I'm Debating Peter Singer
I assume you’ve heard of him. Topic: “Do the Rich Pay Their Fair Share?” on September 13 at 8 PM ET, via Zoom.
This debate is the first in a series. The next two, as you can see below, feature Louise Antony versus Alex Byrne on “Is There a Sex/Gender Distinction?,” and Michael Huemer versus Christopher Wellman on “Do Immigration Restrictions Violate Human Rights?” Wellman crushed me in the vote on the same topic when I debated him five years ago, so I wonder if Huemer can do better.
Since this is a charity event for “Public Intellectuals for Effective Charities,” there is actually an admission fee. Or to be more precise, an admission auction. As the organizers explain:
Send an email with a receipt of your donation to the effective charity The Life You Can Save (minimum $10) to PublicIntellectualsforEA@gmail.com to receive your invitation to the grand hall zoom meeting on the day of the event. Our 1,000 seats will be assigned by auction, so that those giving the most generous donations will receive their seats first. (What this means is that if enough people beat your donation, you won’t receive your invitation on the day of the event, so exceeding the $10 minimum is strongly encouraged!)
The event will not be recorded, so cough up the cheddar for charity!
Will the recordings of the events be made available elsewhere?
No! This is your only opportunity to attend these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to see the best of the world’s minds engaging on the issues of today. If that interests you, make your donation to The Life You Can Save and attend the event live!*
*This policy is subject to changing in the unlikely event that we change our minds, but don’t count on it!
Requiring a donation to TLYCS then pitting you against Singer seems like the most set up for failure anyone has ever been in history, but good luck all the same!
I'm immediately confused by what a consequentialist like Singer (or myself) would make of a formulation like "fair share". I definitely believe that anybody in a position to be reading this comment would be a much more moral person if they replaced a chunk of their marginally pleasurable consumption with donation to the world's most effective charities. But I can't see at all how "fairness" would apply. "Fair" only makes sense to me with regard to a specific process being unbiased in the ways it purports to be unbiased: a tennis match becomes unfair if one player can arbitrarily decide which balls are in or out; it doesn't become unfair if one player has a stronger serve than the other.