How is any luxury spending ethical?

Great Debates
1

Ok, I realize how naive this sounds, but I mean it as a genuine question:

If every day people die for lack of a few dollars to buy antibiotics or clean water, how is it ethically justifiable to spend money on a set of pearl earrings or a nice car? How is this situation different from setting up a swimming pool in your backyard while your neighbor dies of thirst? Isn’t the latter case clearly unethical? How are they different?

Let me pre-empt some answers.

  1. Don’t give me any Malthusian crap. It isn’t true that if we save one life, another just dies of starvation or whatever. There is more than enough food and water on this planet for everyone – its a distribution problem. Besides, there are better ways to control the population than letting people die of horrible diseases.

  2. Don’t argue that you can’t be sure where your money is going. There are plenty of well-respected charities that give 100% of your donation directly to the where it’s needed (bypassing any sort of corrupt governments, etc.)

  3. You can’t argue that you are somehow not in the position of dying of tuberculosis because of your merit, and should therefore be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. This position is ridiculous – even if you were born in the slums of Malawi and managed to work your butt off to get an education and a job in the developed world, you were still lucky enough not to be stricken with malaria as a kid, or get a debilitating parasite from your village’s well. Virtually all of us enjoy the priviledge of having been born into a society that offers halfway decent education for free, etc. Why does that priviledge not become an obligation to help those who are not as fortunate?

I know there is an argument to be made about there not being a moral obligation to help someone if you didn’t contribute to their being in a harmful situation, but aside from some sort of vague slippery slope argument, I just don’t see it. Can someone point it out to me?

Even if you’re not morally obligated to help, what good reason is there not to help? (other than personal greed)

2

Oh, and no Reaganomics either (unless you’re genuinely willing to defend the position that buying luxury items is a more efficient way to help someone dieing of tuberculosis than to give them antibiotics)

3

Have you stopped beating your wife?

No, really. Other than this nonsense above you raise some good issues. However, if Communism is what you want (which in all seriousness is what it seems like you are looking for- I work for the benefit of all with nothing to show for it because I lack need) I wish you the very best in making it happen.

People work because they are given incentives. For some people the incentive is to breathe another day. For others it’s to earn enough to buy the newest hot sports car. But if they are working for the sole purpose of wealth redistribution they will not work, because it’s obvious that someone will work for them.

In addition, we are still a world with borders, and people look down on what is perceived as interference in their internal issues. So we can only help so much. The United States, among other countries, gives tremendous amounts of aid to other countries. The question you might want to ask is why some of these countries are more interested in killing their own people instead of helping them. With the amount of aid that we give there is no reason why a sngle person on this earth should be starving to death. That’s not to say that they would be able to live in the lap of luxury or anything like that, but they should be able to survive. Yet somehow year after year we are called upon to donate massive amounts of our discretionary income to charities. Where does the money go? Africans, in particular, seem to be having this problem. They obviously can’t feed themselves, yet they have no problem massacring themselves in large numbers (Rwanda, for instance).

Anyhow, the bottom line is that I earn my money, and as a result I should be allowed to do with it what I want to as an incentive to continue to work. Otherwise I’ll just put my feet up and get fat on your hard work, and I think you would agree that that’s not ethical at all.

4

Ethicist Peter Singer (known for making obstinately–some say simplisticly–straightforward arguments for controversial positions) says exactly that. And from a utilitarian perspective, it’s damned hard to argue against him. (Though plenty try.) Utilitarianism is the postion that all ethics is aimed at producing the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of suffering possible in the world in any given situation.

This position, while intuatively appealing, has its problems. (What if the world could be made happier by torturing an innocent child? What if a madman received infinite pleasure from raping people?)

Others therefore (and for other reasons) argue that ethics is based on something else, such as socially contracted obligations, or divine commands, or universal truths logically incumbant on any moral being, and that these do not encompass self-impoverishment for the sake of others with whom one has no special relationship. Often, obligations to oneself or one’s family are considered more prior.

Personally, I hold to an ethic of virtue, which requires me to strive toward moral perfection. It does not obligate me to immediately abandon all that I know of my way of life (as would your proposal) but does obligate me to live as simply as I practically and happily can and to learn to live more simply still, to the extent that focussing on such a goal does not make me less virtuous in other ways. (I admit I do a fairly crap job at this.)

Ultimately, however, I believe that no ethical system is objectively true or false, but that ethical systems force us to examine the sort of world in which we truely want to live. The true answer to your question, therefore, is that we simply don’t want it so.

