Peter Singer

So there might be a variety of risks in being too paternalistic that utilitarians can accept as reasons for restraining paternalism in some circumstances.

Right.

Well, one of the ways I would like to change people's behavior is to enable them to see that if they are part of the affluent world, and they're not the very bottom rung of the economic ladder in the affluent world, but they're, let's say, middle class or above.

that the additional marginal utility that money has to them is very small compared to the additional marginal utility that money has to somebody who is living in extreme poverty.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as something close to three US dollars per day now and says there's around 800 million people living

on that level, which is actually historically a very low figure.

It's about 10% of the world's population.

And it's only in the last 20 years or so, I think, that probably for the first time ever, 10% or fewer of the world's population have been living in extreme poverty.

That is, have not reliably been able to get enough food for themselves to feed themselves and their family.

And we now add other things to being in poverty like not getting any basic healthcare.

Of course, most of the world didn't get any basic healthcare for most of our evolutionary past.

Not being able to educate our children, all those kinds of things.

So if you're living on $3 a day, then obviously if you, let's say you could get an extra $1,000, that's roughly your annual income that you've now doubled.

And there's all sorts of things that you can do that you couldn't do before.

It might be, for example, that you can

buy a corrugated iron roof for your dwelling, which up to now has been thatched and leaks when it rains heavily and anyway is actually more expensive in the long run than a corrugated iron roof because it has to be replaced quite frequently.

But you just could never accumulate the cost of a corrugated iron roof.

to keep yourself and your family dry.

So that could be a big improvement.

You could maybe afford to send your children to school when you couldn't previously.