MARTIN PETERSON

FOREIGN AID AND THE MORAL VALUE OF FREEDOM Accepted 10 June 2004

ABSTRACT. Peter Singer has famously argued that people living in affluent western countries are morally obligated to donate money to famine relief. The central premise in his argument is that, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do so.” The present paper offers an argument to the effect that affluent people ought to support foreign aid projects based on a much weaker ethical premise. The new premise states that, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of moral importance, we ought, morally, to do so.” This premise, supplemented with a notion of final value drawing on Amartya Sen’s concept of freedom as capabilities and functionings, is conceived as a special version of a weak, egalitarian Pareto principle. KEY WORDS: ethics, famine relief, final value, foreign aid, Pareto principle, Sen, Singer

1. INTRODUCTION Triggered by the famine sweeping East Bengal in the 1970’s, Peter Singer argued in his often-cited paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1972) that affluent westerners have a moral obligation to donate money in order to improve the situation of hungry people. The central premise in his argument is that, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do so.”1 From this premise, and the assumption that a few dollars less for affluent westerns is not as morally important as the death of hungry people, Singer concludes that each of us have a moral obligation to donate nearly all our money to famine relief. While Singer’s premise appears to be intuitively attractive, it is certainly a very strong ethical premise judged from a theoretical point of view. It requires us to give up some of our own wealth in order to prevent other people from being hungry, even though we have never met those people and have not caused their famine. It is far from clear, I think, why I should sacrifice some of my wealth in order to improve the living conditions of people who are and will remain complete strangers to me. They will certainly never pay me back. 1 Singer

(1972, p. 231), italics mine.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7: 293–307, 2004. C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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Singer also claims that his argument can be based on a weaker ethical premise, according to which one is morally obligated to prevent something bad from happening just in case that can be achieved “without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant.”2 It is clear from Singer’s discussion, however, that the term ‘morally significant’ cannot be interpreted literally. For example, Singer takes his weak premise to imply that one ought to save a drowning child from a shallow pond, even if one thereby will become muddy.3 But the mud is, of course, not morally insignificant. If my clothes become muddy I have to wash them, and since I do not like washing clothes, the necessity for the act will decrease my overall well-being. The weak version of Singer’s premise is attractive mainly because it can be seen as an application of the well-known Pareto principle, according to which resources should be reallocated if (i) some people would gain by doing so and (ii) no one would lose anything. Obviously, the strong version of the premise, which is the formulation Singer needs for establishing his argument, is not backed up by the Pareto principle. The first clause is satisfied, because many people in developing countries would gain from a reallocation. But the second clause is not: You and I and other people living in affluent countries would lose a (comparatively small) amount of well-being if resources were to be reallocated. In his recent book One World. The Ethics of Globalization Singer recapitulates and defends his original argument.4 Nothing indicates that he now considers his argument based on the strong ethical premise to be in need of revision. Despite this, the present paper aims at revising and improving Singer’s argument, such that it becomes more plausible. The new argument relies upon an ethical premise weaker than Singer’s original one, which, at the same time, is supported by the Pareto principle (applied to individual moral value, not wealth). This new premise states that, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of moral importance, we ought, morally, to do so.” Here the term ‘moral importance’ should be interpreted literally. Section 2 is devoted to a discussion of the Pareto principle and its relation to ethics. In Section 3, which is the central section of the paper, the new argument for foreign aid is detailed and shown to be a version of the Pareto principle in which Sen’s concept of final value as capabilities and functionings is applied. In Section 4 some common arguments against foreign aid, which have been overlooked by Singer, are shown to be either irrelevant or false. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Singer

(2002a, ch. 5).

