Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is December 20th, 2019.

My guest is philosopher and author Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Biographics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University,

and the Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

His most recent book and the subject of today's conversation is the 10th year anniversary edition of his book,

The Life You Can Save, How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty.

Peter, welcome to Econ Talk.

Thank you. It's good to be with you.

So your book centers around our obligations to help people not just near us, but far from us,

and to help them in dramatic ways and to provoke thinking about that and to motivate the morality of those decisions.

You give the example of a person on the way to work, wearing a nice suit, maybe expensive shoes,

and comes across a child. So describe that example and what we learn from it.

Right. Yes. So as you say, you're wearing some expensive clothing to go to somewhere special,

walking across a park on the way, when you notice that a small child has fallen into the pond and is flandering around apparently in danger of drowning.

You look around for somebody who's looking after this child, this child is too young to be on their own,

but you can't see any parent, babysitter, anything like that.

So it seems like there's only you and the child.

...