is excess spending murder?

[philosopherthales]

One number that I have heard to feed a child in Africa is $50 dollars for half a year or just around 10 dollars per month. These children are the ones that die in the thousands because of sicknesses directly caused by malnourishment. Lets say someone has the choice of taking care of one of these people and say, spending excess money on discretionary ‘wants’ like television or high speed internet (both cost around 50$/month) and he/she chooses the ladder....is it murder? Clearly, that person has two choices with life and death being the difference. Is this not the definition of murder? Does the fact that the person whose life is in the balance is not known to that person change anything? And if so, does that mean someone can only murder people who they know and killing someone randomly is not murder?

Thoughts?

 

[Jedi christian]

Well, I think it is very mean and selfish to choose the TV over the children, but I would not consider it murder.
a.) There are much more people in this world who live in 1st world countries than little starving children in Africa. If everyone pitched in, they would have excess money!
b.) It is better to spend money in your own area helping the poor than in Africa. You can see the results here in your area, and it will give you more joy when giving.
c.) It is not absolute that that child will die if you don't spend money. It may very well happen, but it will not necessarily happen.

Jedi_Christian

 

[philosopherthales]

Thank you Jedi Christian for responding with some interesting comments for farther debate.



Some of my thoughts on your points

a.) There are much more people in this world who live in 1st world countries than little starving children in

Africa. If everyone pitched in, they would have excess money!

You can look at the way of thinking that I presented above on a societal scale or on an individual scale. As a society, no one person can take the brunt of the blame if the same choice was given to most members of it and they made the wrong choice. But on the individual level, it is not very logical to believe if you make a choice that other people will make that same choice as well and the need for your contribution would then be no longer needed. Remember the reasons behind laws against murder. They are there because the life that is taken is important. It is easy to see that not giving will lead to death if there is a direct ways of giving to the neediest (which there is). The fact that someone died is the importance and not so much so if the blame can be placed on any one person.

b.) It is better to spend money in your own area helping the poor than in

Africa. You can see the results here in your area, and it will give you more joy when giving.

If you spend money in a wealthy community (in comparison to the poorest parts of the world), it is very unlikely you will be saving a life. In an affluent community, the poor are taken care of by other people with the philosophy of ‘help the community’.


Do you really feel more joy? If that joy relies on you seeing the improvement you have made then some programs can take care of that like sponsoring an individual child in which you get letters and photos regularly; you can clearly see the difference. And why do you need to see something. You really only have to logically know something because seeing is just the path to knowing; knowing through logically concluding that you are helping is just the same.

c.) It is not absolute that that child will die if you don't spend money. It may very well happen, but it will not necessarily happen.

Well, if you spend money, the least that will happen is that that child or adult will not be on the brink of death. If this is the case, then you still have a moral dilemma. On one hand you have suffering and in the other you have discretionary wants that in some cases, these discretionary wants if looked at can mean very little even in your life. An example would be some car that costs many thousands more then a regular car that gets you where you need to go at the same speed (same speed laws). The only difference is in some cases: looks which is not that important.


Here, on the one hand you have suffering, and on the other there is none. The choice that one makes is what can lead to either of these. Like I said before, the blame can’t exactly be placed on that person, but the blame is not so much what is important. It is the suffering that counts.


You just said that “It [death] may very well happen, but it will not necessarily happen". A little thought experiment: In front of you are 2 buttons. One is labeled 2% chance of death to some unknown faceless person to you and the other has a 0% chance a death to that person but you get a fancy car as referenced above. Which is the moral choice? And is pressing the one labeled 2% murder if the flip of the coin turns out unfortunate? Lets not leave it to a flick of the coin then....

 

[Madcoil]

Helping the children of africa is indirectly helping them, the young africans, murder someone else.
Allow me to explain: When you see pictures of african children you see two kinds.

1: The starving little naked boy with flies all over him. (And if he can't even wave away those flies I don't see how 50 dollars is going to help him.)

2: The other kind of little boy with a big Kalashnikov.

Where do these starving and poor little children get weapons from? I can't afford a kalashnikov! Why should I help someone who can? If those children sold their weapons they could live like kings, AND feed the poor at the same time! But look at those little rats... They're firing in the air for celebration. They're killing women and children (after having thorougly raped and pillaged them.). In other words, they're wasting bullets (the village you spare today is the village you can pillage and rape tomorrow. That's an ancient viking tactic, that is. Well, okay, so it isn't.), which in turn means they're wasting the food-funding we're sending them, which means that they're wasting MY tax-money. And now they want more? Running out of bullets, are they?

