World poverty,positive duties,and the overdemandingness objection

3.1.

Frances Kamm (2000) discusses the issue of whether distance matters morally to the duty to rescue. As part of her discussion, Kamm asks us to suppose that we can expect many cases to arise in which a small donation of ours will do a significant amount of good for a needy person. We are also asked to suppose that these cases do not differ qualitatively as individual cases. Kamm (2000: 660) then asks about what reason we could give, if we have given aid in one case, for not aiding in the case after that, and in the case after that, and so on. She considers a possible reply to this question that involves the idea of an aggregation problem. ⁶ This is the problem that the aggregation of all of our small individual donations would consume much of our life. In order to avoid the aggregation problem, we might therefore be justified in refusing to give aid even in a single case. Kamm does not find this reply satisfactory. She writes:

It is incorrect, I believe, to judge what we should do in one case on the basis of what we need to do if many cases were to arise. Even if there is no distinction between the cases as individuals, the cumulative effort or cost is different in aiding one or many. Even if there is no magic cutoff point such that the difference between aiding ten and aiding eleven, for example, will involve making more total effort than required, we can set an arbitrary cutoff so as not to go on aiding when the aggregate total would clearly be more than required. (Kamm, 2000: 660)

I find Kamm’s proposal unsatisfactory for two reasons. The first of these reasons is theoretical and the second is practical. Kamm’s suggestion is disappointing from a theoretical perspective because the suggestion does not amount to a theory at all. Murphy is correct when he writes that if a principle of beneficence of some form must ultimately be defended, then ‘it is incumbent on us to show how to understand and justify a limit to the demands of beneficence’ (1993: 273). The issue of when an agent is morally justified in stopping aiding the global poor is a pressing, practical, and philosophically interesting one. A theory that addresses this issue must provide a principled answer as to why some ways of responding to this issue are correct and why other ways are incorrect. Kamm’s suggestion about an arbitrary cutoff point provides no such principled answer. That is, it provides no justification for thinking that setting the cutoff point at one point, as opposed to setting it at another, is correct.

The deficiency of Kamm’s answer from a practical perspective arises from the fact that her suggestion has no practical implications whatsoever. To see this, consider a libertarian who asserts that everybody is justified in stopping giving to the global poor after having performed nil acts of aid. Contrast this with someone who asserts that, say, people with an annual income of more than US$35,000 are justified in stopping giving to the global poor when and only when they have, in a given year, performed acts of aid the cumulative effect of which is such that their annual income is reduced by 20 percent. Does Kamm’s suggestion have any traction with respect to answering the question of which of these mutually exclusive views is the correct one? No. Each of the two individuals can satisfactorily justify their respective view by referring to Kamm’s idea that it is acceptable to introduce an arbitrary cutoff point and then go on to say that their respective cutoff point is exactly that: arbitrary.

Perhaps Kamm, or someone else attracted to the idea of an arbitrary cutoff point, would want to reply that the position of the libertarian is mistaken because it is ‘clearly’ the case that the aggregate burden of her individual acts of giving does not exceed what can be required of individuals. Such a reply is, however, not acceptable since it begs the question against the libertarian position. What is up for debate is the question of when individuals are justified in stopping giving to the global poor. It might be ‘clear’ to Kamm that the libertarian cutoff point is incorrect, and it might even be the case that this cutoff point is incorrect. The incorrectness of this particular cutoff point has, however, to be shown, not just asserted, and there is nothing in Kamm’s way of thinking, relying as it does on the notion of an arbitrary cutoff point, that indicates to us where the inputs to an argument of the required form can come from.

Kamm’s suggestion about an arbitrary cutoff point seems to rest on the idea that a serious philosophical and practical issue can be circumvented by appealing to the idea that most people have an intuitive understanding of when enough is enough when it comes to aiding the global poor. Perhaps most people do have an understanding of this that satisfies Kamm’s intuition on the matter. However, people’s intuitions differ, and if Kamm wants to criticize certain individuals for having the wrong intuitions, she needs to have an argument to back up her view, and with respect to the issue at hand, no such argument is offered.

3.2.