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2. THE PARETO PRINCIPLE AND FINAL VALUE Aid programmes are seldom or never Pareto optimal, at least not in the traditional sense of the term used by economists. Some taxpayers in industrialized countries, whose money are used for funding foreign aid programmers would have been happier to see that money spent on domestic projects. In fact, in order to invalidate the Pareto principle it suffices to find merely one taxpayer in a rich country who would have preferred the initial allocation of resources. This holds true no matter how much the poor people would benefit from the aid programme. One ought to be cautious when using the Pareto principle for supporting ethical conclusions. The Pareto principle, there is no doubt, plays a central role in economic theory, but its relevance to ethics is more complex. Of course, as far as common sense morality is concerned, there are numerous situations in which people are morally obligated to opt for acts that are not prescribed by the Pareto principle. For instance, if I can save a child from drowning in a shallow pond without risking my own life, I ought to do so even if I do not wish to become muddy. Or if I can prevent a serious crime just by spending some time at a police station passing on information to a police officer, I ought to do so even if I would have preferred to spend those hours on the beach. Neither of these “reallocations of resources” can be backed up by the Pareto principle. However, the point to be made here is that as soon as our moral obligations are claimed to go beyond those of the Pareto principle—which they surely do—and involve a trade-off between conflicting interests, the picture become much more controversial from an ethical point of view. Whose interest should be given priority, and why? On what basis should such trade-offs be made? Therefore, even though it might be possible to justify foreign aid programmes on grounds that go beyond the Pareto principle, it should be clear that arguments or theories based solely on that principle have a much wider potential, and are thus more compelling. In this paper I outline such an argument based on Sen’s concept of final value as substantive freedom. The distinction between final and instrumental value plays a fundamental role in development ethics. According to the traditional perspective, the value of e.g. economic growth is to be found in the increase of final value to which it gives rise. For example, classic utilitarianism claims that happiness has final value, and therefore that development in terms of economic growth is instrumentally valuable if and only if the total sum of happiness in the world increases. Many modern utilitarians tend to focus on preference satisfaction, claiming that development is valuable if and only if the total sum of preference satisfaction increases. Even John Rawls’ ethical theory, according to which the bearers of final value are ‘primary goods’

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(e.g. income, health, and education), can be squeezed into this concept of development as a purely instrumental value. This is achieved by claiming that development is instrumentally good if it increases the amount of primary goods in society, especially for its worst-off citizens.5 However, no matter which of these concepts of final value is chosen, it seems to follow that aid to developing countries cannot be sanctioned by the Pareto principle, simply because some taxpayers in the rich world would lose a small amount of final value in such transactions. Sen’s concept of final value differs from the utilitarian and Rawlsian in several respects. According to Sen, substantive freedom is both the bearer of final value and the primary means for achieving it.6 Here we focus on the claim that substantive freedom is the bearer of final value, and leave its instrumental role aside. Sen introduces two technical concepts for making his account more precise, viz. ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’. Sen’s list of relevant functionings ranges from basic functionings such as being adequately nourished and free from avoidable disease, to very complex activities and states, such as being able to read, vote in elections, and freely express one’s opinion on political matters. An agent’s capabilities is made up of the set of alternative functionings she can achieve. Sen explains, “Capability is . . . a kind of freedom: the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations (or, less formally put, the freedom to achieve various lifestyles).”7 The difference between functionings and capabilities is illustrated by comparing an affluent person who freely decides to fast, to a poor under-nourished person forced to starvation. Perhaps both persons are equally well-off with respect to their functioning achievements in terms of eating or nourishment, but they are certainly not equally well-off in terms of capabilities. The affluent person is free to choose another combination of functionings in which she no longer starves, but the poor person is not.8 According to Sen, the overall value of the situation faced by a person depends on both the person’s functioning achievements and her capabilities in that situation. Hence, it is not the mere number of alternatives open to the agent that matters. The functioning achievements, i.e. the actual outcomes that can be achieved, are also important. More precisely, the ‘capability set’ 5 In

this context it is worth noticing that Rawls himself in The Law of Peoples (1999) argues that foreign aid should mainly help, or even be limited to, getting a poor society more well ordered, such that basic human rights are respected. Relative difference in affluence among peoples are not morally relevant according to Rawls. Singer (2002a, pp. 176–180) criticizes this view strongly. 6 Sen (1999, p. 36). An Aristotelian version of Sen’s theory has been developed by Martha C. Nussbaum. Here I focus on Sen’s original version of the theory. 7 Ibid. p. 75. 8 Ibid.

