Peter Singer is all over the place this week.
this drowning child analogy is asinine. the kids aren't drowning for no reason: our society is structured so that at all times, some number of children will always be forced into drowning. Marx called this the reserve army of labor. your boss calls this employee turnover. policy wonks call it downwards wage pressure. the question is not "how many folks are you personally responsible for saving?", that's liberal nonsense. it's a zero sum game. you are always shoving more into the water with your other hand. the question is, how long will you let this child-drowning machine go unsmashed?
Alternatively titled, "someone thinks the world would be a pleasant place if we were all martyrs" [ i don't ] A strikingly similar worldview to "hugging doesn't save lives,v therefore is worthless," one which I feel errs in its absolutionism. "If we can do something, our time is wasted unless we do something 100%!" - "If I can give money, I should give ALL the money I can!" "If we can save lives, we must spend ALL our time saving lives, and activities that don't directly save lives (hugging) are completely worthless compared against literally saving every possible immediately endangered life." Fanaticism does everyone little good. Spend 80 hours a week saving the immediately drowning person and your life will suffer. We weren't made simply to pull everyone around us out of fires.