Against Effective Altruism Again

Life, limb and labour is not owed to the sick, so, neither is money

The drowning child argument for the duty to give to charity is very strong. Yet I do not believe it really requires us to give a large sum of our money to charity, because, our personal prerogative, i.e., moral license to place greater weight on our own interests than interests considered from a (supposedly) impartial perspective, is actually large enough to permit us to keep all, to, almost all, of our money. I show this to be the case by focusing on how we are not required to give up our life, limb or labour to sick people, so, analogously, we are not required to give up an equivalent amount of money either.

Most effective altruists recommend donating about 10% of your income to charity. In the UK this equates to £3,764 and in the USA it equates to $6,280. There are many instances were giving up your life will be equivalent to that value, or, perhaps, we can make up instances. Imagine a very old man is walking along a railway and he sees a child who has fallen on the tracks and cannot get out of the way of the oncoming train. He values his last days at precisely £3,764, or, perhaps, just £1,882. Were the effective altruist to dictate what he should do, then, absent him already having given to charity, they’d recommend he throw himself in front of the train to stop it. I would maintain he is not required to sacrifice his life to save the trapped child.

Think about a person who would willingly sell their kidney for £3,764 were a free market allowed. He is not required to give up his kidney for free to save a person with kidney failure. That’s on them. Similarly, should a person need saving but it require 26 days of work, e.g., you need to care for them because no one else will, equivalent to at least £3,764, the relevant worker is not required to work for that amount of time to save them. Judith Jarvis Thomson even makes the claim that: ‘If I am sick unto death, and the only thing that will save my life is the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. then all the same, I have no right to be given the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand’. I suspect she would maintain he is not morally required to gift it either.

Note that in the above cases only life, limb or labour can be given up because money will not do by itself, thus, money gifts cannot replace these gifts of life, limb and labour. This means a rebuttal to the argument cannot be money can be given instead therefore avoiding any counterintuitive moral requirement per effective altruism to give life, limb or labour. Now I have laid out an intuitively compelling case for the strength of our personal prerogative concerning our life, limbs and labour I will set up my argument against the effective altruist requirement of us to give at least 10% of our income to charity, or, indeed, 5%, or, maybe, even 1%. The weight of the case probably rests on the second premise for most people.

P1: We are not required to give up X amount of our life, limb or labour to save a person from death

P2: Giving up X amount of life, limb or labour is morally equivalent to giving up Y amount of money

P3: Y amount of money is the 10% of income effective altruists say you should give to charity

C: We are not required to give 10% of our income to charity

Effective altruists such as Peter Singer, Peter Unger and William Macaskill will attack both of the main premises. An obvious reply is asserting the first premise would mean letting the child drown in the shallow pond. I have explained how absent effective altruism there can still exist a requirement to save the drowning child due to reciprocity, however, I acknowledge that people outside this reciprocity pool can be left to die. I would maintain though it is more counterintuitive that an old person could be morally obligated to throw themselves in front of a train, donate a spare organ, or, work for 26 days to save a life, hence, the drowning child intuition should give way to the force of my examples.

The second premise is where I suspect most people will press their objections. By stipulation I have set the money amounts of the life, limb and labour to the £3,764 effective altruists recommend giving to charity. Perhaps the indifference between the marginal amount of life, limb and labour and £3,764 is not actually the case because people fail to understand money is not actually that valuable. Let us grant this and imagine that people overestimate the value of money by a factor of two, or, in other words, underestimate the value of life, limb and labour by 50%. In the labour case then 13 days of labour would be required, a coin flip on the kidney and similarly for the old man throwing himself in front of the train. I still think it is obvious this is not required, so, analogously, donating £3,517 is not either.

Moderate deontologist effective altruists such as Micheal Huemer may claim my argument is not much of a victory, because, 5% could simply be the requirement. Even this though I think is implausible requiring as it would simply halving the chance of giving up life, limb and labour in the preceding instance. Again: Individuals are not required to work a week to save a person from death. Money is the embodiment of that work, so, neither are they required to give up said amount. Of course, I haven’t said much for figures under 5%. Certainly, giving up some labour to others is seen as morally required, because, the drowning child in the shallow pond requires labour to remove. Perhaps an hour or so.

Another thought experiment that counts against the utilitarian grounding for effective altruism is this. Imagine you have an 80-year-old man and due to his genetic make-up you can extend his life by another 80 years by giving him a drug which will cost £3,000 (which he cannot afford). I take it to be intuitive that you are not morally required to give him the £3,000. This shows the good of life is not per se enough to warrant a minor sacrifice on your part, because, were that to be the case you’d have double the strength of reason to help him than to help the starving child in Africa. But you intuitively don’t. (This assumes each year of life is equally valuable to each and a ten-year-old African child would survive to 50 if helped).

The preceding has shown a plausible case for the strength of our personal prerogative being so strong that we do not need to donate anything like the amount of money effective altruists argue we must, typically, 10% of our income. Crucially, the preceding does not rest on any of the controversial moves I made in the previous post on effective altruism, e.g., rejecting agent neutral value entirely, or, equating new life with continued life. As a result of this, however, the conclusion is weaker than it previously was as it does not rule out a moral requirement to give to charity per se; it only limits it to a much smaller amount.