What should a billionaire give and what should you-speech Good afternoon ladies and gentleman my name is George France. Welcome to the fourth business lunch. Today I will be talking to you about Peter Singers views on charity. The daily life of an African living inpovertyis a lot different compared to yours or mine. Africans living in poverty barely survive day to day. 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water and others must walk miles just to get clean drinking water, whereas people like us can walk mere meters and get it straight from a tap.
There are about 7 million people in African that are dying from starvation this very second and wont be able to getfoodunless they are lucky enough to find a charity handing it out, where as we can pick up a phone and order food from a number of places and get it in a matter if minutes. 2. 2million people in Africa die every year of curably diseases like cholera, which can be cured for under $30 whereas if we have an illness we would just see thedoctorand get a prescription to cure our illness.
No one wants to put a price on a human life but if we did I am sure everyone in this room would agree that it would be millions of dollars. This strongly backs up the point that everyone is equal which Peter Singer constantly uses as a strong argument. This means it is wrong to evaluate people based on how wealthy they are but instead we should give themmoneyso that they are also equal in the wealth. I’m sure everyone would agree that it is wrong that children in the developing world are dying from diseases that are easily treated in the developed world.
Children’s lives are valuable and most people would value the lives of children as equal and perhaps even give their own life to save a child. Yet thousands of children every day are dying and may people don’t even donate money to try and stop it. This point is backed up by the quote “ when will people finally accept that the death of a child in the developing world is just as tragic as the death of a child in the devolved world” As I’m sure you know there are lots of celebrities that donate millions to charities every year, like Bill Gates.
So the question arises that if Bill Gates is donating millions and leading by example what should we donate? Peter singer writes that we should donate as much as we can without going into poverty ourselves but I know this can be inconvenient for many of you so I would suggest that you donate as much as you feel comfortable with. But as I am sure many of you are wondering most celebrities donate huge amount of money to improve their image and if this is so should we really follow them.
Even if celebrities are only donating to look better the money still goes to charity and helps millions of people so the motives to giving the money don’t matter as long as it helps. Peter Singer makes a vey strong point that people are born into poverty and can not help that fact that they are poor and the same thing applies to the rich, that they are only rich because they were born into good circumstances.
For example if Bill Gates was born in a slum with parents that can barley afford to feed him in Africa I’m sure he would not be as successful as he is today. What I am saying is if people can’t get a goodeducationthey will struggle to get a job and they will live in poverty. So we need to donate to charity to make the circumstances better for people in developing worlds by building things like schools so they can get an education and then a job so they earn money breaking out of the poverty trend.
I’m sure a lot of you would argue that you have earnt your money and therefore no one has the right to tell you what to do with it but Peter Singer would argue that we owe people from developing countries because we are partially responsible for their suffering. The rich are rich because the poor are poor. Also I’m sure that a lot of you would argue that money doesn’t always get to the charity and the people that need it because people divert it and take it.
But as Peter Singer says, “ a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing”. This means that if only say half the money donated actually gets to the people that need it the money can still help save lives and is better than no money at all. I hope that I have changed your views on charity and I hope all these arguments will help to convince you to donate and support charities in the future. Thank you for letting me speak to you all today I hope to see you all again. By George France
