Premise 2 is Peter Singer's Weaker Principle of Sacrifice. I claim that hedonistic utilitarianism might be problematic for effective altruism. For Premise 1, I focus on hedonistic utilitarianism and criticise its outlook on extreme poverty.

I will scrutinise each of these premises in turn. Individuals ought to donate to effective charities working towards extreme poverty alleviation where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. Donating to effective charities is one of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty. Individuals ought to choose the effective option in preventing very bad things.

If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. Their reasoning, which I will scrutinise, is as follows: Premise 1. Effective altruists are concerned with extreme poverty and many of them think that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty. This book provides an excellent case for being more generous and eschewing the oft-touted American individualism (what I would actually call selfishness: for a literary example of this selfishness-as-a-virtue, see Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged) rather than looking out only for ourselves, we should be looking to help those less fortunate than us, and Singer's arguments here provide the basic moral and practical reasons for such altruism.Įffective altruism is a movement which aims to maximise good. Still, the burden should not fall on the richest 10% alone: most of us not in the top 10% of America's wealthiest (those of us earning less than $102,000 annually) could still easily give far more than we do by simply giving up some of our more frivolous spendings. What is actually most surprising to me is the final section in which he lays out the numbers: if the richest 10% of those in the US (and the equally wealthy worldwide) would give at higher levels than they do now but at levels that do not adversely affect their lifestyles, we could effectively end world poverty.

In this book, Singer lays out the case for why those of us in affluent nations should be giving to charity to help the poor worldwide. He takes his utilitarianism very seriously, and the implications of this philosophy, if followed, would radically change our world for the better. This book underscores why Peter Singer is the most influential philosopher living today.

The life you can save charity