NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Would You Let This Girl Drown? 8 July 2009, p.A31
Why we’re so willing to try to assist a stranger before us, yet so unwilling to send donations to save strangers from malaria half a world away.

If that article was a reading passage from the GMATs, they’d have a field day with it. The analogy of the girl in the pond is riddled with logical inconsistencies. As a result, it overall fails (at least to me) to make an completely accurate, valid point. And as it’s the impetus of the article, it kind of shuts down half the remaining premises.

Kristof’s point about the one vs. the many is initially appealing, and here’s why. Look how many people donate to a “John Doe Cancer 10k Run” or a “Jane Doe Multiple Sclerosis 10k Walk.” It almost never fails that the aggregate amounts of monies poured into individual-benefit charities is larger than the amount donated to global charities. Like Kristof says, it’s easier to give to a charity that benefits one than one that benefits many.

As Kristof also shows, the personal appeal to emotion has a vast impact on charitable giving. It’s also easier to give the money than to work outside the scope of capabilities. But the lack of funds is why global charities are often understaffed and often unable to carry out their missions to “save the money,” at least without UN funding or MNC funding; those who are willing and able cannot sustain themselves to do the work of saving 25,000 lives.

So, for example, I look at my friend’s annual appeals to donate to the Terry Fox Run. People would be more likely to donate 1) because they know my friend had cancer (ie, the feel-good reward) and it’s an easily identifiable cause and 2) because the actual research of cancer is beyond their scopes of capabilities (ie, personal responsibility).

However, by addressing the logical flaw, the initial appeal of the “one vs. many” starts to fall apart; the G8 would not let the individual girl drown (nor would anyone else) primarily because of Premise 1. But, to say that the G8 would catch up on its commitments for the millions of lives relies on the assumption it must recognize both Premises 1 and 2 above. Quite frankly, that’s a rather emotional assumption to rely on, after all, the conclusion depends on an unwritten Premise 3: International altruism supersedes domestic economic interest (and certainly now, France and Italy not in positions to fulfill that premise). If you yourself are in a wheelchair, it is going to be very difficult to help the drowning girl in the pond — the best you’ll do is recognize the problem and try to get help from elsewhere. Making the leap from the “one” to the “many” paves the way for logical inconsistency in any argument.

The fact is, the global public needs to recognize that the commitments of the G8 members are essentially non-binding. They are a guide for the top global leaders to shrink the wealth gap and achieve that which is in the best global interests. The world has valid interest in where these actors are molding the the direction of the world is.

But because his inductive logic leaves out Premise 3, I disagree with Kristof’s main point of contention that humanitarians are “abjectively ineffective at selling their causes.” A customer’s inability to buy may not be defined the same as his lack of desire to buy. The G8 is a consumer of humanitarian causes, just like any other actor.

P.S. The saying “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” is often attributed to Joseph Stalin. How ironic to use that quote in a story about charitable donations.