In ‘Poverty and the Moral Significance of Contribution’, Gerhard Overland (2005) discusses Thomas Pogge’s arguments about why we might have reason to assist the global poor (Pogge, 2008). Whatever duties we might have to aid the global poor, simply because they are poor, Pogge argues, we also have more stringent responsibilities of assistance by virtue of our contributory role in global international institutions that create and sustain conditions of poverty on a large scale. Overland argues that contribution makes no such moral difference and that the apparent significance of contribution can be explained in other terms. In that case, Pogge fails to identify grounds for assistance distinct from our positive duty to aid people simply because of their impoverished condition. As part of his overall argumentative strategy against Pogge, Overland touches upon the issue of positive duties and a version of the overdemandingness objection. He writes:

People obviously want to get help when they need it. But people also want a say in how their time and resources are used for the benefit of others. They therefore have grounds to restrict how far they wish to translate the duty to help people whose need they are not responsible for. A duty to assist people at low cost does not impose a very demanding burden on people, and is accordingly to a large extent compatible with the interest of maintaining control over one’s time and resources. In this sense there is a trade-off between one’s interest in being helped oneself, and one’s interest in managing one’s own time and resources ... I therefore propose that a duty to assist people in severe need at low cost, with the criteria for selecting whom to assist as being severity and urgency, would be picked in a contractual situation in which all information – except information about prospective recipients is available to the parties to the contract. The implementation of that rule would give everyone an increased probability of being assisted when they need it most, without doing so unfairly. (Overland, 2005: 308)

Overland’s suggestion is subject to what might be labeled the ‘reiterated step’ objection. When some well-off individual has performed one act of aid at a low cost to herself, she, from the very fact that this act was at a low cost, still has the large majority of her resources left to spend on other things. This means that she is in a position to perform a new act of aid if such an act can be done at a low cost. So, if such an opportunity arises, and it certainly will given the empirical realities of the world we inhabit, she will be under an obligation to perform a new act of aid. By the logic of Overland’s proposal, this step should then be reiterated up until a point where either the benefactor is so materially impoverished that she is unable to perform any more acts of low-cost aid or nobody is in need of low-cost acts of aid. So, contrary to what Overland believes, his proposal does not set a nondemanding ceiling for what duties well-off individuals have with respect to giving aid to the global poor. In the end, the consistent application of his proposal leads to a duty to be beneficent that is not significantly less radical than the type of duty that follows in the wake of acceptance of Singer’s 1972 view on the issue. ⁷

When the logical implications of Overland’s proposal are clear, it is, moreover, difficult to share his optimism that informed individuals in the kind of contractual situation he envisages will agree to a principle of duty to assist others when this can be done at a low cost. Overland suggests that one of the primary reasons individuals in this situation will agree to such a principle is that they have an understandable and legitimate interest in maintaining control over their own time and resources. Overland’s principle does not, however, allow individuals to maintain such control. As a result, individuals in the original contract situation have no reason to agree to his principle.

3.3.

If the proposals by Kamm and Overland with respect to how to meet the overdemandingness objection should not be embraced, can one be better served by looking to Liam Murphy for help? In ‘The Demands of Beneficence’, Murphy (1993) addresses the overdemandingness objection head-on, and he presents and defends a principle about what the legitimate limit is to the duty to be beneficent. Murphy calls this principle the ‘Cooperative Principle’. In its entirety, it goes like this:

Each agent is required to act optimally – to perform the action that makes the outcome best – except in situations of partial compliance with this principle. In situations of partial compliance it is permissible to act optimally, but the sacrifice each agent is required to make is limited to the level of sacrifice that would be optimal if the situation were one of full compliance; of the actions that require no more than this level of sacrifice, agents are required to perform the action that makes the outcome best. (Murphy, 1993: 280)

The general idea behind the cooperative principle is the view that principles of beneficence should not demand more of agents as expected compliance by other agents decreases (Murphy, 1993: 267). Murphy contrasts the cooperative principle with what he calls the ‘Simple Principle of Beneficence’. This principle requires that each person performs the action, of those available to her, that will provide the best outcome. ⁸ It is obvious that the simple principle of beneficence is extremely demanding. Consider, for example, what its implications are when it is applied to the issue of global poverty and we assume that the good that must be maximized is human material well-being. On this assumption, the simple principle of beneficence requires that many individuals among the relatively well off give up most of their time, energy, and resources for the sake of impoverished people in the developing world. This is so partly because the extent of global poverty is so dramatic and partly because so few of the relatively well off devote a significant amount of their resources to combating global poverty. If more people devoted more of their resources to eradicating global poverty, the simple principle of beneficence would make a much more limited demand on those individuals who are willing, or already have done something, to contribute to the eradication of global poverty.