 

[MoonlessNight]

If you sneeze when and don't cover your mouth, causing an elderly person with a weak immune system to catch the flu and die, did you commit murder? I mean, you could have covered your mouth.

That being said, I don't think that it is a good idea to keep all of one's wealth to oneself when one could help others less fortunate. I don't think people should spend until it hurts, but certainly most people could give and still be comfortable. But even though it might be immoral to do something, that is because of the act and the motivations for that act, not necessarily because of the consequences. You can't be held responsible for what you could have prevented in cases like these.

 

[Jedi christian]

I think I agree with MoonlessNight.

 

[jesusfreak3786]

One number that I have heard to feed a child in Africa is $50 dollars for half a year or just around 10 dollars per month. These children are the ones that die in the thousands because of sicknesses directly caused by malnourishment. Lets say someone has the choice of taking care of one of these people and say, spending excess money on discretionary ‘wants’ like television or high speed internet (both cost around 50$/month) and he/she chooses the ladder....is it murder? Clearly, that person has two choices with life and death being the difference. Is this not the definition of murder? Does the fact that the person whose life is in the balance is not known to that person change anything? And if so, does that mean someone can only murder people who they know and killing someone randomly is not murder?

Thoughts?

Wow I never thought about it that way.

 

[jesusfreak3786]

Helping the children of africa is indirectly helping them, the young africans, murder someone else.
Allow me to explain: When you see pictures of african children you see two kinds.

1: The starving little naked boy with flies all over him. (And if he can't even wave away those flies I don't see how 50 dollars is going to help him.)

2: The other kind of little boy with a big Kalashnikov.

Where do these starving and poor little children get weapons from? I can't afford a kalashnikov! Why should I help someone who can? If those children sold their weapons they could live like kings, AND feed the poor at the same time! But look at those little rats... They're firing in the air for celebration. They're killing women and children (after having thorougly raped and pillaged them.). In other words, they're wasting bullets (the village you spare today is the village you can pillage and rape tomorrow. That's an ancient viking tactic, that is. Well, okay, so it isn't.), which in turn means they're wasting the food-funding we're sending them, which means that they're wasting MY tax-money. And now they want more? Running out of bullets, are they?

Lots of anger huh?

 

[philosopherthales]

Madcoil, there are a lot of guns in Africa? There is a reason that you hear of machete killings in Rwanda or militias that are armed with sticks. The fact is, they are too poor to have lots of weapons. An AK 47 costs around 500 dollars which is a large amount of money, but for some people, they only have them for defense in a dangerous area and the reason they can afford such a thing is because they give up a lot of other things for that protection.

Also, rebel activity in Africa is not exactly “bad”. A lot of rebellions over there are caused because the government is corrupt. Government officials steal millions from the people and in this part of the world, millions could make a lot of difference. Pretty much, theft by government officials is just the same as the government endorsing killing. In other cases, like the recent rebellion in Liberia, the government kills their own civilians. Is rebel activity bad in this situation? Was the Revolutionary War in America a good thing or was it bad?

Not to say that raping and other corruption on the part of some of these guerillas should be written off. These things happen when there is an absence of law and order which happens in the middle of rebellions. These things happened in the American Civil War. You are going to hear about these things. We live in a society where information travels fast.

What I am trying to say here is don't write off a whole people for the actions of some. Don't write off aid because there are rebellions or that the people have weapons. What you have said does not even come close to concluding logically that aid to africa is aid for killers. Most kids over there are not killers.

 

[Madcoil]

...and the reason they can afford such a thing is because they give up a lot of other things for that protection.

Like food. Like medical help.




Like it or not, child soldiers is a serious problem, and have been for some time, because compared to older soldiers who begun at an older age, they are ruthless and without scruples.
There are programs to teach these young heartless murderers about empathy and perhaps imbue into them some small measure of humanity (probably the wrong word...), but it's not a very popular job because if you get caught you're dead in the longest most drawn out and painful sense of the word. Kids are good at torturing things.

A lot of rebellions over there are caused because the government is corrupt.

Yes, and a lot of soldiers are forming around the government which has the money we sent, and so the governments army has the weapons we paid for.
And so the rebels feel like they need to even the scales. So they raid a few towns to buy cheap weaponry on the black market using the small amount of money that trickled through to the populace.

Stop giving them money. Start erasing their debts.


Was the revolutionary war a good thing or a bad thing?
I dunno, people killing eachother in a bloody war that didn't solve anything that couldn't have been solved through diplomacy. I guess you can pick, because I don't have a heart to.

What I am trying to say here is don't write off a whole people for the actions of some.

Yes, of course. It's only when it's about me giving away my money that you have to go down into individual choices.