Phil 360: Business Ethics
A variety of perspectives on famine
• We have seen that a government has some
obligation toward starving members of its
society.
• What, if anything do the wealthiest members
of the world owe to the poorest?
• What do citizens of affluent countries owe to
those who are starving globally?
Famine, Affluence, and Morality
• See the paper by Peter Singer
• Singer offers the following moral principle (my
paraphrase):
– If we can help others without sacrificing
something of comparable moral importance, we
are morally obligated to do so.
– Singer refutes such views as the “fair share” view
and he advocates that people give to the point of
marginal utility.
– This is a very stringent point of view
Lifeboat Ethics
• This set of perspectives is owed to (largely)
Garett Hardin. See paper.
• Hardin argues that if a commodity even a vital
commodity (i.e. space in a boat or food) is
scarce, then those who have it are not
obligated to part with it, even if they have it
through no merit of their own.
Malthus
• Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English
clergyman and early economic scholar.
• Malthus is famous (or infamous) for his
realization that population would eventually
outgrow the ability of the world’s farmers to grow
food.
• He used this (in his time, true) notion to argue
that no aid be given to areas experiencing famine,
on the ground that it would simply allow
overpopulation to get worse until more people
would die of starvation.
The Haber-Bosch Process
• See Thomas Hager, “The Alchemy of Air”
• This process is used to turn atmospheric nitrogen (which is
plentiful and free) into synthetic fertilizer, meaning that as
of now, the world’s farmers are capable of producing much
more food than necessary to support even the current
population.
• It is estimated that ½ of all the animal protein in the world
is due to the Haber-Bosch process, which produces enough
food to support 1/3 to ½ of current world population.
• As a result, the conditions that Mathus pointed out no
longer strictly apply, at least not with respect to grown
food.
Amartaya Sen
• The Haber-Bosh process has been around for well over
half a century now, so why are there still famines?
• Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize winner in economics for his
work studying famines, points out that famines are
human-created events. There is enough food for
everyone, but what there is not is enough money
among certain groups at certain times to buy the food
that is available.
• The details of his views are available in many places,
including his book “Development as Freedom”
The world’s resources:
• When we speak of the world’s resources, we
mean to refer to:
– Natural goods: air, water, minerals, land and trees
– Cultivated natural goods: agricultural produce and
livestock
– Manufactured goods
– Non-manufactured goods: talents, technology,
knowledge, organizations
Who owns the world’s resources?
• The status quo view:
– This is the currently prevalent view: Legally
speaking, the world’s resources are owned by
countries, corporations, companies, and
individuals.
– This does not mean, of course, that the world’s
resources OUGHT to belong to who they currently,
legally belong to.
The universal ownership view
• Those who advocate this view advocate the
position that all of earth’s resources belong
equally to everyone.
• Those who advocate this view have no clear
plan for distribution of all the world’s
resources, but that doesn’t mean that the
view is not morally correct (it might be).
The universal access view
• So long as the resources of the world are used
by whoever owns them to the mutual benefit
of all, it matters less who owns them.
• For this view, ownership is not the main issue,
it’s the control that the rest of the world has
over the use that a particular country,
company, or individual puts those resources
to.
Global Common Goods
• There are parts of the world that clearly nobody
owns. The ozone layer, for example is a common
good that nobody owns but that everybody is
obligated to protect (recall the tragedy of the
commons).
• In general, each nation, company, and individual
is morally obligated to use resources in such a
way as not to waste them, not to destroy them
for future generations, and so much as possible
to develop sustainably.
International action
• International actions, like the Kyoto protocol,
for example, are attempts at getting some
kind of international consensus on the
appropriate use of resources, and appropriate
stewardship of global common goods.