A feature of the simple principle of beneficence which Murphy finds unacceptable is that it requires individuals who comply with the principle to pick up the slack from people who do not comply with it. It is simply unfair that a given individual has to do more to secure a certain end because other people do less to secure the end in question. The cooperative principle is a huge improvement on the simple principle of beneficence because the former principle avoids this unfair feature of the latter principle. The cooperative principle makes sure that what each individual is under an obligation to do in terms of being beneficent is not determined by what other people do. The cooperative principle assures this outcome by only demanding of us that we be beneficent to the extent that would be optimal if everybody performed the action that would produce the best outcome.

In this way, the cooperative principle promises to be a principle which can be utilized to meet the overdemandingness objection. By invoking this principle, a defender of positive duties can say that a commitment to such duties does not saddle individuals with an overly dramatic and unbearable duty to work for the eradication of global poverty. To be sure, positive duties toward the global poor imply that we should work for the betterment of the global poor’s condition, but our duty to do so is relatively limited because we are only required to do what would be optimal in an ideal situation in which everyone did what was optimal to secure the eradication of global poverty.

In the end, the cooperative principle is not a plausible principle. Murphy himself explicitly acknowledges this by presenting a counterexample to the principle (1993: 291). ⁹ Consider two adults walking through a park on the way to the airport. They observe two children in danger of drowning in a lake, and the location of the children is such that if each of the two adults wade in to the lake, they can both save one child and they can each catch their respective flight. If either of the adults save both children, then that person will miss her flight. Murphy acknowledges that the best thing would be for each of the two adults to save one child. Suppose, however, that one of the adults refuses to sustain any loss to help a child. In this scenario, the whole burden of saving both children will fall on the other adult, and she has, as Murphy says, to put up with it and pick up the slack from the other person’s unwillingness to help out.

This prescription, however, runs counter to what the cooperative principle dictates. On this principle, each of the two adults would be justified in just saving one child and doing nothing to save the other. The adult who is willing to help finds herself in a situation of partial compliance with the cooperative principle, and this principle asserts that in such a situation an individual is only required to do what it would be optimal to do in a situation of full compliance with the cooperative principle. Moreover, in such an ideal scenario, it would be optimal for the adult willing to help to save just one child as the other child would be saved by the other complying adult. The previously mentioned commentators on the cooperative principle agree that what this thought example brings out is that the way in which other people act does have an impact on what is morally required of us as individuals. This undermines both the cooperative principle and the idea behind the principle: that one is not required to do more in terms of being beneficent as other people do less in that respect.

Let me now suggest a further problematic feature of the cooperative principle. ¹⁰ Suppose that one is attracted to the idea that there are positive duties partly because one finds it intuitively implausible that one is under no obligation to perform what might be labeled ‘easy rescues’. ¹¹ On this supposition, (1) one rejects the libertarian position, at least partly, because it cannot accommodate the intuition that if we are in a position to perform an easy rescue, we are under an obligation to do so even if we have not harmed or otherwise been causally involved in creating the unfortunate position of the person we can help. Suppose now that one (2) accepts the overdemandingness objection and (3) utilizes the cooperative principle as a means to meet this objection. The combination of (1), (2), and (3) is problematic.

To see this, consider the fact that, as things are today empirically, there are many very affluent people who are not blameworthy for not performing easy rescues. These people are the ones who have contributed to the eradication of global poverty the amount of their personal affluence that would be optimal under full compliance with the cooperative principle and have stopped contributing to this end even though they still have an immense amount of money that would enable them to perform many additional easy rescues. On the cooperative principle, such a person is not blameworthy. This result is, however, problematic. If it is objectionable that libertarians allow that one is not blameworthy if one does not perform an easy rescue when one has a chance to do so, why is it then not objectionable if affluent people refuse to carry out these rescues after they have contributed the amount of their affluence that would be optimal under full compliance with the cooperative principle?