5

Ah yes, I meant to address the argument Airman Doors provided while I was posting. It is an economic, not a moral one. There are sound reasons why societies should not be set up in which people are forced to act as the OP suggests. This would, in fact, be Communism, as Airman Doors points out. This would not seem to present an argument agains individuals voluntarily acting so under moral compunction. That everyone should not be required to give to charity does not mean we have no individual moral duty to do so.

6

Because we as human beings have more than just a legal right to do as we please with our own property, we have a natural right.

There are obviously exceptions and limitations to any right. But we as people deserve the fruits of our labor. I do not think we are obligated to help others by any conventional morality. I think it is a great kindness to help others, but I don’t think it is a moral requirement.

I think immoral acts are only acts which bring about harm to others or society. I don’t feel that withholding my discretionary budget from charities brings harm to others. It withholds help for some, but it is not causing harm, thus it is not moral and is thus not unethical.

Basically I think the fact that any property rights we have are more important than any obligations we may have to third world countries.

7

I’ll answer this without questioning the presumption that my couple of dollars would actually help and get to the right people and such:

This is not Brave New World. Everybody does NOT belong to everybody else, and nobody is required to turn to ascetism in the hopes that somehow giving away all the money they didn’t need to survive would help the needy. This view obligates me totally to everyone else; do I have no obligation to help myself? To enjoy my own life materially?

8

Also of course there is the flaw that you force us to make assumptions that aren’t rational to make.

Firstly there is no charity organization that gives 100% of your donations to the “people that need it” charities have to use some of the money they bring in for administrative purposes. Some charities are very efficient and use an extremely minimal amount of these funds, but none can give 100% of your donation directly to recipients.

Also there is no reason to believe that throwing money at problems fixes it. You highlight this fact unwittingly with your “it’s a distribution problem” quote. It is indeed a distribution problem that people starve to death. But much more than money is needed to fix the distribution networks. We need new governments around Africa, new infrastructure, new social norms.

Some of that can be helped with money, some of it won’t be affected by any mountain of money you throw at it.

9

Where in the OP does it say that he wants to force people to give? The way I read it is that, irrespective of the law, do you find it ethically OK to spend $500 on sneakers when a guy next to you is starving?

I have a family member who is in a very bad financial situation (sometimes can’t find enough money for the basic necessities in life). [The reason he is in the situation he is, and why it is difficult to get out of it, is waaay too complex to discuss here.]

Many times, when I see a fancy new gadget, I wonder if that money will be better spent if I gave it to my family member, and I often give him some money. I honestly could not enjoy all the luxuries that my income affords me if I knew he was starving.

On the other hand, I don’t seem to mind buying expensive things even though I know that millions are starving around the world. I think this is inconsistent, since we should feel bad about any human suffering, but maybe it has to do with the fact that we simply don’t feel as much empathy for people in other countries compared to people in our country, and especially relatives.

Another point is that, even with relatives, you don’t help them out in such a way as to equalize the wealth between you. You help them out just enough for them to have a decent life. But there is still wealth inequality left over for you to be able to enjoy some things they can’t, and I think that’s OK.

10

Just in case I wasn’t clear, I do think it is ethically suspect to spend $500 on sneakers when a guy next to you is starving.

Unfortunately, we all do it, in one way or another, implicitly or explicitly, and we all find rationalizations about “why it’s not so bad”, so that we won’t feel too bad about ourselves for doing so.

11

From the most ethical person to walk the earth, in Matthew 26:

We will always have the poor with us. And it is indeed our obligation to help them. But that is not to say that to be righteous, we all need to live like Tibetan monks. There is somewhere a reasonable balance between Ebeneezer Scrooge and Mother Teresa. All of us want material things, and if we can afford it and still maintain our societal obligations, there isn’t any reason not to have them. Jewelers and sports car manufacturers need to make a living, too.

12

I think you are beginning from the wrong starting point. Where are these antibiotics that people are dyijng for want of coming from? In order to provide drugs (or food or anything else that is life saving) people have to be given incentive. If I didn’t have the incentive of buying a nice house and providing for my family, my incentive to invent new drugs, my colleagues incentive to test these drugs, and my more distant colleagues incentive to transport/deliver these drugs (and on and on) would not exist.

Without luxuries, the drugs that I didn’t invent would be dangerous and sitting in a warehouse (that wasn’t built).

