The One Percent Solution to Poverty; Singer's Proposal in "One World"
By
Singer, Peter, One World, The Ethics of Globalization,
I have been sporadically reviewing and assessing Australian philosopher Peter Singer's 2002 book "One World, the Ethics of Globalization," and this is the last installment. I had given great attention to Singer over many essays when, a month ago, I happened to mention "One World" to the
"In `Famine, Affluence, and Morality', one of Singer's best-known philosophical essays, he argues that the injustice of some people living in abundance while others starve is morally indefensible. Singer proposes that anyone able to help the poor should donate part of their income to aid poverty and similar efforts. Singer reasons that when one is already living comfortably, a further purchase to increase comfort will lack the same moral importance as saving another person's life. (One point of contention is at what point a person may be said to be 'living comfortably' and `Famine, Affluence and Morality' does not set out how to specify this.) Singer himself reports that he donates 25% of his salary to Oxfam and UNICEF. In "Rich and Poor" ... his main argument is presented as follows: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it; absolute poverty is bad; there is some poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance; therefore we ought to prevent some absolute poverty." (Article: "Peter Singer," in Wikipedia)
As we shall see, Singer further argues in One World that our idea of charity is unnecessarily nullified by national borders. We lump in frivolities, such as golf club fundraisers, with substantive charities that would actually save lives. Thus we diminish what moral good our money does. In the climactic chapter of One World, Singer offers several persuasive thought experiments showing how morally indefensible it really is to ignore the crying needs of the poorest in the world.
"In Living High and Letting Die, New York Philosopher Peter Unger presents an ingenious series of imaginary examples designed to probe our intuitions about whether it is wrong to live well without giving money to help hungry malnourished or dying from easily treatable illnesses like diarrhea." (Peter Singer, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, 186)
In view of Singer's own generosity in putting his money where his mouth is, it would seem fair to suggest to anybody who would criticize Singer that they first donate 26 percent or more to the poor. Otherwise they do not have his moral authority. In "One World" Singer suggests that members give to life-saving, international charity a much more modest percentage of income than his own 25 percent, as we shall see.
The unique value of One World is that it suggests that we simultaneously adopt political measures to bolster the prerequisite of charity, order. To really help the poorest humans on earth, there must first be a foundation of world order. This, no other ethicist dares think about, even though Aristotle pointed in the right direction when he held that politics grows out of ethics, not the other way around. It has to be the personal, moral imperative of our time to unite the human race under one law and one government. Any other moral speculation is mere hairsplitting, a distracting waste of time.
Because of his interest in ethics, Singer does not attempt to detail what a world government might look like; he only emphasizes its central historical importance. In the last paragraph of the book, Singer offers a capsule history of the past several centuries.
"The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are celebrated for the voyages of discovery that proved that the world is round. The eighteenth century saw the first proclamations of universal human rights. The twentieth century's conquest of space made it possible for a human being to look at our planet from a point not on it, and so to see it, literally, as one world. Now the twenty-first century faces the task of developing a suitable form of government for that single world. It is a daunting moral and intellectual challenge, but one we cannot refuse to take up. The future of the world depends on how well we meet it." (Peter Singer, One World; The Ethics of Globalization, 200-201)
This is not to say, though, that Singer is an uncompromising world federalist. Because of the possible risks, he does not advocate leaping headlong into a world government. However, "we could accept the diminishing significance of national boundaries and take a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to greater global governance." (200) He suggests starting by establishing core labor and environmental standards. But such standards, like everything else on a world level, rests upon a stable, ordered background maintained, monitored and regulated by some central authority.
"If these standards are developed and accepted, they would not be much use without a global body to check that they are being adhered to, and to allow other countries to impose trade sanctions against goods that are not produced in conformity with the standards. Since the WTO (World Trade Organization) seems eager to pass this task over to the ILO (International Labor Organization), we might see that organization significantly strengthened. Something similar could happen with environmental standards. It is even possible to imagine a United Nations Economic and Social Security Council that would take charge of the task of eliminating global poverty, and would be voted the resources to do it." (p. 200)
The degree of centralization of the world governance he has in mind is not clear, other than the fact that it should be democratic -- there is universal agreement on this because it would reduce the chances that a central government would degrade into a world-wide tyranny. But the other nightmare scenario, the growth of a massive, inefficient central bureaucracy, he suggests can be avoided by "subsidiarity." This is a mandate directing that decisions always be made at the lowest level capable of dealing with the problem. This is being actively applied in the European Union. If it proves successful "it is not impossible that it might work for the world." (p. 200)
Singer does not seem to be aware of the Earth Charter, a grassroots document that has already pounded out a broad consensus of spiritual, moral and philosophical planks for a UN Economic and Security Council to walk on, including the goal of eliminating poverty. I think if he, and all the rest of us, including Baha'is, adopt this document, we would find it much easier to come together with diverse groups in attaining the goal of "planetizing" charity.