The morally objectionable feature of the refusal to perform an easy rescue is, presumably, that one ought to act in a beneficent way when this is easy to do and the positive consequences of doing so are substantial. On this presumption, it is, however, difficult to see why a very affluent person can avoid being blameworthy if she refuses to perform easy rescues with respect to the eradication of global poverty after she has contributed the share of her affluence that would be optimal under full compliance with the cooperative principle. Such an affluent person seems to be just as blameworthy for her unwillingness to perform an easy rescue as the rest of us (relatively nonaffluent people) would be if we refused to perform the first easy rescue we ever had a chance to perform.

There is even ground for thinking that the affluent person in question would be even more blameworthy than the relatively nonaffluent person for having failed to perform an easy rescue. This is so because it is financially much easier for the affluent person to perform easy rescues after having contributed what would be optimal under full compliance than it is for many relatively nonaffluent people to perform their first easy rescue. To be sure, the financial burden of paying, say, US$100 to global poverty relief is not immense for the average US citizen, but compared to this burden, the financial burden that the world’s truly rich have in virtue of performing numerous US$100 easy rescues, after having done what would be optimal to do in a situation of full compliance with the cooperative principle, is miniscule.

It should be noted that one way to steer clear of this criticism is to say that one’s commitment to positive duties is not based on the intuition that it is wrong not to perform easy rescues. What it is that motivates people to reject the libertarian position and embrace the idea that we have positive duties is an empirical issue. It is not, however, unreasonable to suggest that at least some theorists who are attracted to the idea that we have positive duties are motivated, at least to some extent, by the intuition that a libertarian position that only entails a commitment to negative duties is wrong because it cannot accommodate the idea that we are under an obligation to perform easy rescues.

3.4.

Peter Singer has recently defended the principle that ‘if it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so’ (2009: 15). This premise is the crucial one in an argument that has as its conclusion that in order to be good people, we must give to the global poor until we are in such a position that if we gave more, we would be sacrificing something nearly as important as the bad things our donations can prevent (Singer, 2009: 141). Singer concedes that this bar for being a good person is high and is such that it is not likely that many people will qualify as being good. Singer therefore proposes an alternative way of thinking about how much we ought to give in assistance to the global poor. This alternative standard is underwritten by pragmatic considerations to the effect that since it is unlikely that many people will meet the demanding standard, it makes sense to introduce a less demanding one in the hope that more people will meet this standard and thereby generate an increased amount of donations that can be used to minimize global suffering.

Independently of whether Singer thinks that this alternative, less demanding standard can be justified philosophically, and not merely pragmatically as a kind of second-best solution, it is worth discussing this standard because it can be invoked as a means to meet the overdemandingness objection. Singer’s less demanding standard is built on the idea of a set of income brackets for annual income. Each bracket indicates how much an individual who falls within that bracket should give annually to global poverty relief. The set of income brackets dictates giving in a manner that in one respect is similar to the manner in which a progressive tax scale dictates tax contributions: top earners are obligated to pay both a higher percentage of their income and a higher absolute amount of money than people who find themselves in a lower income bracket. The exact numbers associated with the various income brackets are not important for the general point I want to make. In order to give a hint as to how demanding Singer’s standard is, it should be mentioned that people who make less than US$105,001 are not obligated to donate anything and that people who find themselves in the top income bracket, earning more than US$10.7 million per year, should pay 5.0 percent of the first US$148,000, 10.0 percent of the next US$235,000, 15.0 percent of the next US$217,000, 20.0 percent of the next US$1.3 million, 25.0 percent of the next US$8.8 million, and 33.3 percent of the remainder (Singer, 2009: 164).

It is obvious how this proposal can be used to meet the overdemandingness objection. On this proposal, a large group of low-to-middle income earners are not obligated to donate anything and a person who, for example, makes US$10.70 million in annual income is allowed to keep US$8.19 million for herself (Singer, 2009: 165). A proposal that allows this is much less demanding than, and indeed inconsistent with, both Singer’s early view about how much we ought to give (1972: 241) and his later view on the issue (2009: 141).

