What Should A Billionaire Give Peter Singer Analysis
779 Words4 Pages
In “What Should a Billionaire Give-and What Should You?” Peter singer asks the question, “What is a human life worth?”(1) He assumes most of us can’t give it a distinct price, but he knows it would be a very large amount of money if we had to. We would also assume like singer that people would also agree that every human life would have the same value, but does it? Even though we may believe these things do we give or help to our full capability and if not should we have to, And to what extent?. Singer is very rhetorically effective in sharing why we should give even though I don’t fully agree with all of what he says.
He uses the example to of Bill Gates, reaction after learning about a disease that kills half a million children each year. Gates said “How…show more content… Even though we did nothing to cause the child to fall into the pond, almost everyone agrees that if we can save the child at minimal inconvenience or trouble to ourselves, we ought to do so. Anything else would be callous, indecent and, in a word, wrong. The fact that in rescuing the child we may, for example, ruin a new pair of shoes is not a good reason for allowing the child to drown. Similarly if for the cost of a pair of shoes we can contribute to a health program in a developing country that stands a good chance of saving the life of a child, we ought to do so”(4). In that example singer appeals to the readers emotion.
Singer then we do our fair share and be done, or are we obligated to give more if we can? He revisits the example with the pond and the child. This time he says that there are fifty adults around a pond, and fifty drowning children in the pond. Therefore, everyone should save one child and the job will be done. If only half of the adults decide to help a child, should they just do their “fair share” (help only one child) and leave the rest to