Achieving the best outcome: Final rejoinder

Abstract

The one central point in all my writing on this topic, from “Famine, Affluence and Morality” onward, has been that the failure of people in the rich nations to make any significant sacrifices in order to assist people who are dying from poverty related causes is ethically indefensible. It is not simply the absence of charity, let alone of moral saintliness: It is wrong, and one cannot claim to be a morally decent person unless one is doing far more than the typical comfortably-off person does.