one occupation group is hit but not anothcr. The causation of starya-

ion can be sensibly sought in failurcs ofentitlements

rf the respective groups. The causal analysis of famines in terms ofenlitle-

nents also points to possible public policies of pre- vention. The main economic strategy would have to

:ake the form of increasing the entitlements of the leprived groups, and in general, of guaranteeing ninimum entitlements for cvcryone. paying parlicu-

Lar attention to the vulnerable groups. This can' in :he long run, be done in many different ways, lnvolv'

ing both economic growth (including growth of food

352

outpl

these

eny I mote fact, i not b instar the gl reduc place{

vaflol quash

in difi substa

menb Thr

i f prol If the cientll whate. this vi On the morall then it' acceptl eYen m

straint' entitler

In fr absurdr entitler sions t( "absur( one at and the mass st belongs of seein

I sho regardir which c one. Evt violatior consequ tioned e be justly

I

,s not years

) mil- g the rela-

lg tne nc of lbod

lation

neans

ine of d had in the llo to lOpra,

food nes of 'tcKen

reater adesh

; food d lost yment LOnary

Other 'any) I thcre rt once s only rfeach rciated

lement

Partic- rpatlon starva- lments

3ntitle- of pre- rave to of the

nteeing )articu- can, in involv- of lbod

output) and distributional adjustments. Some of these policies may, however, require that the pr,rp- erty rights and the corresponding entitlements of ihe more prosp€rous groups be violated. The problem in fact, is particularly acute in the short run, since it n'ay not be possible to engineer rapid cconomic glorith instantly. Then the burden of raising entitlements of the groups in distress would largely have to fall on reducing the entitlemcnts of othcrs more favoralrly placed. Transfers of income or commodities thror gh various public policies may well bc ellectivc in quashing a famine (as the experience of lamine relief in differ€nt countries has shown), but it may require substantial government intewention in the entitle- ments of the more prosperous groups.

There is, however, no great moral dilemma in tltis if property rights arc treated as pwely instrument . If the goals of relief of hunger and poverty are sul fi- ciently powerful, then it would be just right to vioLrte whatcver property rrghts come in the way. since- in this view-property rights have no intrinsic status. On the other hand, if property rights are taken to be morally inviolable inespective oflhcir consequenc 's, then itwill followthatthese policies cannot be mora ly acceptable even though they might save thousands, or even millions, from dying. The inflexible moral "c< n- straint" of respecling people's legitimately acquir:d enl itlemcnls would rule out such policies.

In fact this type ofproblem presents a reductio rd absurdum of the moral validity of constraint-bas )d entitlcment systoms. However, while the conclu- sions to be derived from that approach might well rc "absurd," the situation postulated is not an imaginary one at all. It is based on studies of actual famines and the role ofentitlement lailures in the causation of mass starvation. If there is an embarrassment here, it belongs solidly to the consequence-independent w.ry of seeing rights.

I should add that this dilemma doss not arise from regarding property fights to be of intrinsic value, which can be criticized on other grounds, but not tl is one. Even ifproperty rightsdre ofintrinsic value, th( ir violation may bejustilied on grounds ofthe favorable consequences of that violation. A right, as was me t- tioned earlieg may bc intrinsically valuable and st ll bejustly violated taking overything into account. Tlrc

SrN . Propcrty and Hunser 677

"absurdum" does not belong to attaching intrinsic value to property rights, but to regarding theserights as simply acceptable, regardless of their consequences. A moral system that values both property rights and other goals-such as avoiding famines and staNation, or lulfilling people's right not to be hungry---can, on the one hand, give property righrs intrinsic importancc. and on the other, recommend the violation ofproperty rights when that leads to better overall consequences (including the disvalue ofrights violation).

The issue here is not the valuing ofproperty dghts, but their alleged inviolability- There is no dilemma here either for the purely instrumental view of prop- erty rights or for treating the fulfillment of property rights as one goal among many, but specifically for consequence-independent assertions of propelty rights and for the corresponding constraint-based approaches to moral entitlement of ownership.

That property and hunger are closely related can- not possibly come as a great surprise. Hunger is pri- marily associated with not owning enough food and thus property rights over food are immediately and directly involved. Fights over that property right can be a major part ofthe real ity ofa poor country, and any system of moral assessment has to take nole of that phenomenon. The tendency to see hunger in purely technocralic terms of lbod output and availability may help to hide the crucial role of entitlements in the genesis of hunger, but a fuller economic analy- sis cannot overlook Lhat crucial role. Since property rights over food are derived from property rights over other goods and resources (through production and trade), the entire system of rights of acquisition and transfer is implicated in the emergence and survival of hunser and starvation.

THE RIGHT NOT TO BE HUNGRY

Property rights have been championed fora long time. In contrast, the assenion of'1he right not to be hun- gry" is a comparatively recent phenornenon. While this right is much invoked in political debates, there is a good deal of skepticism about treating this as

678 CHAPTER I4 . WORLD HUNCERAND POVERTY

l"ruly a right jn any substantial way. It is ollen asserted that this concept ol "right not to be hungry" stands esscntially for nothing at all ("simple nonsense," as Bentham called "natural rights" in general). That piece of sophisticated cynicism reveals not so much a pcnetrating insight into the practical affairs of the world, but a refusal to investigate what people mean when they assert the existence of rights thal, for the bulk of humanity, are not in fact guaranteed by the existing institutional arrangements.

The right not to be hungry is not assetted as a rec- ognition of an institutional right that already exists, as the right to property typically is. The assertion is primarily a moral claim as to what should be valued, and what institutional structure we should aim for, and try to guarantee if feasible. It can also be seen in terms of Ronald Dworkin's category of "background rights-rights that provide a justifi ca- tion fbr political decisions by socicty in abstract.'"' This interpretation serves as the basis fot a reason to change the existing institutional structure and state policy.

