Response to Famine

     In Singer's piece "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," he mentions that the writers Sidgwick and Urmson propose that if society, or government, etc., places a strict moral code on people that is “beyond the capacities of the ordinary man” (Singer 237), the people will disregard the entirety of the moral code. As an example, he says that if commanded to not murder then people will comply, and if given the option to donate to famine relief some will. However, if forced to both not murder people and to give away most of their livelihood to the famished, then both laws will be disregarded as excessive and people would murder and not donate. Singer claims that this argument fails to take into account the varying moral standards of societies (in our society, giving 5% of all income is seen as extremely charitable, but Singer thinks that is not enough) which are a result of social pressures, and thinks that we can sway the social pressure into a more charitable and non-consumeristic society.

     I disagree. To see an instance of our society responding to what they considered excessive law, simply look to prohibition. Aside from the obvious abundance of liquor smuggling and speakeasies, the rules of the game (society listening to laws) changed. A man like Al Capone was so successful in his outlaw liquor business that he gained the political and societal sway to installing his own mayor. This leads me to my next point. Singer seems to support a large societal mindset shift away from consumerism, but that is unrealistic in American society. Capone and his gang owned Chicago because the people desired what he had, and that is the core of consumerism. Our American society is so heavily rooted in consumerism at this point that an upheaval of that magnitude would lift us out by the root.