Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher, has created an exquisite consequentialism theory on global poverty. His idea is that it’s our ethical responsibility to help those who are in an unfortunate state then us because it would bring about better consequences than spending extra money on ourselves. Many, many people have taken it upon themselves to combat this idea and sadly I think they are more like excuses than anything. A few that stuck out are that people are two far away to help so “I” shouldn’t, and another being that what Singer is suggesting is way too demanding, that it is not possible for all to help out, and finally that it could cause people to react negatively and withdraw. Addressing the first one is easy; help is help the distance doesn’t matter. The second argument happens to be a more reputable argument. Singer responded to it by saying “maybe we should draw the line between what is required and what is not so as to help the most people, but it’s not obvious that excludes requiring people to give away lots of money to the poor.” I agree with Singers idea there, yet I view this problem in a different way. How do we determine who needs help? I completely understand that helping someone is helping no matter how you look at it, but hypothetically if Singers idea was put into effect and made mandatory, who is determined as worthy of help? As well as how do we help? Many times food and water have lead to war or other events. Reverting back to Singer I do