This proposal does not, however, constitute a plausible way of meeting the overdemandingness objection. The proposal is vulnerable to a version of the reiterated-step objection. To see this, consider an individual who falls within an income bracket that carries with it an obligation to donate. This means that she should give x dollars away. Giving x dollars away either leaves this individual in her current income bracket or moves her one income bracket down. In the former scenario, she is obligated to give away x dollars again and keep reiterating this step until she moves one income bracket down. In the latter scenario, she is obligated to give y dollars away. ¹² Giving y dollars away either leaves her in that same income bracket or moves her one income bracket down. In the former scenario, she is obligated to give away y dollars again and keep reiterating this step until she moves one income bracket down. In the latter scenario, she is obligated to give z dollars away. ¹³ This sequence of steps should be reiterated until the individual has reduced her annual income to less than US$105,001 and thereby becomes exempt from participation in the donation scheme.

The only plausible, nonarbitrary way of stopping this spiraling-down process of reiterated steps of giving consists in introducing an appeal to fairness at some point in the process of reiterated steps. Such an appeal would be an appeal to the effect that it is not unfair for an individual to stop giving at this particular point, whatever that point exactly is, since this individual has already made at least one donation and thereby done her fair share.

Two observations should be made here. First, Singer cannot make such an appeal to fairness since he explicitly has rejected Murphy’s cooperative principle and explicitly said that we are under an obligation to pick up the slack that arises from other people’s unwillingness to spend resources on minimizing the suffering of other people (Singer, 2009: 146). According to Singer, it is not acceptable for anyone in, say, the top income bracket to stop giving after having once donated the required sum. After this donation, such an individual still has plenty of useful resources to spare, and the giving must therefore, if Singer’s proposal is to be taken to its logical conclusion, be continued. Second, people who are attracted to Singer’s solution and want to meet the reiterated-step objection through some kind of appeal to fairness must show in what sense Murphy, Kamm, Schmidtz, and Singer are all confused in their critique of the cooperative principle and the appeal to fairness that this principle rests on. I am not claiming that this task is impossible, but I find it difficult to see how it can be successfully executed.

One last point should be made with respect to Singer’s proposal. It might be suggested that it does succeed in setting a fairly undemanding standard for what our obligations are to the global poor in the sense that it at least shelters people who have an annual income of less than US$105,001. The proper reply to this suggestion is to say that the US$105,001 limit is arbitrary and puzzling given the fact that even a very small donation has the potential to do a lot of good in terms of minimizing human suffering. ¹⁴ Given that one can live a relatively comfortable life on an annual income of, say, US$35,000 in the USA and that a life can be saved on the other side of the planet with a US$20 donation, it seems only reasonable to suggest, if one believes in positive duties, that an obligation to donate to global poverty relief kicks in at a level that lies way, way below the limit suggested by Singer.

3.5.

In ‘Beneficence, Duty and Distance’, Richard Miller (2004) discusses Singer’s early view of what our obligations are toward the global poor. Miller decries Singer’s position as being too radical and argues for a position that involves a principle of beneficence that is less demanding than the one defended by Singer. The position Miller argues for is, on the one hand, one that permits many purchases that Singer would condemn and, on the other hand, one that accepts positive duties and condemns callous indifference toward the needs of the global poor. At the heart of Miller’s position lies the principle of sympathy:

One’s underlying disposition to respond to neediness as such ought to be sufficiently demanding that the giving which would express greater underlying concern would impose a significant risk of worsening one’s life, if one fulfilled all further responsibilities; and it need not be any more demanding than this. (Miller, 2004: 359)

Miller stresses that the impact of the principle of sympathy on obligatory beneficence toward the global poor is dependent upon what counts as significantly worsening someone’s life, and he expresses confidence that this principle will yield a position according to which it is ‘typically wrong to fill vast closets with designer clothes in a world in which many must dress in rags, but not wrong occasionally to purchase a designer-label shirt that is especially stylish and, though not outlandishly expensive, more expensive than neat, plain alternatives’ (2004: 360).

