I need help finding an counter argument?

Question

The Moral Equivalent of Murder

1. The absolutely wealthy are allowing the absolutely poor to die.
2. If there is no moral difference between allowing someone to die and killing them, then the absolutely wealthy are killing the absolutely poor.
3. There is no moral difference between allowing someone to die and killing them.
So, the absolutely wealthy are killing the absolutely poor.


I dont want to agree with it but I can't think of an counter example.

this arugemnt is from Peter Singer: “Rich and Poor” and “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”

Answer 1

Consider the following example:

A scientist is working on a cure for death. With enough research, he may be able to prevent anyone from ever dying. Pursuing this research costs time and money. He decides instead to spend his time and money distributing soup to starving people. He saves some small number of lives doing so, but his research never progresses and he dooms enless billions of the future to death.

Okay. A bit extreme. But there are those who would argue that any rich person might do this to a lesser extent.

If a rich person is rich because he owns a business, he is probably employing many people. Those people have food and live well because of the rich person. If doing this makes him rich, it is probably because his business produces a product or service that other people are willing to spend resources on. Assuming that all those people aren't fools, that means he as also enriched the lives of all the people who buy his products. Further, by getting all the money himself, he can then create more businesses which produce more products and multiply his benefits to society many-fold.

And NONE of these benefits would exist if he instead took all his money and bought soup. It is easily conceivable that a rich person saves more lives by being rich than by spending himself into poverty. The argument you state does not hold up.

Answer 2

There are no absolutes in a social standing. Peter Singer is basing his argument on an impossible platform. The moral equivalent to murder would be in the regimes of Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, and Adolf Hitler's social structures.
In those times and places you will find within the populace "The Moral Equivalent of Murder". Both the wealthy and the poor of those lands, and those times would be responsible for that type of apathetic murder.
But in the western world of wealthy nations the political and the economical agendas are not to be a social means of murder. Perhaps you can misconstrue that into a third world country, or perhaps you can't. But we cannot lay the blame for the poor on the wealthy, nor can we state with "authority" that the wealthy are responsible for the moral equivalent of murder amongst the poor.

Answer 3

This is the fallacy of the "unspoken middle term."
It begins with "If there is no moral difference..." and concludes with "There is no moral difference." The unspoken middle term is how the author gets from one to the other. He never demonstrates his logic in the proposition you gave us.
He uses the same fallacy in the first proposition. He never demonstrates that the wealthy ARE allowing the poor to die, nor does he demonstrate that it is necessary or moral that the wealthy try to prevent the poor from dying. Now, it may seem moral to some people that the wealthy ought to help, but that moral presumption is never proved.

He uses another fallacy, the name of which I don't know. He uses the 3rd prop to support the 2nd. They should be ordered differently. 3 should be 1st. Then he should prove it. After proving it, the 2nd prop is unnecessary. Then the 1st prop should be last to demonstrate the end is the result of the means.

The counter argument is that there has been no necessity shown for the wealthy to help the poor--even if you believe they ought to--and until one proves that necessity, no killing, let alone murder, has been conducted.

Answer 4

The only objection you can make is with 2.
2.If there is no moral difference between allowing someone to die and killing them, then the absolutely wealthy are killing the absolutely poor.

Singer is an extreme utilitarian. He is a consequentialist who says what happens is what matters.

However, if you think that the intention of a person matters, statement 2 can be rejected because the absolutely wealthy had absent stance rather than stance to murder or stance to help.

Answer 5

There is a difference between murder and allowing someone to die. If a man swims into a typhoon and we see him struggling in the water, we are not required to jump in to save him. We do what we can, but we are not guilty of murder for not risking our lives to save the man. Even when less is at stake than injury to ourselves, I don't think that allowing someone to die is the same as killing them. If so, then I would say that any amount of money we pay for some otherwise-worthwhile cause (like giving money to the ASPCA to spay and neuter dogs or giving money to improve a child's education) is abdicating our responsibility to make sure that everyone has food and won't starve. We are allowing someone somewhere to die by having other priorities, but I don't think it can be said that we killed that person.
Moreover, we don't owe a responsiblity to everyone else to save them, or else each and every one of us (not just the absolutely wealthy) is a murderer. People die of starvation every day but is it then true that any person who can spare any morsel of food is a murderer for not doing so?

