In Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence, And Morality?

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In Peter Singer’s article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” he discusses the moral dilemmas that shouldn’t really be dilemmas. He claims that if there is a possibility that you can prevent something bad from happening, without a significant sacrifice on our part, you ought to do it. Singer brings up many good points to support his claim. In the end, there is a flaw in his reasoning. There are certain situations where morals or laws must be broken for the greater good. When this article was written in 1971, there was a wide scale famine going on in East Bengal. Singer starts out his article by referring to the current crisis of Bengal and all of the tragedy and death that was happening, and how theoretically simple it would be for the United States and other countries to intervene and provide aid. He also brings up where priorities lay in Australia, which would be fair to say that many more countries’ priorities fall along the same line. He brings up the statistic that Australia’s aid funds are one-twelfth the amount of the brand new Sydney opera house. He uses this example to prove his point that even though there are more important things to do with a countries’ funds than opera houses. …show more content…

If you have a chance to stop a vigilante, there holds a possibility that their actions can enable a criminal to do awful things. An example is Robin Hood stealing from the rich, and giving to the poor. The only reason that King Richard wants to catch Robin Hood is that way it will stop from taking his wealth away so he can do what he will with it, and not provide aid for the people in his kingdom or others. This example can be related back to the first as the vigilante is about to kill a future mass villain, and if you stop him you enable the villain to commit many crimes. If you stop a vigilante because it is against the law to be one, and following the law is moral, you would be preventing the bad that a vigilante can do by turning him/her

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