Response to giving your maximal

I find Peter’s claim on giving your maximal to be validate, but I don’t find it to be true.  The only objection I have is we cannot give maximally to people in need because they will only latch and become dependent on that help. Peter says, “give away enough to ensue that the consumer society, dependent as it is on people spending on trivia rather than giving to famine relief, would slow down and perhaps disappear entirely.” Even though we would like for this to be true, it never can be. We live in a capitalistic world where we are actually working hard for all of our earnings. Peter’s argument seems to be that of a socialistic world- where a society works hard for their earnings but have the mind-set to actually share those earnings.

Take this example: You have two sheep; you give one to your neighbor. This example exemplifies Peter’s argument in giving maximally to people in need-which is called socialism. I may need that sheep for food, fabric, etc. The idea is that I gave the maximal. Take another example: You have two sheep; you shave them and sell fabric. You neighbor also had two cows- and to maximize your profits, you form and alliance. You both open a shop and distribute the fabric accordingly. This form of society is capitalism, which is exactly what we oblige by. We are groomed by capitalism and most of our nations industries are capitalistic - people working for themselves. We work had because we know we will get rewarded with lots of money, but we would not work as hard knowing that the money we worked hard for was going to famine relief, even though morally we know it is a good thing to do. In a perfect world where everyone’s motivation is to help one another, then yeah Peter’s argument sounds perfect. However, that can never happen since we are self- interest and too greedy for that type of world to exist.