A core component of Miller’s thinking is the idea that individuals often have worthwhile goals and are involved in worthwhile activities from which they cannot readily detach themselves. As a way of spelling out what a worthwhile goal is, Miller (2004: 361) says that if the goal is an interest that enriches the life of the individual and if she can pursue it well, then that goal is worthwhile. An ability to pursue such worthwhile goals and activities enjoyably and well is something that one is justified in pursuing, and it is an ability that requires resources. There is, moreover, a point at which one significantly worsens one’s life if one responds to other people’s neediness with a donation instead of spending the money in a manner that enables one to pursue enjoyably and well one’s own worthwhile goals. These considerations imply that there is a limit to how much one is obligated to donate to the easing of other people’s neediness. According to Miller, we ought to give up until a point such that if we gave more, we would run a significant risk of significantly worsening our lives, but we are not morally required to give anything beyond this point.

In order to cast more light on the role in Miller’s theory of the notions of goal, ‘worthwhileness’, identification, detachment, and ability to perform enjoyably and well, and to avoid problems of misrepresentation, the following passage is instructive:

In ordinary assessments, my worthwhile goals include the goal of presenting myself to others in a way that expresses my own aesthetic sense and engages in the fun of mutual aesthetic recognition. I need not apologize for being the sort of person who exercises his aesthetic sense and social interest in these ways. My life is enriched, not stultified by this interest, given my other interests and capacities. And to pursue this goal enjoyably and well, I must occasionally purchase a luxury or frill, namely some stylish clothing, rather than a less expensive, plain alternative. Similarly, I could not pursue, enjoyably and well, my worthwhile goal of eating in a way that explores a variety of interesting aesthetic and cultural possibilities if I never ate in nice restaurants; and I could not adequately fulfill my worthwhile goal of enjoying the capacity of great composers and performers to exploit nuances of timber and texture to powerful aesthetic effort without buying more than minimal stereo equipment. So I do not violate [the Principle of] Sympathy in occasionally purchasing these luxuries and frills. (Miller, 2004: 361)

Should Miller’s position be accepted by someone who seeks to meet the overdemandingness objection? My view is that it should not. The problem with Miller’s position is not that it is too demanding. On the contrary, it is too undemanding. It sets the bar for our duties too low to be of any interest to those who believe that we in any minimal, de facto sense have a positive duty to aid the global poor. Contrary to what Miller thinks, the principle of sympathy does not carve out some moderate position according to which we have significant obligations toward the global poor, but are justified in stopping donating to global poverty relief much earlier than is suggested by Singer’s view. Miller’s position is not moderate; it is radically undemanding.

To see this, consider first that the principle of sympathy has no traction against wealthy people who have extremely expensive goals from which they cannot easily detach themselves. Any such rich individual will significantly worsen her life if she gives up the means (private jets, yachts, limousines, and so on) through which she pursues, enjoyably and well, her expensive goals and donates the savings to global poverty relief. While not going as far as to concede this point, Miller (2004: 363) makes a concession to the effect that the demands of the principle of sympathy are sometimes low:

Admittedly, the demands of Sympathy are sometimes lower because someone cannot readily detach from an exorbitantly expensive goal that most of us lack or could readily do without ... On account of a sufficiently strong attachment to such a goal, someone might need to retain much more than he otherwise would to avoid worsening his life.

It is also unclear why Miller finds it appropriate to sneak in a comment about how the rest of us might ‘readily’ be able to do without the expensive goals of rich people. Whether the rest of us can ‘readily’ do this and whether people ought to have such goals is irrelevant in the present context. This is acknowledged by Miller himself in leaving out, in the wording of the principle of sympathy, any talk of the idea that one worsens one’s life if and only if one gives away to charity so much that one does not have enough to cater for goals that one ought to have in some nonpersonal, normative sense of ‘ought’. A core idea in the principle of sympathy is the plausible one that people’s lives are significantly worsened when important goals of theirs are frustrated. ¹⁶ This idea trades, however, on what important goals people actually have and what goals they actually can readily detach themselves from, and not on what goals they ought to have or what goals other people can readily detach themselves from. So, it is irrelevant whether the goals of rich people are ones that one ought to have or are ones that a certain segment of people can readily do without. What is important in the present context is whether rich people actually have these goals and whether they are important to them (whether they are securely attached to them). If both things are the case, then the rich people in question are, due to the wording of the principle of sympathy, sheltered from obligations to ease the neediness of the global poor.

