How is any luxury spending ethical?

[treis]

In your example presumably Pepsi folded becuase there wasn’t enough demand to support both companies in the market place. Those workers at Pepsi don’t say aw hell the company folded looks like I will go on unemployment for the rest of my life. They switch to a different industry that isn’t supplying enough to meet demand. If suddenly there was a demand for enough food, medicine, clothing and shelter for all those in need smart people would start working on supplying that.

If our society can produce X amount of stuff and needs Y amount to meet our basic needs. The difference in production between X and Y goes to whatever the society values most whether that be Plasma TVs or helping the poor. If our society started valueing aiding the poor more X and Y don’t change. All that changes is how that difference is allocated.

If we all started giving our money to charities instead of buying plasma TVs the plasma TV companies would probably go bankrupt. However the industries providing the materials for aid would grow and hire new employees. Would the engineer that has 25 years in designing TVs make as much in the aid industry? Probably not but that is a problem inherent with any change in production. If this were a valid criticism then it would also be unethical to iPods instead of walkmans.

[cwthree]

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?

I sense a fallacy in the setup of the question, but can’t quite put my finger on it. The OP seems to presume that if one doesn’t spend money or resources on luxuries, then the money/resources will be available to other individuals. This seems an unwarranted assumption.

It seems to me that the OP has overlooked another possibility (which I believe has been addressed by Peter Singer): What if I don’t spend my money/resources on luxuries but instead purchase or consume only the minimum that I actually need, without exhausting my finances or other resource available to me? How ethical is it to save money? If I don’t donate the unspent money, it’s not available to others (say, the folks who need to buy antibiotics). How ethical is conservation for conservation’s sake? Cleaning up a lake or river doesn’t automatically make the clean water available for drinking - there may be other factors that make the water inaccessible by people who lack access clean water.

Is it ethical to save money now if the savings is later spent by the saver on necessities? Are retirement and 401K accounts ethical, since they bank money earned today against tomorrow’s spending needs? Is it more ethical to leave one’s estate to those in need than it is to leave it to one’s (income-earning) children?

Is it ethical to conserve resources now (clean up a lake, but don’t make the water available for drinking, irrigation, etc.) with the goal of making those resources available later (make the water available once it’s returned to a sustainable level)? Is it more ethical to periodically leave a field fallow than it is to use the field year after year, using potentially harmful fertilizer to compensate for depletion of nutrients from the soil?

[Apos]

The reason this Ungerian argument is so powerful is that it doesn’t rely on you buying into any particular moral framework. It simply asks several questions about what you consider immoral, and then points out how luxury spending is inconsistent with the obvious answers. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you quibble about positive or negative morality or anything else, X or Y or any of the more complex moral terminology. If you consider someone who watches a child drown for fear of getting their hands dirty to be a monster, as most people would, you’re faced with the problem that children are dying all the time for want of a few pennies: the near cost equivalent of washing your hands after saving the drowning child. The only substantive difference is distance, but its hard to formulate an argument for that being sufficiently relevant.

The problem is compounded by the fact that it works both ways. Ekers can shrug if he wants at the implications of starving or dehydrated children… but not without giving up the ability to find it immoral or monstrous that someone would simply watch someone die instead of calling 911 just to save cell phone minutes. To most people, their moral intuitions can’t give that sort of moral judgement up without resorting to the realm of a sociopath.

[Bryan_Ekers]

However there are still plenty of people in need and plenty of orginizations able to provide that need basically corruption and waste free. Of course as with any originization when you increase the size there will be some waste and corruption but this is the same whether it be a charity or a corporation.

You’re missing my point. Even if the charity itself was capable of transferring donated wealth with 100% efficiency, the countries with the greatest misery also have the greatest governmental violence and/or corruption. If it was the simple matter of helping otherwise productive people recover from a natural disaster (say, a tsunami) and get back to a state where they could be self-sufficient again, fine. If the donation is instead to a country like Somalia or the Sudan, where the disaster is the country’s own government, which has no interest in letting the citizens ever become self-sufficient, than the self-deprivation in the name of charity is a waste of time and I don’t understand any ethical system that would require it.