It is broadly in this form that the right to "an adequate means of livelihood" is refeffed to in the Constitution of India: "The state shall, in particular,

direct its policy towards securing. . . that the citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequatc

means oflivelihood." This does not, ofcourse, offer to each citizen a guaranteed right to an adequate liveli- hood, but the state is asked to take steps suclr that this

right could become realizable for all. In fact, this light has often been invoked in politi-

cal debatos in India. The electoral politics of India does indeed give parlicular scope for such use of what are seen as background rights. It is, of course, not altogetherclear whcther the reference to this right in the lndian constitution has in fact materially influ- enced the political debates. The constitutional state- ment is often cited, but very likely this issue would bave figured in any case in these debates, given the nature of the moral and political concern But what-

ever the constitutional contribution, it is interesting to ask whether the implicit acceptance of the value of the right to freedom from hunger makes any differ- ence to actual policy.

It can be argued that the general acceptance of lhc right of freedom Irom acutc hunger as a maior goal has played quite a substantial role in preven! ing lamines in India. The last real famine in lndia war in 1943, and while food availability per head in india has risen only rather slowly (even now thc food availability per head is no higher than in marry sub-Saharan countries stricken by recuffent fan ines), the country has not experienced any fam- ine since indcpendence in 1947. The main cause of lhat success is a policy of public intervention. Whcnever a famine has threatened, a public policy of ntcrvcntion and relief has offered minimum ent tlements to the potential lamine victims, and thu j have the threatening famines been avert€d. It can be argued that the quickness of the response of the respective governments (both stat€ and cen- tral) reflects a political necessity, given the Indian ele{:toral system and the importance attached by the public to the prevention of starvation. Political preisures from opposition groups and the news me,lia bave kept the respective governments on the r toes, and the right to be free from acut€ hur ger and starvation has bcen achieved largely because it has been seen as a valuable right. Thus the recognition of tbe intrinsic moral importance of .his right, which has been widely invoked in put'lic discussions, has served as a powerful politi- cal instrument as well.

r)n the other hand, this process has been far from effr ctive in tackling pervasive and persistent under- nor rishment in India, There has been no famine in Dost-independence India, but pefhaps a third of India's rural population is percnnially undernour- ish,:d. So long as hunger remains non-acute and star-

vat on deaths are avoided (even though morbidity and

mo.tality rates are enhanced by undernourishment), the need tbr a policy response is neither much dis- cussed by the news media, nor forcefully demanded evcn by opposition parties. The elimination of fam- ine j cooxists with the survival ofwidespread "regular

hur ger" The right to "adequate means" of aoarislt' me,t does not at all seem to arouse political concem in i. way thal lhe right lo "adequate means" to avotd sta vation does.

The en[ fcas ability I accepte, though also par posed. I in quest tant gl ent way. nature o covetag( the way famines fam il iar political practical little pro nomenor acute hul

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The contrast can be due to one of several diffcr_ ent reasons. It could, of course, simply be that tlre ability to avoid undernourishment is not social y accepted as very important. This could be sr. though whal is socialty acceptetl and what is not s also paltly a matter of how clearly the questions ar e posed. It is, in fact, quite possible that the freedorn ln question would be regarded as a morally imoo. tant rjghr jf the question were posed in a iransoa. ent way, but lhis docs not happen bccause of the nature of Indian electoral politics and that of ne\,! s coverage. The issue is certainly not..dramatic" ir the way in which starvation deaths and threatenin r famincs are. Conrinued low-key miscry may be to, familiar a phenomenon to make it worthwhile for political leaders to get some mileage out of it irr practical politics_ The news media may also finrl little prolit in emphasizing a non-spectacular pho. nomenon-the quiet survival of disciplined, non acute hunger.

If this is indeed the case, then the implications fbr action ofthc goal ofeliminating hungeq orguarantee. ing to all the means for achieving this, may be quit(

srN . propcrty and ttullgcr 6].9

complex. The political case for making the quiet hun_ ger less quiet and more troublesome for govemments in power is certainly relevant. Aggressive political joumalism might prove to have an instrumental moral value if it were able to go beyond reporting the hor- rors of visible starvation and to portray thc pervasive, non-acute hunger in a more dramatic and telling way. This is obviously not the place to discuss the instru_ mentalities of practical politics, but the endorsement ofthe moral right to be free from hunger-both acute and non-acute-would in fact raise pointed questions about the means which might be used to pursue such a goal. ..,

NOTES l. This is presented as a ,.Directive principle of State

Policy." lt does not have a direct operational role in thc working of the lndian legal system, but it has considerable political force.

2. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, ahd tJtopia (New York: Basic, I974), pp. ix, 166.

3. Ronald Dworkin, Tbkine Rights Seiously (Carnbri_ dge, Mass.: Harvard University press, 1971), p.93.

READTNG QUESTTONS l. Explain how rights can be instruments, const-aiDts, ot goals according to Sen. What does he think

the advantages of the goal view of rights are? 2. What are the two conclusions about rights th ( he draws from the distinction among the three dif-

fercnt vierrs? How does he distinguish betwcen the int.insic value of a right and the overall value of a right?

3. Whar is rhe best explanation for the cause cf famines according to Sen? Explain the difference between endowments and entitlemenrs.

4. Expiain what Sen means whcn he talls about the right not b€ hungry. How does he use the notion of background fights to argue for his view?

DrscussroN QUESTIONS t. How does Sen's solution to the problem of world hunger compare to the others proposed in

this chapter? Discuss whether there are any potential problems with his view that he fails to consider. What are some of the ways that private citizen,j could work to implement the sort ot strategies sug- gcsl.ed by Sen?