Over 12 million people, most of which are under the age of 5, die every year from the flu, diarrhea, and other diseases that are completely preventable (Social Problems). In America, the country that uses most of the worlds resources, we do very little to help them because all that matters is what I want. Capitalism and Social Darwinism in America feeds our individualism to make us think that people in poverty are lazier than us and they just need to work harder. We also have a more conscious appealing argument that if we do nothing then we aren’t causing their deaths. Mylan Engle brings up the point that if we see a baby drowning in a puddle then we are obligated to bend over and pick it up. I don’t think anyone would disagree with a very literal hypothetical situation such as this one. If it’s easy to prevent death, then we should try and prevent it. The underlying problem with Mylan Engel’s situation is that it’s too literal. Even though many people know that there are millions dying in Africa and other underdeveloped nations, since we don’t see them, no one has any urge to go donate money or whatever they can to help. And our helpful Social Darwinism that is lodged into our brains tells us that it’s ok we don’t help when we actually start to think of the problem at hand. So let’s bring another hypothetical situation, but a more immoral, emotional situation to think about instead of a simple one like helping one drowning baby.

I once read an article, by James Rachels, on Euthanasia that hypothetically involved two men with the exact situations, but lets make it three for this discussion on world hunger. The three different men would all receive a large amount of inheritance if one of their younger relatives were to die. The men at different times and places have their younger relatives in bathtubs, the three children’s families all leave and the three men are left in charge. One man goes upstairs to the bathtub to drown the child to get his money, makes it look like an accident, and leaves. The other man goes upstairs to the bathtub with the same intention, but sees that the child is already drowning so he will receive his money, watches while doing nothing, and then leaves. The third man goes upstairs, sees the child drowning, has a change of heart, helps the child, and then leaves knowing that he did a good thing that day. The first two men are on equal levels of morality; they both actively and passively killed a living creature. The last man was the only moral one. He was going to do a horrendous act because of his own selfish intentions, but then changed his mind and made the choice of choosing the right act. I bring up that example because the first two men are how most people think, more the second than the first, and act where their life is the only one that matters. There is no argument for not helping if you can and any other choice is immoral. I know that sounds pushy and similar to someone like Peter Singer who says that you have to give money which makes people often feel bad, but I’ll address that next.

The morality of helping those in desperate need brings the topic of how should we help. The extent of our obligation is giving as much as you can depending on your individual level of wealth. I don’t want to give any exact amount like 10% of your income, but more along the lines of the wealthy should give more than the poor and they should be forced to do it. Mohandas Gandhi said that the rich and affluent people are ok, but they should be trustees of the wealth. If some have the opportunities and abilities to make money and capital more easily than others do then they should be giving money away to those that need it to better themselves. Gandhi also said that it shouldn’t be the government that takes money away from rich people and then redistributes it to the poor. The rich should make the choice to help because governmental redistribution is a form of violence. I however disagree with Gandhi because the rich do things like outsource jobs to use sweatshops and slavery then dump environmental waste in other developing countries because America is too strict on human rights laws.

The rich have shown that they are not capable of being trustees of wealth and they are in it to make money for its own sake and nothing else. I believe that the most amount of money is in the hands of very few that don’t need the extra money so the government should take it from the hands of the millionaires and billionaires that have profited off of human suffering in developing countries and give it back to them. It is an act of violence, but as damage control the government should take some of the money back and give it to the poor people who need it. The key here is need, Bill Gates doesn’t need to take a billion dollars out of the economy for him every year and give very little back. With that money the countries themselves could build infrastructure, invest in education, and become as self-sufficient as a village so they couldn’t be taken advantage of anymore because they need help.

I say the rich people in America because they are hoarding the most amount of money all for themselves. It shouldn’t however be left to just those who definitely can afford, but to emphasize my point of anyone that can. A person in middle class should still help others, but in that case it should go along more with something similar to energy efficiency in a house or building, meaning lowering the amount of output without changing your daily life and standard of living. The case of charity in the middle class should be an optimal level of aid given while providing for yourself and others without changing your daily life. If providing for your family is all you can do then you are in no way obligated to help other people, but if satisfying your own greed is what you’re doing without giving back to society then you are committing and immoral act. You are passively killing people by having that extra coffee.