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of an individual is representable by a set of vectors. Each vector is made up of real numbers representing the extent to which the individual has access to things she may value doing or being, i.e. her functionings. Thus, the vectors represent the individual’s potential achievements, whereas the capability set represents the individual’s freedom to achieve alternative functionings. As noted above, the total value of a situation depends both on the capability set and the actual achievement, i.e. the chosen vector. Sen claims this contributes to making the “capability perspective . . . inescapably pluralist”,9 i.e. that final value cannot be measured by a single number. Sen feels this is a merit of his position: To insist on the mechanical comfort of having just one homogenous “good thing” would be to deny our humanity as reasoning creatures. It is like seeking to make the life of the chef easier by finding something which—and which alone—we all like (such as smoked salmon, or perhaps even french fries), or some one quality which we must all try to maximize (such as the saltiness of the food).10

Two arguments speaking in favour of Sen’s account of final value are that it tallies pretty well with our considered intuitions, and that it opens up the door for interpersonal comparisons of final value.11 As for the first argument, only the most obstinate (classic) utilitarians would claim that freedom totally lacks final value. A reasonable person faced with a choice between a certain amount of pleasure, and the same amount of pleasure plus some freedom (capabilities), ought reasonably to opt for the latter alternative. And if the freedom of the latter alternative is sufficiently high, it might even be rational to prefer the second alternative even if it contains a slightly lower amount of pleasure. Note that this standpoint is fully compatible with ethical consequentialism, i.e. the claim that the ethical status of an act is solely determined by its consequences. Even though the underlying idea in Sen’s theory—that freedom has final value—seems reasonable, one can argue that he is wrong when claiming that this theory is inescapably pluralist. Of course, Sen is right that there is no single quality in the world that we all must try to maximize, but this does not rule out the possibility of finding a numerical measure that aggregates several different finally valuable qualities. And given that such a single numerical measure can be found, Sen’s position might be neatly squeezed into a novel version of utilitarianism, according to which capabilities (rather than pleasure or preference satisfaction) are what ultimately matters. As for the second argument, that the capability perspective opens up the door for interpersonal comparisons of final value, it is of course correct that 9 Ibid.

p. 76. p. 77, italics his. 11 Ibid. pp. 76–80. 10 Ibid.

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income and education are easier to measure interpersonally than pleasure, or at least that the conceptual difficulties in doing so are less troublesome. This holds true even when a one-dimensional measure is constructed out of radically different bearers of final value, giving us a pragmatic reason for accepting Sen’s theory.

3. DONATING FREEDOM The ethical premise needed for establishing the conclusion that affluent people in the industrialized part of the world are morally obligated to support foreign aid to developing countries is a very weak one. It reads: “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of moral importance, we ought, morally, to do so.” In this context ‘moral importance’ should be understood in terms of final value. Because final value is interpreted in terms of substantive freedoms—i.e. capabilities and functionings—we have access to an argument for foreign aid not available to adherents of competing theories about final value. The point is that no substantive freedoms have to be given up in order to support foreign aid. A donation of one dollar per day makes no difference to the substantive freedoms enjoyed by an affluent person in an industrialized country, but it can make great differences for people in sub-Saharan Africa or southern Asia. The donor may still exercise the freedom of speech, the freedom to achieve a certain lifestyle, the freedom to eat decent food, and so on. If the donor began donating a small amount of money, his or her utility levels would perhaps become slightly lower, but his or her substantive freedoms would remain unaffected. It is important to realize that freedom is not always a matter of ‘all or nothing’. Except for basic human rights, most substantive freedoms come in degrees. For example, some university students have the freedom to study for 4 years, whereas others have the freedom to study for 5 years. However, small donations of money rarely or never affect one’s substantive freedoms in that respect. One dollar per day does not spell the difference between n and n + 1 semesters at university. Rather, this amount is the difference between an extra cup of coffee per day, which is not part of one’s substantive freedom. If the affluent person were to donate a larger amount of money than one dollar per day, say twenty or fifty dollars, his or her substantive freedoms would be put at risk. The donor would no longer be able to afford the same healthcare, the same education, the same vacations, and so on. This would clearly mean a sacrifice of substantive freedoms. Exactly how much one