@Apos

The problem is compounded by the fact that it works both ways. Ekers can shrug if he wants at the implications of starving or dehydrated children… but not without giving up the ability to find it immoral or monstrous that someone would simply watch someone die instead of calling 911 just to save cell phone minutes. To most people, their moral intuitions can’t give that sort of moral judgement up without resorting to the realm of a sociopath.

Hardly. To make your analogy more realistic, throw in a corrupt police force who might receive the 911 call but won’t act on it without a bribe and even then, would visit the house and could be bribed by the abuser to simply leave without making an arrest. Only with that element do you get a reasonable picture of the misery of third-world nations. The citizens are being harmed because of the active interference of their own governments or occasionally by rebel militias in nations undergoing civil wars. Sometimes both.

But if you want to suggest I’m a sociopath instead, be my guest.

[treis]

@Bryan Ekers

You’re missing my point. Even if the charity itself was capable of transferring donated wealth with 100% efficiency, the countries with the greatest misery also have the greatest governmental violence and/or corruption. If it was the simple matter of helping otherwise productive people recover from a natural disaster (say, a tsunami) and get back to a state where they could be self-sufficient again, fine. If the donation is instead to a country like Somalia or the Sudan, where the disaster is the country’s own government, which has no interest in letting the citizens ever become self-sufficient, than the self-deprivation in the name of charity is a waste of time and I don’t understand any ethical system that would require it.

@treis

You’re right we are better of spending that money in the 100% efficient industries with absolutely no corruption or thievery. [b I didn’t realize we had to explicitly say that you are under no ethical obligation to donate money that will just be stolen or wasted. However there are still plenty of people in need and plenty of orginizations able to provide that need basically corruption and waste free. ** Of course as with any originization when you increase the size there will be some waste and corruption but this is the same whether it be a charity or a corporation.

I really don’t see how that post doesn’t address every point you brought up.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@treis

I really don’t see how that post doesn’t address every point you brought up.

You had introduced this additional tidbit in the original reply:

Of course as with any originization when you increase the size there will be some waste and corruption but this is the same whether it be a charity or a corporation.

I hadn’t been talking about the efficiency of charities or corporations, but rather the inefficiency of governments. I still sense a basic disconnect in your argument:
[list=#][li]The charities collect money from westerners to improve the conditions of people in third world nations, but…[/li][li]Those conditions are the result of ongoing corruption and violence from the governments of those nations[/list][/li]
I don’t see where you’ve acknowledged the second point, and as long as the second point still exists, the efforts of the charity and their donors are effectively tossed into a bottomless pit. It would be comparable to giving a man a fish and feeding hm for a day, but teaching him to fish and seeing a death-squad thug confiscate his fishing pole and net for the good of the state (or a rebel thug doing the same for the sake of the revolution).

Anyway, my point is that improving the lot of third-worlders is easy, and could easily have been done decades ago with the smallest donation of wealth from the western nations, combined with a sharing of technology. That it hasn’t been done is a sign that the third-world governments don’t want to see it done, and until they are overthrown or evolve into something less brutal (allowing the natural industriousness of their citizens to flower), a westerner deciding not to buy a plasma TV will make absolutely no difference whatsoever. And if there is no ethical attachment to a pointless gesture, the decision to buy said TV cannot be called unethical.

[treis]

I am sorry but are you seriously suggesting that if it weren’t for corrupt governments poverty would be eliminated in the world? Certainly warfare and dictators cause their fair share of poverty but there are plenty of poor democracys. A majority of Central and South America has been democratic for a while and still struggle with poverty. The largest democracy in the world has a 25% poverty rate with a paltry GDP per capita of $3,000. Africa has been griped by civil war but many countries have ended the violence and become democratic. To suggest that there aren’t places where aid is needed and can be effectively given is insane.

Poverty rates Note that there is no standard poverty level rather it is determined for each country.

GDP per capita

[Bryan_Ekers]

@treis

I am sorry but are you seriously suggesting that if it weren’t for corrupt governments poverty would be eliminated in the world?

Eliminated? Nah. Greatly ameliorated? Absolutely.

Certainly warfare and dictators cause their fair share of poverty but there are plenty of poor democracys. A majority of Central and South America has been democratic for a while and still struggle with poverty.

They’ve been democratic for a relatively short time and still have lots of problems. Besides, up to now I’ve been talking about places where people are starving, concentrating on the worst cases in Africa and Asia. When was the last major famine in South/Central America? A quick search shows a minor one in Argentina in 2002, folowing an economic collapse, but nothing like the casual daily misery in other parts of the world.

