On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, fabio guillermo rojas wrote: > Is that low or high? I'd say it's probably ok, most people can't afford to > give much anyway, with mortages, student loans, children, etc. Only the > wealthy could give thousands and still pay the phone bill.
The marginal dollar transferred from private "frivolous" spending to life-saving charities is likely total utility increasing though; from that perspective, we have an inefficiently small amount of charity. Even Peter Singer doesn't give as much as he claims he should. Adam Smith preceeds us here (quote below). There really does seem to be a vast divergence between willingness to pay to prevent suffering and willingness to be paid to cause suffering, though the utility consequence of the two should be identical. I'm more than happy to spend $67 on satellite tv per month, though it's quite plausible that a dozen lives could be saved by that money if I gave it to the right charity. But, if someone offered me $67 dollars, with the condition being that a dozen people half-way around the world would die if I accepted it, I'd not take the money. Alex Tabarrok is willing to give up his leg if doing so would cure SARS forever. I wouldn't, but if I were missing a leg, I don't think I'd accept a replacement one in exchange for SARS being unleashed. ----- "Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. "And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. "The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. "To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others?"