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can give away without decreasing one’s substantive freedoms and violating the Pareto principle (in its freedom-based version) is an empirical question that falls beyond the scope of this paper. For simplicity, I will assume that one US dollar per capita per day is well below that level. The taxpayers in my native country, Sweden, currently donate less than fifty cents per capita per day. This is about five times as much as the corresponding figure for the US.12 Naturally, I admit there might be extreme, often hypothetical, situations in which one dollar per day spells the difference between having or not having a substantive freedom. An example: “If I give away one dollar per day I cannot afford my medicine, so I will lose all my health related freedoms.” In such extreme situations the argument defended here requires that you donate nothing, since you otherwise would have to sacrifice something of moral importance (viz. freedoms related to health). Consequently, the moral obligation to support foreign aid is restricted to situations in which such rare circumstances do not occur. This is, however, no significant restriction of the argument, since for most affluent people in industrialized countries, and in most situations, a single dollar per day is insignificant with respect to the substantive freedoms he or she can enjoy. In order to get the argument off the ground, it must also be established that one dollar per affluent person per day will make a difference to poor people in terms of substantive freedoms. Of course, such a small amount is not enough to give substantive freedoms to all poor people in the world. But if a higher amount was spent on some specific subgroup of poor people (e.g. the citizens of a certain country) at least those people would enjoy greater substantive freedoms than before. By definition, one’s substantive freedoms increase if the infrastructure where one happens to live is improved, or if one’s education becomes more up-to-date, or if one’s fear of bad health is reduced by an improvement of the healthcare system. The argument stated here implies that affluent people in industrialized countries are morally obligated to donate more money to developing countries than they are currently doing, but not as much as classic act utilitarianism would suggest: according to classic act utilitarianism, everyone ought to “give as much as possible, that is, at least up to the point at which by giving more . . . one would cause oneself and one’s dependents as much suffering as one would prevent.”13 Nevertheless, it might be claimed that the present argument is too demanding. It is not obvious that one is required to do all one can that does 12 Singer 13 Singer

(2002a, pp. 180–181). (1972, p. 234).

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not upset one’s substantive freedoms. For instance, it seems to follow that I instead of going to the cinema tonight ought to donate that money to an aid programme. However, note that this is correct only if my visit to the cinema is not part of my substantial freedom. If the visit to the cinema is of great importance for me and I repeatedly, night after night, find myself donating money to foreign aid instead of enjoying a movie, it might very well hold true that my substantive freedom is put at risk, and then no donation is required. I am not allowed to go to the cinema every night, but perhaps one visit per month is needed for preserving my substantial (cultural) freedom. This indicates that the argument is not too demanding after all. As explained earlier, the forte of my argument is that it does not presuppose classic act utilitarianism or any other debatable ethical theory. The proposed argument can simply be seen as a special case of a very weak ethical principle, the Pareto principle (applied to final value, not wealth), which is accepted by adherents of several ethical theories. In fact, one does not even have to assume the full strength of the Pareto principle in order to have the argument go through. It is sufficient to assume that a reallocation of resources must take place only if some badly-off people would benefit from it and all others, badly-off and otherwise, remain at the same level. Thereby one can avoid the criticism of the Pareto principle that it promotes increased inequality in situations in which rich people can be made even richer without making the poor people any better-off. Alleviating poverty may, of course, involve changing power relations between poor and rich people in developing countries, and the required measures might even be morally right precisely because of this. However, in such a case the Pareto principle is no longer applicable, since some people—the elite in the developing country—thereby loses some of their privileges. In order to motivate activities that reduce the power of the local elite, more complex ethical arguments have to be invoked. However, a substantial part of the most urgent aid programmes, e.g. those aiming at reducing the effects of a famine, hardly disempower the local elites, and therefore the argument spelled out herein is applicable to those cases. Another criticism, which I have encountered in discussions, is that my argument is sensitive to how donations are individuated. If one saves a dollar per day for a year, the accumulated sum will equal a short vacation, which would be problematic if one considers that vacation to affect one’s substantive freedom. I have two replies to this objection. First, if one considers the vacation to be morally important, one could (in most cases) give away another dollar per day instead of the one being saved. Second, and more importantly, it is reasonable to maintain that the individuation of

