Giving money to a beggar or to a charity has such a small impact. It’s easy to move from thinking that you can’t make much of a difference to not doing anything at all. Does inaction mean that you don’t care? Or at least don’t care in a way that matters?

I don’t donate large sums of money to charity. Does this mean I am indifferent to the suffering of others? In a sense it does. I am putting my own needs ahead of the needs of others.

I have to admit that I live a life of hypocrisy. I want to live in a more just world. I’m not, however, doing much to bring it about. Should I feel bad about this? Perhaps. My only excuse is that I’m human. I, too, shut out the needs of others who are less fortunate than me so that I can get through the day.

What I want is to be a part of a society where fairness is part of the fundamental fabric. I’d be willing to give up a lot more to live in a fairer world. This is what economists call a collective action problem. While I’d be happy to forgo some perks if everyone was cutting back, I don’t want to be the only one making the effort. I’d feel like a sucker.

Eric

You are right, I was honing in on exploitation right off the bat.

We can take a step back and talk more broadly about the morality of caring for other people.

Let’s assume that we are totally self-sufficient and don’t need to interact with the outside world. Suppose we are very productive and could do things to help people in other places who aren’t doing as well as we are. Should we help them?

In this case there would be no self-interested reason to help them. It would simply reduce our standard of living while offering us nothing in return. The only reason to help others would be if it somehow made us feel good. This comes down to a question of how our brains are wired. Some people will feel good while others won’t care.

I don’t think there is an objective or rational way to decide how much to help other people.

Maybe we’re self-sufficient and don’t need others to meet our needs, or maybe we trade fairly with others to maintain our lifestyle. Should we care about African farmers starving because of a drought? Should we care about our next-door neighbor who wishes he had satellite TV like we do?

Eric