I promised to end with Singer's proposal for ending world poverty one fat pocket at a time. As long as nationalist governments are obsessed with petty rivalries and refuse to consider even the most miserly contribution to eliminate poverty, he suggests that would-be world citizens take the matter into their own hands. He suggests a publicity campaign planting in peoples' heads the goal that everyone pay at least one percent of their income to the poor. This would be more than enough to wipe out the grossest suffering, although much more could be done with what he calls "optimal" giving. I will let Singer take over from here.
Sidgwick's point: there is a distinction between "what it may be right to do, and privately recommend," and "what it would not be right to advocate openly."
... The point is to nominate as a target the figure that will lead to the greatest amount of money being raised. For that it needs to be a target that makes sense to people. One way of looking at how much we might suggest that people should give is to suppose that the task of eliminating poverty in the world were fairly distributed among all of the 900 million people in high-income countries.
How much would each of them have to give?
As we have seen, the World Bank estimates that it would cost $40 to $60 billion per year in additional aid to achieve the development goals set at the United Nations Millennium Summit. These goals, calling for poverty and hunger to be halved by 2015, are more modest than the elimination of poverty. They could leave untouched the situation of the poorest of all, in countries where the costs of reaching poor people are higher than they are in countries with better infrastructures. But they are at least a stepping stone on the way to a more complete victory over poverty, so let us ask how much it would require, per person to raise this sum.
There are about 900 million people in the developed world, roughly 600 million of them adults. Hence a donation of about $100 per adult per year for the next fifteen years could achieve the Millennium Summit goals, even at the high end of the World Bank estimates. For someone earning $27,500 per annum, the average salary in the developed world, this is less than 0.4 percent of their annual income, or less than 1 cent in every $2 they earn.
There are many complexities that such figures ignore, but they go both ways. Not all residents of rich countries have income to spare, after meeting their basic needs; but on the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of rich people who live in poor countries, and they could and should give too. We could, therefore, advocate that everyone with income to spare, after meeting their family's basic needs, should contribute a minimum of 0.4 percent of their income to organizations working to help the world's poorest people. But to do so would be to set our sights too low, for it would take fifteen years even to halve poverty and hunger. During those fifteen years, tens of thousands of children will continue to die every day from poverty-related causes. We should feel a greater sense of urgency to eliminate poverty. Moreover there is nothing especially memorable about 0.4 percent of one's income.
A more useful symbolic figure would be 1 percent, and this might indeed be closer to what it would take to eliminate, rather than halve, global poverty.” (One World, 192-193)
"We could therefore propose, as a public policy likely to produce good consequences, that anyone who has enough money to spend on the luxuries and frivolities so common in affluent societies should give at least 1 cent in every dollar of their income to those who have trouble getting enough to eat, clean water to drink, shelter from the elements, and basic health care. Those who do not meet this standard should be seen as failing to meet their fair share of a global responsibility, and therefore as doing something that is seriously morally wrong. This is the minimum, not the optimal, donation.
"Those who think carefully about their ethical obligations will realize that -- since not everyone will be giving even 1 percent --they should do far more. But if, for the purposes of changing our society's standards in a manner that has a realistic chance of success, we focus on the idea of a bare minimum that we can expect everyone to do, there is something to be said for seeing a 1 percent donation of annual income to overcome world poverty as the minimum that one must do to lead a morally decent life. To give that amount requires no moral heroics. To fail to give it shows indifference to the indefinite continuation of dire poverty and avoidable; poverty-related deaths.
"In the light of such calculations of the amount of aid needed, it is indicative of the present pessimistic climate of opinion about aid that the targets set by the world leaders at the Millennium Summit are commonly referred to as "ambitious." Of course, those who are skeptical about achieving them may be right -- certainly the money that has been given or pledged to date falls far short of what is needed. The $5 billion increase in U.S. aid over three years pledged by President George W Bush in March 2002, while better than no increase at all, is nothing like the doubling of foreign aid from rich countries sought by World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn." (Peter Singer, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, 194)
"The philanthropist George Soros called it, with some justification, "a token gesture instead, of something that could successfully impact most of the poor countries." By contrast, all it would take to put the world on track to eliminate global poverty much faster than the Millennium Summit targets would be the modest sum of 1 percent of annual income -- if everyone who can afford it were to give it. That, as much as anything, tells us how far we still are from having an ethic that is based not on national boundaries, but on the idea of one world." (pp. 194-195)
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