Andrew Kuper Debates the Philosopher Peter Singer
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The president of LeapFrog Investments on why he disagrees with Peter Singer on global poverty. Question: Why do you disagree with Peter Singer? Andrew Kuper: Peter Singer and I had a really fun, fascinating and intensive knockdown debate about how we should address global poverty. Peter's view is that we as individuals should give away a huge portion of our income to low income people and his reasoning is very interesting, he says, "Look, if you are walking to a lecture, say that you're a lecturer or to your job, and you saw a child drowning in a puddle, you're continuing to walk on to your lecture or job when you can rescue someone from almost certain death is morally reprehensible. And all you're going to do is get your clothes muddy, maybe you'll lose the clothes," he says it's a similar thing. By not giving away our income when we could be lifting people out of poverty that often kills them, we are in effect doing that morally reprehensible thing. Now, I believe there's a powerful emotional reaction to that by my difference with Peter is simple, I think that it's not so easy in this complex global environment to get people out of the puddle. And that there are better mechanisms that we don't disagree on getting people out of the puddle, there are much better mechanisms for helping people get out of poverty than just giving everything away. Don't get me wrong, I believe in charity, I just believe in one tool among many, many others. Now, why do I emphasize some of the others, I emphasize some of the others because I believe poverty is a systemic notion so you might give away a whole lot but if the system doesn't include people if the economic system doesn't include people, they're not going to be lifted out of poverty. So you might give away money to people and it helps them to get food or something profoundly important like that or slowly increase their income but then you haven't dealt with the macroeconomics of the country so the currency collapse and people are suddenly starving again. Now, it goes well beyond that because now think about the use of your dollars because you could give them away but in South Africa, one of the and many, many developing countries, one of the major sources of income is tourism. The tourism industry supports millions and millions of people, it supports the economy, it's the driver of the economy. If you give everything to the point where you have just the bare subsistence amount to yourself, all of that goes away, there isn't going to be that kind of system and a whole economic engine that employs millions and millions of people will simply disappear. Similarly you stop consuming higher end clothes, what happens to the millions of people in India, China, Sri Lanka, South Africa who are making those clothes? They're going to be, probably, out of work so I think there's a real danger in simplistic thinking, "I'll give it away." We learnt this in the '70s with Food Aid, people said, "Give them food." So food was dumped in the local environment, thereby bankrupting the local farmers because they couldn't sell their produce so the best of intentions, the road could be paved with good intentions. So what we need to do is think about really systematic institutional interventions and what I have emphasized in my work and what Leap Frog emphasizes in terms of creating whole profit with purpose, companies and therefore ecosystems that support the poor and are yet profitable, what I've emphasized is create sustainable infrastructure for ending poverty, don't just think you can give it away, give money away and it will solve the problem. And a last thought on this, even if the largest foundation in the world has 60 billion dollars, there are four billion poor people out there, that's $15 per person, even if you could give it all away to those poor people with no transaction costs, no friction, that would be $2 a day for a week and then it would be gone. Charity capital has to be catalytic capital, it has to help start things, things like Leap Frog, things like the Acumen fund or Ashoka, or Endeavor, it has to drive innovation that then creates sustainable solutions, often market-based solutions to poverty. There are uses that are pure charity capital like helping people to get out of slavery, like dealing with terrible immigration situation there are clear uses for charity capital just as charity, not everything can be done profitably but to the extent we can, we should be using that capital to help generate institutions, infrastructures that have massive, sustainable global effects. Recorded on: May 1, 2009
Comments
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in Singer's book 'the life you can save' he answers all objections raised in this clip, and more.
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Andrew Kuper picks an example of Singer to make a point against his theory, but misses the point of the example. The point was to demonstrate, that we are less affected by people suffering far away from us, then those with similar life circumstances, which is irrational. Singer never said to buy a lot of food for them and not change the system. He is a utilitarian, which means, he would ask the question, which action brings more use to the most people and reduce suffering. Of course changing the unbalanced nature of our economy would be more effective to do that, which is why that should be our goal as is Oxfam's, a favourite organisation of Singer's.
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well said!
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This little man didn´t even understand Peter Singer´s point, which is exactly giving money to the institutions that are working to reduce poverty. Then he says some absurd thing about charity being the end of turism... Peter Singer has the answer to that as well: Vacations in South Africa are great, but don´t squander money in useless things. Instead, save that money for charitable projects.Then he insists that the whole capital from charity wouldn´t solve the World´s poverty even for a week. That´s plainly wrong; the simple action of taking the richest top 1% fortunes and redistributing it to the poor would solve poverty in the blink of an eye (until greed does his job again).
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But I do not call this a debate: It is called expressing your views on Singer's philosophy.