Whether the absolutely rich owe the absolutely poor something (which I would say they do), is a separate question than whether they (or we) are actually killing/murdering them by not providing everything they or we can.

Answer 6

To get a sense of what's wrong with this, consider two versions of the well-known "trolley car" example.

An out-of-control trolley car is hurtling down its tracks. It is about at a switching point (or whatever the proper terminology is) and could follow one of two routes. Along path 1, it will crash into and certainly kill one person. Along path 2, it will crash into and certainly kill two people.

No one is near the switch except you. You have no job with the trolley company, so you have no responsibility to an employer that might complicate things, you just happen to be the only person on the spot.

Suppose, as you look closely, you discover that the switch is in the position that, unless you change it in a hurry, will mean that when the trolley car gets there it will follow path 2. Do you change it? to follow path 1 and kill only one person?

If you're a radical utilitarian, I suppose you would. One death is better than two deaths, and that's all that matters. But most people would have a contrary intuition. Most people would think that if you tokk action, and MOVED the switch, you would be KILLING (not just "letting die") the one person into whom the trolley would then crash. If you don't do anything to the switch, two will die -- those deaths will be accidental, and they would be the same deaths that would have occurred had you been nowhere near the switch that day.

I submit that in such a situation, you might well say "it is not for me to make this decision," and you wouldn't touch the switch at all, so as not to be guilty of kiling the one. Of course, Singer thinks you'd be guilty of killing the other two by inaction. But that's the point, isn't it? I submit he has let an abstract theory overcome the normal and healthy intuition and one's own personal responsibilities and what philosophers often call "agency."

In other words, (2) above is true but trivial because (3) is false.

If you don't agree, consider another runaway trolley. There's no switch this time. You're standing next to the track and a fat person is standing next to you, absorbed in his newspaper or otherwise unaware of what's going on. You're a body builder, so you figure you COULD stop the trolley and save the two people in its way further downhill, but only in one way -- by grabbing the fat person and throwing him on the track. The train will hit and kill him, but the weight of his corpse will then slow it down and let the two others survive.

The calculus in sheer numbers is the same. Killing one to save two. Only in this case its more obvious that you're killing that one -- you're picking him up and throwing him on the track. Do you see a problem with that? I would hope you do.

Answer 7

I'm not sure if this helps but:

1. Weathly people succumb to death just like the poor. They die of "rich man" diseases. They kill each other inside and out to grow their wealth. They even allow themselves to die (Ken lay, Enron) for the sake of their riches. Rich people also commit suicide. People in Hollywood are also murdered just like the people in South Central LA.

2. The first is a sin of omission, the second a sin of commission. The first is an act of cowardice, the second an act of hate. But there may be practical obstacles that prevent one from acting.

3. There is no such thing as doing nothing. To stand idle is to decide to so something, which is nothing. However, one cannot be responsible for another's fate, especially of it is beyond the reach of one's grasp. A person may be born into a wealthy situation and be subject to things beyond their control. Thus, their sin is not necessarily one of immorality. Jesus sais to Pilate that it was not in Pilate's power to control the situation. There ar things beyond human control that we must accept giving our limitations, and therefore, can only plead "not guilty."

Answer 8

absolutely, the rich ones are killing the poor. as you may notice in the distribution of wealth and to the relation of the production, rich ones are always gaining most to the profits of labor. but in the participation on production, the poor ones have the most contributions but not recieving what is just right for them. in that way, there's almost nothing left for the poor ones and it is a way of killing them.

Answer 9

your argument is not valid...in practice...YET!!!
like, Peter Singer it becomes valid only in print
...become a best seller is my answer...