My point of how to help others is that the biggest problem in helping others is where to get money in a capitalist society. Many people don’t want to give their own money away because they can’t make money by doing so. That’s the reason why America doesn’t do much of anything about world hunger, there’s no money to be made off of helping others. That’s why America doesn’t have universal health care, put resources into protecting the environment, help their own people in poverty, or significantly help the people trying to get a good education but can’t afford it. There’s no short-term profit in helping people and we live in a society based on greed, not need. My compromise to this major flaw in modern western civilization and my own claims that not helping others on a global scale is morally wrong is the genetic engineering of food.

We currently know that there are many benefits to genetically modified crops. According to Jonathan Rauch, they can grow more efficiently, have increased nutritional benefits, and can grow in places that other crops can’t. The disadvantage to these wonder crops is that genetically modifying food may cause genetic problems in our own bodies when digested. So the compromise is to send these crops to starving nations because it would be cheaper on our pocket books, corporations may be more willing to do this because it could advance research (profit), and sending these types of crops, since their efficiency is so high, wouldn’t lower our food supplies here in the modern world as much.

Another important way that we in affluent countries should help with is by sending birth control and education so women can control the population levels. Emma Goldman, an Anarcha-feminist, said “that since we live in a capitalist system, a system that creates hierarchies, women are used as the means of production for labor and abortion gives a women control over their own body so they should have the right to choose.” She means that giving women more rights would help economies and make the world more egalitarian. According to Murdock and Oaten, helping them with parental confidence, birth control, and improved status of women would lower the population so they wouldn’t need as much food and wouldn’t be starving as much. These would all be alternative ways of culling world hunger by lower in the population Also if they later were to gain more affluence, then the butter could be spread out more evenly to give the population in those starving countries a higher quality of life.

To critique my own views as a sign of integrity, I wanted to point out more that some people even in middle class can’t afford to donate to charity. The ones that can’t afford donating to those abroad because of previous expectations like paying for taxes, their children’s education, health care, their own retirement, and other social institutions are in no way obligated to donate to charity. The middle class here should have the choice of donating. They should not be forced to donate too much because they could hypothetically put themselves into poverty. I say they deserve the choice because if it came to passively killing people abroad by not donating or protecting yourself you are of course morally ok by choosing yourself. That choice should definitely come up in their budgeting to see if they can donate, but they need to choose the optimal level of charity, similar to Baxter’s optimal level of pollution, with the other social institutions they have to pay for in mind. The poorer classes of people across the world who can barely or can’t pay for everything they need of course are in no way obligated to donate or help. Only the very rich are completely, 100% morally obligated to donate their earnings even if it means taking it by force.

I also understand that not all humans are completely under the corrupting influence of Social Darwinism. Most people in the middle and working classes in America are not completely selfish. A lot of good comes from these two classes of people, I just generally find that it’s those with money that are more corrupt than others. A man by the name of Dr. Zimbardo, a social psychologist, said that evil is a demonstration of power. Money is power because you can buy and do most anything you want if you have enough of it (Zimbardo). Since power is evil and money is power, then money is evil. An overabundance of money is evil. And since people too involved with social Darwinism think that they are better than others because of their money, they see no reason to give their money and power away because they’re better than those without it and those without it need to be culled.

I am not a big fan of Garrett Hardin and his lifeboat ethics of letting people die to help them. Letting someone die is passive killing to those that can prevent it, but if they cannot receive help because of environmental factors like geography and the fact that they don’t get enough water year round to support themselves, then I grudgingly say that they should be left to die. This is because if they cannot be helped, then we shouldn’t even try. If sending money, food, birth control and other alternatives to helping won’t do much good to helping them help themselves because literally where they reside is unfit to live, then trying to help them would be futile and useless.

This paper has argued that if you are able to donate resources to help relieve world hunger easily then you are morally obligated to do so to lower suffering on the planet. I say if you are able because people in poverty are not obligated and those in middle class should aim for an optimal level of charity in their lives. People in the upper class of society are completely morally obligated to help as much as possible. The government should be the organizer for all of the charity that goes overseas and that charity should go in the form of sending genetically modified food, economic infrastructure, birth control, education, and money so they can better themselves. Sending aid is not counter-productive because as Kasun would say we need to invest in people themselves to bring down poverty, hunger, and to help them help themselves. Doing so would create a more egalitarian society with a better economy.