Peter Singer Famine

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Peter Singer main aim in his essay “ Famine, Affluence, and Morality” that we as people who live in Great Powerful nations such as the U.S. have a huge moral obligation to support and give more than we actually do to International aid for famine relief, disaster relief because “ suffering and death from lack of food and other necessities are bad.”(Singer 761). The only way such drastic shift in mentality would occur is if we dramatically alter the way we live our lives in order to help a greater cause. I disagree with Peter Singer argument for reasons which I would discuss in this essay.
Singer uses a hypothetical example in order to prove his point in which he states that if a person walks by a pond and sees a chid drowning in it he “ ought …show more content…

Similar to the issues we face when donating money , it is sometimes practically impossible to get food and water to such countries mainly due to civil issues(unrest), governments that are dysfunctional and lack of infrastructure. Another issue is that donating to such countries can only be looked at as short term options for highly emergency cases and such donations cannot be ongoing for a long time because such countries can become dependent on them which will impact both their economy and political structure. Such reasons are why some people are hesitant in donating their hard worked money which they can use to guarantee one’s own or family happiness rather than donating it to a cause where its highly likely charity organizations would not use such money for the purpose of the donation which means that the people targeted will not enjoy the benefits of one’s …show more content…

Unfortunately , there are many aspects working against Singer’s argument such as failure of government polices that causes famine and most importunity why should we sacrifice our entire lives to work for some complete stranger?. A question Singer failed to answer which made his essay seem like an outrage over the lack of help that developing countries are getting from the West. Charity is a great thing to especially when the result is saving someone’s life but charity is not taxation, we as people have the freedom of choice on whether or not we should help

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