Essential Question Response #3

"Then, if we value the life of a child more than going to fancy restaurants, the next time we dine out we will know that we could have done something better with our money."
This is a quote from Peter Singer's "The Singer Solution to World Poverty."

Singer's writing basically said that human beings were responsible for donating money to the poor. Now in terms of values, this is a very noble stance; we have been raised to believe that rich should give to the poor from stories such as Robin Hood. But is this really a responsibility? Someone might argue, "By giving to others less fortunate than yourself, you are bettering the human race." Now what I want to know is why do they believe that? I agree that in terms of individuals, donating helps keep people alive so that they may have the opportunity to find a way to better human race. But how can you say that feeding a poor Chinese farmer is a responsibility of the human race? Just to be clear, I definitely agree that it is our responsibility to better the human race, but on a large scale, how are we doing this by helping people in poverty. In a world where our medicine has allowed us to cheat numerous population controllers, such as diseases, maybe this is one of the only ways we can do so. All species have some sort of limiting factor that prevents them from expanding. Why do we deserve to be different? We can't escape the fact that as populations increase, resources decrease. So in the end, I believe that although donating to charity is noble in terms of individuals, when you look at the big picture, it isn't a responsibility of human beings.