I agree that Singer needs to outline better what the limit is, and also needs to address a lot of issues over whether this obligation really does entail in those conditions. However, in this case I think he presumes that the conditions that trigger the obligation are all in play and so that the days comment only applies to whether that changes that obligation, and I think Singer would say that that in and of itself doesn’t change the obligation.

One remark, though: equating Ron Paul with libertarianism and mixing in GOP crowd is overdoing it a bit. While RP may have taken a few slogans from the book, he is hardly a sane libertarian. And GOP – oh well, thankfully (as far as the above mentioned are concerned) I am not an American citizen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vV3QGagck

“… and Marx is claiming it was offside.”

I am not arguing against the entailed obligation to contribute to such charitable efforts entirely. I am challenging the vagueness of those parameters. Yes, Singer limits the nature of any required sacrifice, but what would constitute that excessive degree of financial sacrifice in charitable donations will obviously vary very widely. On what grounds can one argue, generally, that the donation must be made within only “a few days,” or that a recent donation – last month? yesterday? – is no excuse from making that next one perhaps only a few days later?

I then raise the issue of the numbers involved, again not to make an excuse based on a level of futility against the overall numbers, but because those numbers restart the clock on “a few days” and “recently” every day and even every moment. “A few days” and “recently” simply are so indistinct, especially on a rolling, renewable basis, that they do not provide any meaningful boundary of moral obligation. It is sufficient, I think, to say that the all the questions answered affirmatively, one is obligated to make such a charitable contribution – or to perform some morally equivalent act – but the vague time parameters are entirely unsupported.

“However, although you’ll come to no physical harm if you rescue the child, you will get your clothes wet and muddy, which means you’ll have to go home to change, and likely you’ll be late for work.”

So he limits it to minor changes, and so if you were giving away too much the question would change, so there is a limit to how many resources you have to give up, although he isn’t clear on where that is. The second is in one of the follow-up questions:

“What if you knew that there is a high incidence of drowning among children, and regardless of your efforts in this instance, many other children were nonetheless bound to drown in similar circumstances? ”

This, I think, eliminates your comment about how far you have to go as well. You answered that there being others who would die anyway would not change your obligation in this case, and yet you use that argument to question your obligation in the donation case. So the question is: if you can, you should; you can, so you should.

However, there is an interesting question in the move from specific to abstract, which is that if you know that you can’t save all of them, who do you save? In the initial case, it was one child specifically, and it is implied that you couldn’t save all those myriad others. Here, you again can’t save the myriad others … but then you have to choose who you should help. How does or can one do that?

However, I do think that the questions don’t unreasonably establish that you certainly seem to think it reasonable to sacrifice small costs when someone’s life is on the line, and then violate that at the end. The only question remaining seems to be how many you should try to save.