Peter Singer, 'The Life You Can Save: How to Play Your Part in Ending World Poverty'

Short Review

The intellectual father of the modern animal rights movement takes on world poverty, advocating a form of radical philanthropy. Provocative and challenging, with some ingenious thought experiments and marvellous examples (eg the teacher who made $45m through real estate investing, gave almost all of it away, and donated one of his kidneys to a stranger). Arguably of greater moral significance than his work on either animals or abortion, the arguments in this book certainly deserve the widest possible airing. But surely there’s something awry with a perspective that suggests, however tacitly, that Bill Gates has led a better life than Sylvia Pankhurst?
 

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