What he is getting at (I think)

In Peter Singer's "Fame, Affluence, and Morality", Singer explains the progression of one's thought process when dealt with a moral issue. He talks about people making assumptions about donations to the Bengal Relief Fund and how these people would go about donating or not based on these assumptions. He mentions, "If everyone does [donate], however, there will be more than can be used for the benefit of the refugees, and some of the sacrifice will have been unnecessary" (234) which is superb work if done, but it could cause unneeded harm to the donor and hurt his obligations to his dependents. So he then continues in saying, "If everyone does what he ought to do, the result will not be as good as it would be if everyone did a little less than he ought to do, or if only some do all that they ought to do" (234). He mentions this because these confusion causing assumptions are a paradox and "arises only if we assume that the actions in question-sending money to the relief funds-are performed more or less simultaneously" (234) which then creates problems. I will mention that he said earlier in the book, "if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it" (231).

Bringing it all together, I'll start off by saying I agree with the recently aforementioned quote from above. If you are able to do something morally without causing harm to yourself and possibly to others, you should do it. He mentions various scenarios that occur mainly due to the assumptions of the possible donors. It would be great if people chipped in more money than needed and give the Bengal Relief Fund more money than needed, but this should only be done by those who can give more than what is "expected" out of a donor. However, if one starts to assume that everyone is doing that then the potential donors won't donate which will cause those who do donate to donate more and the trend could continue and it could lead to harming the donors and their dependents. Of course we cannot think like this, but a scenario like this was mentioned in the reading that a single assumption can deter someone from donating because others are doing the work for him and so he does not feel morally obligated to donate. If everyone started to think that way, nothing would get done. This cycle can continue and vary on many different levels, so what could be done and is the most logical way and what Singer is getting at is donate what you can. If you cannot donate, then Singer and I agree that's fine as well for "the charitable man may be praised, but the man who is not charitable is not condemned" (235), but I would hope the non charitable man does not lie about his economic standing to get out of donating even just 1 dollar. If you are in great economic fortune, we'd both hope you donate a lot compared to someone of lesser fortune and it'd all balance out in the end. We all would not have to donate 100 dollars each, but instead maybe 10-20, and like I said even a dollar works as well. Any amount of money donated to a charity can make an impact and I would hope for the better, always.