Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Famine, Affluence, and Morality is an essay written by Peter Singer in 1971 covering the moral obligation of the affluent to donate some of their money to famine relief. One of the core arguments in the essay is that letting someone die of starvation--when you could have reasonably prevented the death with relatively little costs to your own well being--then morally it is not significantly different than committing murder. The essay argues: Such an act of omission would be seen as horrible if a child were drowning in a shallow pond where someone could have saved the child but chose not to; but the same omission is done by the affluent all the time considering how donations to relief organizations can save those suffering in the third world. The moral question of providing relief when you can should not discriminate based on your distance to the other party.

Quotes

"[..] if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it" (Singer)

External links