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Peter Singer managed to anger animal rights activists with a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, "The Singer Solution to World Poverty." With his typical flair for sweeping (and baseless) moral judgments, Singer argued that Americans who do not give at least 20 percent of their income to solve world hunger are morally equivalent to someone who would sell a Brazilian child to be killed for his or her organs (a situation he borrowed from the Brazilian film "Central Station.")
Unfortunately for Singer, he angered some animal rights activists and groups by recommending that people donate to Oxfam which, all things considered, is probably the best place to donate money if stopping world hunger is where you want to concentrate your charitable giving. The only problem for the animal activists is that Oxfam helps poor people in the developing world buy cattle and other animals for agricultural purposes.
Since Singer is already on record that eating meat is superfluous and therefore equivalent to murder except in dire emergency situations, his position seems to be that Americans are heartless murderers regardless of what they do. Are we to save a child at the expense of a poor cow? In his book, Animal Liberation, Singer is unwavering in his view that this is unacceptable, especially since animal agriculture is completely unnecessary.
Aside from this there are a couple other problems and inconsistencies with Singer’s argument. First, he repeatedly mentions the horrors faced by children in the Third World, which is certainly a legitimate concern. It is surprising that given his well-known views on suffering, that Singer does not simply recommend that Americans underwrite a program to painlessly euthanize children who are probably going to starve to death or die from malaria anyway. This would probably be less expensive as well as meet Singer’s utilitarian criteria of minimizing suffering.
Second, Singer’s attempt at equating actively murdering someone with refusing to contributing to aid organizations is absurd, especially in the context of international aid. Singer laments that aid from the developed world to the developing world is far below goals set by the United Nations, but never mentions that a large part of the reason is the horrible track record of such aid. The main reason people starve in Third World countries is due to the corrupt, incompetent governments there and, as heartless as it may sound, feeding those governments more aid money is often counterproductive and may prolong suffering by making corrupt regimes survive longer than they would without the aid.
Already this year controversy erupted when it was revealed that aid intended to help out poor Russians was diverted into the accounts of Russian politicians. Studies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank aid programs suggest that up to half of all such aid to the most impoverished parts of the world may be diverted. Certainly some groups such as Oxfam do a wonderful job, but Singer’s emphasis on large amounts of giving for such a narrow purpose is extremely shortsighted and by no means the obvious best solution to combat world hunger.