Question

(PHILOSOPHY QUESTION) As Singer implies, it does seem to me that there is something fundamentally wrong when we can enjoy drinking $5 Starbucks coffee, eating loads of unnecessary junk food, and spending large amounts of money going out to nice restaurants when much of the world is starving. What do you think? Do we somehow deserve these luxuries? How would Narveson reply?

Answer 1

Solution:

Whether or not we deserve these luxuries is not important. what we do with such luxuries and how helpful we can be to the needful is the real deal. there will always be a social divide in the matter of being able to manage the expenses and not being able to do. We cannot enforce everyone to act towards making this world a better place for all. To deserve such luxuries we may have worked hard and got lucky at times and someone else might have got unlucky at the same time. hence do we deserve these luxuries is not an important question but what we do with it to help others is what matters.

According to Narveson, we may not be able to say whether helping the poor is a matter of justice or charity. Charity cannot be forced upon on someone and helping the poor cannot be defined justice. Hence, whether we choose to give or not is a question which differs from individual to individual.