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donations ought to be done parallel to how agents actually deliberate. If it is an alternative for the agent to save a dollar per day for a year, then that alternative should be considered; otherwise not. 4. INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITIES The average amount spent of foreign aid in the industrialized countries fell from 0.33 percent of the Gross National Product in 1985 to 0.22 percent in 2000. By far the largest part of that money was donated by governments, not by private organizations. Even in the US, which is well-known for its many private charity organizations, more than 70 percent of the total amount spent on foreign aid programmes came from the federal government.14 Despite these facts, Singer claims that the responsibility to donate money is that of single individuals, rather than nations or organizations. His argument is that each individual is able to establish a causal link between the donation of money and improved living conditions in a developing country: If you donate some money, some poor people will actually survive or get a better life.15 This argument is, however, controversial. The causal link between a small donation of money and improved living conditions for a poor individual is simply missing in many cases. If I donate a few dollars to the Red Cross, Unicef, or Oxfam, no single individual will in the typical case benefit from this. These organizations must, like many similar organizations, make decisions about whether to, say, send ten or eleven staff to a certain area based on a long-term budget. Furthermore, since aid programmes are expensive and involve a large number of experts from different disciplines, no ordinary citizen can afford to start up her own programme. Typically, large organizations are needed for initiating and managing foreign aid programmes. One exception, in which the causal link between a small donation of money and actual benefits for the recipient is more direct is when charity organizations offer affluent individuals to take on a personal sponsorship for a specific person in a developing country, such as a young child. However, those individual sponsorships can typically not be initiated when they are needed most, e.g. in cases of immediate famine or civil war. Individual sponsorships are typically possible only in rather developed regions, with a reasonably well-functioning infrastructure. According to calculations initiated by Peter Unger, the average cost for saving one extra child from dying is about 200 US dollars.16 This figure 14 Singer 15 This 16 Ibid.

(2002a, p. 180). is how I read Singer (1972, pp. 232–233). See also Singer (2002a, ch. 5).

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should cover the cost for buying food and medicine for a reasonable period of time and paying various administrative costs. Of course, 200 dollars is a rather high amount. By donating one dollar per person and day it takes about half a year to save one extra life. A very efficient way of collecting one extra dollar per person and day is, of course, through a slight tax increase. Spending tax money on foreign aid is thus a way in which collective entities, such as states or federations of states, can exercise their moral responsibility. I am fully aware that the relationship between the individual and collective moral responsibility is far from clear; it is, for instance, widely accepted that the moral obligations of individuals and collectives can be very different. Thus, even if collective entities are obliged to donate money to foreign aid it might very well be the case that no single individual is obligated to donate anything (given that potential side effects can be neglected), but rather that they ought to focus on other activities, such as political lobbying.

5. THREE ARGUMENTS AGAINST FOREIGN AID In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1972) and One World (2002a) Singer elegantly rebuts some common arguments against foreign aid, e.g. the idea that geographic distance matters.17 But he neglects other objections. In this section I disprove three common arguments not mentioned by Singer, namely: (i) foreign aid does not work in practice, (ii) democracy is the key to development, not traditional foreign aid programmes, and (iii) western aid programmes ruin the traditional cultures of developing countries.18 The first objection, that foreign aid does not work in practice, can be divided into two parts. The first is the factual claim that foreign aid has no, or little, positive effect on the performance of developing countries.19 The second is a normative premise, saying that one ought not to support aid programmes with no, or little, positive effect, at least not if money can be spent at home on programmes having a substantial positive effect. I have no problem with the normative premise of this argument, and I shall leave it without further discussion. However, the factual claim that foreign aid has no, or little, effect deserves some attention. Of course, critics can easily find examples in which things have gone wrong, e.g. because 17 Singer

(1972, p. 232). Singer (2002a, ch. 5). a discussion of other common objections to foreign aid, see Dower (1991). 19 This objection is discussed by Openskin 1996, (pp. 23–24), and by Kuper (2002a, 2002b). Singer (2002b, 2002c) comment on Kuper’s papers. 18 For