The largest democracy in the world has a 25% poverty rate with a paltry GDP per capita of $3,000.

India, I assume. Their best best for improvement is their continued technological advancement, increasing literacy, population control and the gradual abandonment of their historical caste system.

Africa has been griped by civil war but many countries have ended the violence and become democratic.

Many? Cite, please. This 2002 article describes Mali, Benin, Senegal, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa and Cape Verde as having accomplished “largely peaceful, popular replacements of entrenched, oppressive regimes” but were also sliding (or tending to slide) back into old dictatorial habits.

(heh-heh, “griped” by civil war)

Besides, you’re throwing around the word “democractic” pretty freely. Can you offer your definition/ I’ve been using “western” or “westernized” to describe nations that have a combination of elected governments, constitutional protections, independent courts and regulated but not stifled capitalism.

To suggest that there aren’t places where aid is needed and can be effectively given is insane.

Well, I have no problem with the foreign aid given in large quantities by my government and financed in part by my taxes. I just don’t see the ethical requirement for me to participate directly or sacrifice my perogative to spend my (after-tax) money as I choose.

Meantime, let me check my sanity level… it’s okay.

[treis]

Good so we have identified places where aid is needed that do not have corrupt governments or rebels that will steal the food. We can go ahead and dispense with that argument then.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@treis

Good so we have identified places where aid is needed that do not have corrupt governments or rebels that will steal the food. We can go ahead and dispense with that argument then.

We have? We can? Even using Argentina as a guide, their economic collapse was due to the bizarre mismanagement of their own economy. If aid is given to them but the conditions that created the problem are not corrected (something only the Argentinians themselves can do, barring foreign invasion), that aid will all be wasted when the next crisis occurs.

In any case, it’s irrelevant to the issue of whether or not luxury spending is ethical. I figure that argument could have been dispensed with when it was admitted there was no ethical attachment to the futile.

[Lemur866]

The problem is that most people in the world AREN’T literally starving to death, or dying of easily cured diseases. The ones that ARE dying of starvation and dying of easily cured diseases are indeed the ones living under war, dictatorship, anarchy, communism, slavery, or a delightful combination of all of the above.

If we are talking about people literally dropping dead of starvation, we are already donating more than enough to feed them, and if they aren’t being fed it is because money and food isn’t the answer, they need the US military to step in to do the deliveries.

If we are talking about people in Argentina with crappy jobs and a crap economy but who have food, water, clothing, and shelter, then how much do I owe THEM? Their lot in life will improve as their country approaches the way things are done in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. But these people aren’t facing death, except in the same sense that everyone faces death. That’s why the “Bugatti” example doesn’t apply. People in Argentina and the rest of the functional third world don’t need more charity, they don’t need more food, they don’t need us to pay for their health care, they aren’t dying because we aren’t sending them money. Sure, they are poorer on average than we are, but THEY AREN’T DYING.

OK, but there are people who are actually dying. And those are the ones where more money would be only marginally usefull, and could easily be harmful. Wait, how could it be harmful? You give money to poor person A. Thug B hits poor person A on the head and takes the money and uses it to buy a gun. He then points the gun at person A and demands even more money. Money that ends up in the hands of the dictators and warlords and aristocracy is money that will often be used to make the citizenry of the country even more miserable. Look at how the oil wealth of the middle east has sometimes been a net negative for the citizenry of those countries, the oil money has given huge amounts of power to the dictators. Do we have an obligation to send in the marines? Even if the marines get shot at? What if the marines arrive, shoot the slaveholders and leave, but a new crop of slaveholders springs up to replace them?

In other words, the cases where we can help with money we don’t particularly need to help with money except in emergencies such as tsunami relief. In cases where people really need the help, we can’t help much with just money. What are we going to do about North Korea? China? Sudan? Somalia? Palestine? How many countries can we invade, overthrow the government, and administer without making the situation worse? We’re having a hard time–arguably, we’re failing–in Iraq right now. How much more can our military do?

Sending people handouts won’t work. Overthrowing their governments externally won’t work. So what should we do? How exactly does eating hamburger instead of steak help a slave in North Korea?