Effective Altruism - Helping the Poor - Essay Example

Effective Altruism: Helping the Poor Tiffany family earns about $90,000 annually decided to go for a one-week holiday in China where theywould spend about $10,000. Before boarding the flight, they went to a coffee shop for coffee and doughnuts. While enjoying in the coffee shop, CNN shot a TV program on their screen showing how millions of children were dying from lack of food or medical care in Africa. Although the family thinks poverty is an international problem, they decide to donate $1000 towards helping the poor. This brings the effective altruism, which involves empathetic feeling and compassion to help others. Peter Singer presents his idea that effective altruism can be the best way to help the poor if charity donations are used properly. According to his idea of effective altruism, we only need to give what could otherwise have been wasted as opposed to the typical altruism exhibited by personalities like mother Teresa. Most people are familiar with typical altruism making it difficult for them to be altruistic. He advocates for a pragmatic approach to altruism, through charity organizations and non-governmental organizations, to make certain that donations are used wisely and effectively. However, not everybody can feel empathy and compassion for the poor. Effective altruism is the best way to help the poor because it encourages people to sacrifice and donate the monies they spend on luxuries to charitable organizations that will formulate long term programs to address poverty. Essentially, world poverty especially on third world country is on the rise eliciting the need for effective altruism. It can be argued that the efforts such as donor funding applied to alleviate poverty have not been effective so far since poverty is increasing. In this regard, effective altruism is essential in order to help the poor countries get out of poverty. UNICEF has revealed that about poverty causes deaths of a lot of children each year with most of deaths were all come from low incomes countries. At the same time, more than 80 percent of the world’s population is widening income gap. According to Singer, time is ripe for addressing the poverty problem at a personal level through effective altruism. In this way, everybody including middle income and high income earners would contribute by just giving a little of what they spend on luxury. This would also help in reducing the carbon footprint significantly as well. Singer claims that effective altruism will have profound and lasting impact in the sense that it will not only saves lives, but also it will improve livelihoods. He maintains that the only way to achieve this goal is to sacrifice, “whatever money you’re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away” (332). Certainly, Singer provides a long-term solution to solve global poverty. People living in poor countries usually have inadequate access to clean water, health facilities, food, and education. Indeed, effective altruism may not be employed forever considering the people being helped will be able to stand on their feet. Once the poor have been empowered, they will be able to generate decent income hence eliminating the need for future effective altruism. It also means more middle income earners will be available to support the remaining poor population. According to Singer, effective altruism is the kind of philanthropy that reasonably benefits the poor without necessarily trouble the rich or philanthropists. It means that the rich people ought to contribute the fair share of what they have and not necessarily a large percent of their possessions. Rich people can pursue effective altruism through increasing their donations. Currently, the amount of donations that the rich people give is inadequate and the amount does not constitute effective altruism. The Rich people have some sense of complacence by allocating more of their resources to unwarranted luxuries. Effective altruism means sacrificing one’s luxuries in order to improve the welfare of the poor. Since it is difficult to attain equality, the only decent way to get some level of fairness in resource distribution is through kindness, self-sacrifice, hard work, and charity. Due to the effective altruism has significant impact, more people should engage in effective altruism to combat global poverty. Many people across the world have more than sufficient resources and wealth that they can give part to the poor. Since there is no fixed amount that a person should give to the poor, but a little sacrifice here and there will make the world different. If more people can believe that someone else’s needs is more important than luxuries and pleasures, then more people can engage in effective altruism. Singer imply this idea when he insists that “if we value the life of a child more than going to fancy restaurants, the next time we go out for eating we will know that we could have done something better with our money”(333). If half of 316,000,000 U.S citizens gave a dollar per day to the poor, they would in total have given almost 60 trillion dollars annually, which would make a significant change to global poverty without necessarily affecting the donor’s quality of life. Indeed, it is a great obligation for well-off people to give the contribution towards a better society. Since not everyone can have all the luxury or wealth, it is only humanized that those who have sufficient resources should give to the poor. When people heartily contribute towards charitable courses, they engage in effective altruism, explained by Peter Singer. The feeling of compassion, courage, and empathy towards the suffering people and the less fortunate does not fit the full characteristics of effective altruism. Through effective altruism, anybody can help the poor by sacrificing and donating their spending on luxuries to charity organizations in order to fight global poverty. Although Singer’s viewpoint of effective altruism has obtain momentum in many schools of thought, some evolutionary psychologists still believe that it is nearly impractical to provide for people you have no connection with, especially strangers. In fact, such evolutionary psychologists believe that “human nature is not sufficiently altruistic to make it plausible that many people will sacrifice so much for strangers” (332). For example, if a man got extra money, he will prefer buying something luxury or traveling aboard to improve his living standard but not donating to the charity organization. In as much as many people can have compassion and empathize with the less privileged, but not every empathizer will have the urge to bring real donations to charity organizations. Besides, some people query the credibility of many charity organizations that take advantage of deplorable situations to enrich themselves (333). Many people who query the credibility of some charity organizations do not see the reason for giving an amount surpassing their fair share. Perhaps this attitude explains the reason why many people are not willing to adopt effective altruism to help the poor. Such people do not see the rationale behind sacrificing their pleasures for people who they do not even know. However, any one with wealth surplus to his or her essential needs should be donating most of it to help people suffering from poverty. People can be better in what they do to generate more and return, have more to give. In this way, people can give and remain with more, or at least a significant amount. For example, Bill gates can finance charity organizations without necessarily sacrificing his luxuries. Billionaires have more responsibility than middle class in giving contribution. In conclusion, effective altruism is the best method by which the poor can receive the necessary help that they require. Since the wealthy people have an advantage to increase foreign aids to poor countries, such people are the better placed to promote global economic development. In this respect, it is important that the privileged and influential people take the lead in eradicating global poverty through promoting hard work and philanthropy while at the same time encouraging efficiency and effectiveness in non-governmental organizations. Works Cited Singer, Peter. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”. The New York Times Magazine. 1999. Ed. Gilbert Mueller. Mason, OH: Cengage, 2014. 327-333. Print. Read More