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modern technology has been put in the hands of poorly trained locals unable to maintain it. Such examples do not show, however, that there is something wrong with foreign aid as such. There are other examples of aid programmes that have had clear positive effects. An instructive example of successful aid is the money given by SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) between 1986 and 1994 to the at that time newly created Botswana Railway (BR), which was taken over from the National Railway of Zimbabwe (NRZ) in the mid-’80s.20 By improving the signalling and telecommunications system of the railway, an important means of transporting goods to the South African ocean ports, the capacity and reliability of the railway was significantly improved. The total cost of the programme was approximately ten million US dollars (79.1 million Swedish crowns) over nine years, or about one million dollars per year. Keeping in mind that Sweden each year spends about one and a half billion dollars on foreign aid, or 0.74 percent of its GNP, this must be considered a rather small amount. It is, of course, difficult to evaluate the effects of a single aid programme on the overall performance of a region or country. However, economists consider it to be a well-established economic “law” that, for example, an improved infrastructure in general increases economic growth. In industrialized countries, governments frequently support expensive infrastructure programmes based upon that economic insight, even though they cannot, for methodological reasons, determine the exact effect of any particular programme. There is simply no way of observing the causal traits of a single programme, and experiments in a strict sense cannot be performed since there is no independent control group. However, if governments in industrialized countries, despite this, consider the reasons for starting new infrastructure programmes sufficiently strong, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the reasons for starting aid programmes leading to an improved infrastructure in developing countries are also sufficiently strong. In spite of the positive effects on economic performance (in developing countries) generated by foreign aid in general, the main reason for supporting such programmes must not, I think, be economic consideration. On the contrary, I think the main reason for a sustained support of foreign aid is that it increases the substantive freedoms of people living in underdeveloped countries, as explained in previous sections. I will now turn to a discussion of the second objection against foreign aid, according to which democracy, rather than the traditional forms of foreign 20 SIDA

96/16.

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aid (money, food, technology etc.), is the key to an improved performance of developing countries. Amartya Sen has been one of the most influential advocates of this standpoint in recent years.21 Sen claims, among other things, that no famine has ever occurred in a ‘functioning democracy’.22 According to Sen, only five to ten percent of a country’s population in a typical famine suffers from starvation (even though a much larger proportion feels hunger), and by distributing the available food differently all deaths can in general be avoided. So it is not a shortage in the total amount of food that causes famines; the cause is unequal distribution. There are, in fact, several examples of countries that have exported food during famines. The explanation of this strange phenomenon is that the local market for quality foods, such as meat and fish, collapses during a famine, since people prefer to buy cheaper staple foods. Therefore the price of staple foods rises dramatically, while the demand for quality foods decreases. Producers of quality foods discover they can export their products and thereby earn more money, which they can use for buying the now expensive staple foods at home. Sen claims the reason famines occur only in non-democratic societies is that famines are rather easy to prevent (by redistributing the available food in the population), and that democratic leaders aiming at re-election typically are much more motivated to take preventive measures against famine than are dictators, who have nothing to fear from hungry voters. In a democracy, even hungry citizens may exercise the right to choose their leaders, and leaders know that. Sen’s best empirical support for his claim of a causal relationship between democracy and improved living conditions is this: the last famine in India occurred in 1943, when India was still controlled by Britain. Since India became independent and democratic in 1947, no substantial famine has occurred. The most reasonable explanation for this seems to be that the new democratic leaders have been more concerned with the needs of the people than were the old imperialistic ones, who gave greater priority to being in London’s good graces. However, when it comes to development beyond the avoidance of famine (and avoidance of famine, as we have seen, can easily be achieved by any government) the role of democracy is more doubtful. In fact, Sen’s analysis of the importance of democracy cannot be taken as a reason for believing the primary key to improved living conditions beyond the avoidance of famine is the establishment of democracy. The empirical data discussed by Sen shows merely that there 21 Sen

(1999, ch. 6), argues forcefully for the role of democracy. See also More and Robinson (1994). 22 Sen (1999, p. 16).

