The Rules We Uphold

The Drowning Child asked whether distance excuses you from saving a life at small cost. Singer said it does not. His 1972 essay went further: it makes no difference that millions of others could help and do not. The duty to rescue stays yours.

Critics reply that this makes the whole world a pond with no edge, and that rescue without limit is more than morality asks. Others say that aid badly given has done harm, so the duty is to give well.

Thomas Pogge changes the question. Rich countries do not merely fail to help. They uphold global rules, on trade, on debt and on who may sell a country’s resources, that keep people poor. If so, the duty is the ordinary one not to harm, which almost everyone accepts. The pond was the easy case. The hard case is finding which rules you stand on.

The coffee contract

Marguerite buys coffee for a chain of cafés. She gives to a famine appeal each year and feels she has done her part. A supplier, Joseph, shows her the import rules that favor her country’s roasters. He shows her the contract terms too, which pass each fall in price down to the growers.

Her donation is small beside what the rules take. Marguerite cannot change the rules alone, but she can change her contracts, and she starts there. The question moved from charity to what she was already doing.

Try this today Find one rule or trade practice your country takes part in that touches a poorer one, and ask whether it helps or harms the people there.