If this was a debate, then I'd argue that I debated with Aristotle' view on "The Good Life" but people might call me an ambulance for saying this. -
Andrew Kuper is an imbecile, he doesnt have the moral intuition and intelligence to fully understand Peters views. This is one dumb South African.
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I'm sure if your from the family that charity could be provided to you wouldn't be saying, "Don't help me, its not going to be sustainable, and will most likely drive me and my family into deeper poverty." A bit of sarcasm, but we should at least entertain some of what singer said, put yourself in another shoes to try and gather a view from their perspective. I doubt this man has done any of that, his words are backed by strong economic interests.
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regardless of what you think about either of them, when it comes to "where to put the money" he has a point. give a man a fish or teach him to fish?
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Yep, sound like a misrepresentation. I didn't hear him argue against giving away money to malaria foundations
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This is the problem of Peter Singers idea that when you study economics will earn more money and therefore you can donate more money to the poor. When you study economy you become like Andrew Kuper who only learned how to maximize wealth so he can buy himself a better suit and not feed the poor.
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Kuper has unfortunately he has mis-represented Peter Singer's views about giving away everything till we too are living in poverty. He did mention that charities have to create sustainable solutions, well charities like GiveDirect and Against Malaria Foundation and others do give economic benefits which are long lasting. Education for farmers on crop management to increase yields, malaria bed nets that keep people sleeping safe which helps increase literacy since less sickness = higher chances in literacy and education according to a study done in two african countries. People who get money directly from give direct spend it on things that support the local economy which in term support growth of businesses, some use the funds to start businesses. Education for children, contraceptives and family planning which reduce birth rates so families can focus on caring for the children they already have and the like. I do agree with Kuper on investments will be very important in Africa, but we should not underestimate that charity aid used correctly can help get developing countries out of extreme poverty.
One more thing on investments, I don't know a whole lot about LeapFrog, but I do know that Africa looses tens of billions because of tax evasion. Tax evasion is a pretty big issue in countries like Nigeria. I do hope Leapfrog, one of their ethos is that companies they invest in are not simply siphoning up the money and giving next to nothing in return to the country.
In his book, The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer suggests a public standard minimum that we should expect ourselves and others to give to charity: 1% of our annual income. Our calculator below can be used to determine the percentage of your income that Peter suggests you donate annually.
http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Take-the-Pledge
If I made 30 grand a year, I should give away 1.3% at least, when i make 250 grand a year, that rises to 7%. If you want to donate say 50% even if you only make 30 grand a year, that's great but it would be extremely unrealistic to make a movement that says "lets all give half of all our earnings to charity", very few would follow and it's more productive to set much more lenient goals, like 1% as a baseline and capping at 30% for the super rich making several million a year. -
It's easy to be smug when taking down strawmen.
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This guy completely misunderstood and misrepresented Peter Singer's views.
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He makes a good point...and round and round we go!
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I've never heard Singer suggest that we should give away enough to make ourselves poor... what book did Kuper read? :/
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@cdrpntsndsky - you're absolutely right. In fact, Mr Singer goes further. If participation was mandatory (say, through government levies to fund foreign aid), the quantum of "aid" would reduce materially below 10%.
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Not deliberately misinterpreting a position is not enough. Kuper may not have interpreted Singer in bad faith but he has incompetently misinterpreted him nonetheless. In any person's position, even a person as carefully logical, as Singer, there will be things to disagree with or not to be so sure about, but what you don't do is to create a fictitious position, criticise that position and then congratulate yourself on a critical job well done.
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This is an extremely annoying video. If you want to criticise a position, understand it, present it accurately and then criticise. Kuper fails miserably at doing this. Singer's position on every point is misrepresented. Kuper may also have successfuly rationalised his own consumption habits - I will continue to purchase high end clothes because the jobs of sweatshop workers depend on it. This of course is a recipe for preserving poverty.
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I am not sure how well Kuper understands Singer's ideas. I get what he's saying but he misses the big picture. Especially regarding the production of clothes in developing countries - that is just sad, because the production of these clothes is often highly unethical! I highly doubt that Singer would oppose the production of clothes if the workers were given fair wages, a safe work-environment and no child-labour. Personally, I feel that Kuper's view is too simplistic, not Singer's.
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This is a CLEAR misrepresentation of Singer's views (though perhaps not deliberate). Among other things: (a) Singer does NOT think we should give away money until we are at "subsistence level." He suggests 10% for people of average income in the United States. (b) Singer does NOT think we should send money to people in poverty. That would be absurd. He supports giving to effective organizations that do things like improving sanitation, preventing malaria, etc. See GivingWhatWeCan . com
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