It is important to understand that it is not only the case that such rich people are partly sheltered from obligations of the above kind. The principle of sympathy shelters them completely from such obligations. It is open to any rich individual to say that not only is her life significantly worsened if she has to give up her jet or yacht, but it is also significantly worsened if she has give up less expensive things such as hotel stays, jewelry, champagne brunches at the Ritz, and so on. These items are expensive, and what gives meaning to her life and what is a worthwhile goal for her is being able to have such things, and there is therefore not room in her budget for charity donations of any size. She simply needs huge amounts of cash in order to be able to pursue her worthwhile goals enjoyably and well.

To this Miller perhaps wants to reply, not that such goals are unworthy or are ones that one ought not to have, ¹⁷ but that no rich person actually is securely committed to such goals and no rich person actually would have their life worsened if they were to give up the abovementioned things. Therefore, many, if not all, rich people are capable of donating significant amounts to poverty relief. The following passage indicates that Miller finds such a reply appropriate:

The underlying goals to which most of us who are not poor are securely attached leave room for this giving: we could pursue these goals enjoyably and well and fulfill our other responsibilities, while giving significant amounts to the needy. (Miller, 2004: 362)

Does the principle of sympathy have any traction against members of what might be labeled the relatively well-off middle class? For present purposes, this segment of people can be defined as individuals who are not needy in Miller’s sense of the word, but do not qualify as rich. Running the risk of being guilty of making a stereotypical generalization, let us consider a US housewife from the suburbs who, to use Miller’s phrase, fills vast closets with designer clothes. Does the principle of sympathy require her to mend her ways, cut back on her consumption, and spend the savings on poverty relief? I do not think so. It is open to such an individual to say that her worthwhile goal is, so to speak, to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. In order to do this well and enjoyably, she needs quite a bit of cash to pay for a relatively constant flow of new garments, fairly frequent trips to the hairdresser, annual holidays in exotic locations, a proper vehicle to ferry her and her well-dressed offspring to various expensive extracurricular activities, jewelry, an extensive house with a well-groomed garden, and so on. The combined cost of these things is high, and there is therefore not room in her budget for any charity donations.

To this, Miller can give either of two replies. Either he can put forward a normative argument that aims at showing that such a goal is not worthwhile or he can put forward an empirical claim to the effect that no person is so securely attached to such a goal that its frustration will lead to a significant worsening of that person’s life. As I have tried to show in the above discussion of the implications of the principle of sympathy on the rich’s obligation to donate to charity, there is no material in Miller’s master argument to achieve either of these two tasks successfully. First, his account offers no resources for understanding why the goal of ‘engaging in the fun of mutual aesthetic recognition’ is worthwhile, non-stultifying, and something that one is justified in being unapologetic about while the same cannot be said about the goal of making sure that oneself and one’s family lives a material life that comes as close as possible to the type of material life that is idolized in, say, Tiffany commercials and on the Disney channel. Second, it is mysterious what justification Miller has for the empirical claim that the individuals in question are not securely attached to the goal of living the kind of material life described above, and that such individuals consequently will not have their life significantly worsened if this goal were to be frustrated.

Miller’s attempt to set a demanding, yet not too demanding, standard for what the relatively well-off ought to do in terms addressing the neediness of the poor has a striking similarity with Kamm’s attempt to set a standard for giving. Neither Kamm nor Miller offer any principled justification for their respective standard, but appeal only to intuitions about what would be too little to give and what would be too much to give. At least Kamm is upfront about this. It is telling, and from a philosophical perspective rather disappointing, that the only justification Miller offers for the view that a goal involving visits to nice restaurants, high-end sweaters, and expensive stereos is worthwhile is that ‘ordinary assessments’ (Miller, 2004: 361) sanction such a goal. One wonders where such assessments come from. Are they Miller’s own, those of his friends, or those of people Miller judges to be ordinary? The answer to this question is not really important, because whatever the answer is, it has no force against those people who do not share these ‘ordinary assessments’. People who find joy and meaning in life by filling their vast closets with designer clothes and who are indifferent to the capacities of composers and artists to exploit nuances of timber and texture to powerful aesthetic effect ought to be indifferent toward the suggestion that their goal is not worthwhile because it is not one that is sanctioned by ‘ordinary assessments’.