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exists a relationship between democracy and improved living conditions, not that the former phenomena causes the latter. Democracy might equally well be taken to be an indicator of improved living conditions, rather than a cause of it. For example, there might exist a third, hidden factor that causes both democracy and improved living conditions. A plausible candidate for such a factor is technology. The introduction of modern information technology, for instance, can lead to improved economic growth and facilitate the creation of democratic movements, by making people living under dictatorships aware of the world outside their own country. A fact that speaks directly against Sen’s thesis about the causal role of democracy is the existence of countries that are fairly well developed without being democracies. China is the most noticeable example in recent years. No one can deny that China has undergone rapid economic development since 1979, development which is much more impressive than that of, say, India. The China of today is not a democracy, but India is, which, as indicated above, speaks against Sen’s thesis.23 However, if my empirical conjecture about the role of technology is correct, it will be difficult for the non-democratic regime in China to retain power as more and more citizens get access to modern information technology, even despite governmental attempts to restrict access to e.g. western Internet sites. The third objection against foreign aid is that it may ruin traditional cultures in underdeveloped countries.24 As with the first objection, this one can be divided into factual and normative parts. The factual is that foreign aid ruins traditional cultures. The normative is that this is bad. I believe that at least the normative part can be questioned. My criticism is not that modern cultures are necessarily any better than traditional cultures. My point is, people in the rich part of the world ought not to decide which culture other people should adopt. If poor people living in a traditional culture wish to introduce modern ideas and technologies into their society because they think it can improve their living conditions, they should be allowed do so. It is not morally reasonable to tell other people they ought to remain poor in order to preserve a certain culture. Of course, the best alternative might be to combine a traditional culture with modern elements. But the decision has to be taken by the poor people living in the traditional cultures, not by affluent people in industrialized countries. It should be acknowledged that different groups in a developing country may have different attitudes towards the introduction of modern technology, 23 For 24 Cf.

Sen’s comments on this anomaly, see Sen (1999, pp. 149–151). Goonatilake (1994, p. 67).

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simply because not all groups benefit equally much from it. In case of conflicting interests, the decision whether to approve an aid programme or not cannot be taken solely on the basis of the Pareto principle. Instead, ordinary democratic methods have to be applied. 6. CONCLUSION There are many arguments purporting to show that we are morally obligated to support foreign aid programmes. In this paper I have proposed an argument based upon a very weak ethical premise, to the effect that affluent people in industrialized countries are morally obligated to support foreign aid programmes, since foreign aid is likely to be one of the most efficient means of achieving improved living conditions in what are now underdeveloped countries. My argument can be seen as an application of a weak, egalitarian version of the Pareto principle, according to which one ought, morally, to prevent something bad from happening if it is in one’s power to do so without thereby sacrificing anything of moral importance. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my gratitude to two anonymous referees of this journal for valuable comments on an earlier draft. Thanks are also due to Barbro Bj¨orkman and the participants in Torbj¨orn T¨annsj¨o’s seminar in Stockholm for fruitful discussions. REFERENCES Dower, N., World Poverty, in Singer, P. (ed.), A Companion to Ethics Blackwell, 1991. Green, B., and Law, P., Swedish Support to Botswana Railways, Sida Evaluation 96/16 (1996). Goonatilake, S., Technology Assessment: Some Questions from a Developing Country Perspective, Technological Forecasting and Social Change 45 (1994), pp. 63–77. Kuper, A., Global Poverty Relief—More Than Charity: Cosmopolitan Alternatives to the ‘Singer Solution’, Ethics and International Affairs 16(1) (2002a), pp. 107–120. Kuper, A., Facts, Theories, and Hard Choices: Reply to Peter Singer, Ethics and International Affairs 16(1) (2002b), pp. 125–126. Moore, M., and Robinson, Mark, Can Foreign Aid Be Used to Promote Good Government in Developing Countries? Ethics and International Affairs 8 (1994), pp. 142–158. Openskin, B.. The Moral Foundations of Foreign Aid, World Development 24(1) (1996), pp. 21–44. Rawls, J., The Law of Peoples. Harvard University Press, 1999. Sen, A., Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press, 1999. Singer, P., Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 229– 243.

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Singer, P., One World. The Ethics of Globalization. Yale University Press, 2002. Singer, P., Poverty, Facts, and Political Philosophies: Response to ‘More Than Charity’, Ethics and International Affairs 16(1) (2002a), pp. 121–124. Singer, P., Achieving the Best Outcome: Final Rejoinder, Ethics and International Affairs 16(1) (2002b), pp. 127–128.

Royal Institute of Technology Philosophy Unit Teknikringen 78B SE-100 44 Stockholm Sweden E-mail: [email protected]