When I contribute to charity, it’s usually to avoid feeling guilty rather than to feel good as such… imagining myself as being the guy who doesn’t rescue a drowning swimmer because he doesn’t want to get his suit wet isn’t a state I want to be in.
In most books, insurance fraud is morally equivalent to stealing. A deontological moral philosophy might commit you to donating all your disposable income to GiveWell-certified charities while not permitting you to kill yourself for the insurance money. But, yea, utilitarians will have a hard time explaining why they don’t do this.
When I contribute to charity, it’s usually to avoid feeling guilty rather than to feel good as such… imagining myself as being the guy who doesn’t rescue a drowning swimmer because he doesn’t want to get his suit wet isn’t a state I want to be in.
These charities can save someone’s life for about $1,000. If you spend $1,000 on anything else, you’ve as good as sentenced someone to death. I find this to be really disturbing, and thinking about it makes think about doing crazy things, such as spending my $20,000 savings on a ten year term life insurance policy worth $10,000,000 and then killing myself and leaving the money to charity. At $1,000 a life, that’s ten thousand lives saved. I suspect that most people who literally give their lives for others don’t get that kind of return on investment.
In most books, insurance fraud is morally equivalent to stealing. A deontological moral philosophy might commit you to donating all your disposable income to GiveWell-certified charities while not permitting you to kill yourself for the insurance money. But, yea, utilitarians will have a hard time explaining why they don’t do this.