13

I can’t help wondering if the OP denies all luxury to himself, living on gruel in a tarpaper shack while donating to charity every penny he gets over and above the needs of bare subsistence. Can he live the kind of life he seems to be demanding of others?

14

Since any argument that forced my philosophy professor to kick me out of class must be a good argument:

Posited: People have a moral obligation to feed the hungry.
Posited: People do not have the moral freedom to keep their goods for themselves if a more efficent allocation would feed more hungry.

Fact: The poor are people.
Therefore, the poor share in the obligation to feed the poor.
However, being poor, the only thing the poor can feed themselves with is themselves. This also has the net benefit of saving the amount of food and resources that the poor person would have otherwise consumed over his lifetime.

Conclusion: The same line of reasoning that demands that you open your wallet also demands that the poor you’re helping march into a slaughterhouse for the benefit of their companions.

As I’ve said before, ending up with conclusions like this usually means you need to re-examine your premises.

15

Yeah…I don’t understand where the confusion is coming from. Ethics is the study of how people should act. There’s theory, which I think is what’s being asked in the OP, and practice, which is what people seem to be responding to. If one feels that there is an ethical obligation to help others, how and where does the line get drawn? For instance:

In theory, where does our obligation end? Just to be clear, I’m not saying anyone is wrong, just that it’s a matter of deriving the theory. If it’s foundation is “obligation to help people”, it seems there’s no avoiding hypocrisy. I have to wonder if the OP doesn’t define away everything else, though…

16

Actually, if you want to quote Jesus, there are plenty of verses that say just that. Not many preachers have the nerve to bring them up to their comfortable parishioners.

17

Puh-leeze. Posing a question and arbitrarily rejecting the answers in advance is intellectual masturbation. :rolleyes:

(And you didn’t even manage to do that right – you forgot to include a rejection-in-advance for the argument that human nature is such that people simply won’t generate wealth if they don’t personally benefit from it.)

18

Actually, from a utilitarian perspective, it would be easy to make the argument that what Singer’s position really requires is for the West to spend all its “excess” wealth to overthrow the various Third World kleptocracies and impose the sorts of political and social systems that made the West rich. Somehow I doubt that the few people who agree with Singer would like this notion. :smiley:

19

MH: * I do not think we are obligated to help others by any conventional morality.*

:confused: How ya figure? AFAICT, pretty much every conventional morality, particularly those enshrined in the world’s major religions, explicitly states that we do have an obligation to help others.

Perhaps you’re making a libertarian-style argument that we shouldn’t be legally or socially forced to accept such conventional moral obligations. That’s another story.

But from the point of view of conventional morality, the obligation to help others is certainly explicitly recognized.

Fyl: If I didn’t have the incentive of buying a nice house and providing for my family, my incentive to invent new drugs, my colleagues incentive to test these drugs, and my more distant colleagues incentive to transport/deliver these drugs (and on and on) would not exist.

I think you’re being too pessimistic there. There are incentives to work other than immediate personal financial gain. Some people do willingly work for the satisfaction of a job well done, the excitement of discovery, the desire to help others, etc. etc.

It’s fair to say that without the prospect of personal material gain, the incentive to work is reduced (which is one reason why communist economies are generally much less efficient than mixed socialist/capitalist ones). But the incentive generally doesn’t disappear entirely (after all, even in communist economies people manage to get some work done).

As for the question in the OP: Well, Gandhi, something of a moral extremist, decided that the answer (at least for him personally) was “no, spending on luxuries while others are in severe poverty is not ethical”. Hence his renunciation of personal property and refusal to wear clothing better than that available to the poorest Indians, etc. etc.

For him, though, the goal was not that everybody should have exactly the same amount, but that everybody should at least have a decent life (not starving, not homeless, not dying of preventable or treatable diseases, and so on). Once everybody was at a decent base level, then it would be okay to put some material inequality and luxury on top of it for those who could afford them. This is kind of the same attitude that Polerius was describing.

20

Very good point. Recall the “eye of a camel” quote. My point was merely that Jesus did not deny Himself any luxuries at all. Certainly the disciples were expected to abandon their material goods, but to fall short of their standard is not damning in itself. Most every church has active programs to assist the needy, and most of them allow themselves the luxury of having artwork in the sanctuary. In 19th century US, there were scores of industrialists that donated enough money to build hospitals and libraries, yet most of them also had a luxurious lifestyle. You can have a healthy balance.