Why not steal money and give it to Africans?

[Dan Rutter]

In a reply why it would be wrong to give all your money to African babies, and then steal from others to give more money I have this to say (and this is assuming African babies would actually be helped from the money). Say that the average American (or person from another developed country) has 50 units of utility. In America this person can survive on 30 units of utility. So, this person has 20 units of utility that they hold that they do not need to survive. How should they use this 20 units?

Now assume the average African (or person from a less developed country, or just a poor person in general) has 10 units of utility, and it takes this person 20 units of utility to survive. So the person who is better off should spend his or her 20 units of extra utility and save two worst off individuals.

This situation would be ideal for the "perfect" world. People who are better off would be able to on average help two worst off people. This is not true for our world though. Our society, and much of the world is dependent on luxary spending. If everyone begins to spend all of their excess, unnecessary utility, on helping the worst off, soon economies will crumble. People will soon be out of jobs because people will stop buying things unnecssary.

So, if you steal from the person who is standing outside the Prada store, and do it over and over again, and give all that money to the poor, soon Prada will not have buisness, because these people who were once wealthy can no longer afford Prada's products (this assumes Prada is just luxary, I have no idea what they sell).

Basically, if everyone keeps just giving all of their excess money, the poor will gain in the short run. In the long run the wealthy will suffer by having the economy go down. Soon businesses who require luxary spending would begin to loose business, and lot of people would be unemployed. Soon any giving that was made to the poor would stop, and the poor would be back to their same situation, if not in a worst one.

That article by Peter Singer I posted a month or two ago relates to this issue. Basically the response I gave above are the reasons he is wrong. I have a little more detatiled response on my other computer, that I did for one of my classes on the article if anyone wants to read it.

[SNOWBALL138]

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Our society, and much of the world is dependent on luxary spending.

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This is wrong. Charles Shaw is bigger business than Dom Perignon, Toyota is bigger business than Jaguar, crummy apartments are bigger business than luxury condos, etc. Ugh, read Keynes, and in the meanwhile, stop making things up.