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It's an odd choice of example because quite a few people are killed annually trying to rescue children from bodies of water. It's not risk-free.
The original hypothetical from Peter Singer is a child drowning in a shallow pond, where you could just walk over and pull them out. It is designed to be a zero risk situation.
I say the kid (or his parents) owes the rescuer a new suit, which short circuits the whole thing.
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And at the end of the day, this is the problem -- I haven't spent enough time reading literature responding to it, so hopefully this critique is already well documented -- this is an un-trolley problem. It's designed so that there's absolutely no opportunity cost. But then used to imply therefore, the opportunity cost of other scenarios are handwavable.
If I'm walking by a pond where there's a drowing child; in all likelihood, rescuing that child is the most valuable thing I can do in that moment, and the ruin of a 1k suit, that I'm already wearing is a sunk cost.
But this doesn't extend to prove that some future fungible time and money, there's a best thing to do and thus it is a moral imperative to have it done.
As soon as we add any actual opportunity cost to saving that child or ruining the suit, the parsimony of the aesop falls apart. Suppose I'm risking being late and waterlogged for a very demanding interview, and nearly guarantee I won't get the job, a job at which will save many lives if done well, and I am especially best qualified to do it right.
At that moment, it just becomes a regular trolley problem, with a little bit of forecasting mixed in, and there's nothing really to gleam from it.
If alternatively we take the most superficial lesson from the problem: We should help others when we are able, at a cost to ourselves, even when we aren't physically near them. Then sure! It's a great reminder. And it has just about nothing to say about government spending on foreign aid.
You've added in the factor of saving multiple lives instead of one life (at the cost of a nice suit), which is saying something different from the original. The original means to point out the moral obviousness of saving the child at very little real cost.
To me, Singer's hypothetical points out that there are people you or I can easily help/save at a financial cost that we normally don't blink an eye at (the cost of a phone, a suit, a plane ride...), at no real danger to ourselves. This isn't a philosophical imperative, it is an observation. The observation becomes obvious when the person is next to you, but it still exists when the person in trouble is on another continent. Of course, most people are viscerally affected by someone in danger next to them, and generally have no reason to think of anyone on another continent. Singer's hypothetical attempts to address that disconnect.
I ised to have a lot of beef with the trolley problem because it is almost tautological in its obviousness. But reading some variations on it by the original author, and knowing she was a virtue ethicist, the major point I took away was that real-world moral decision-making is hard! The trolley problem is easy, but recognizing when you are faced with a "trolley problem" in real life, and figuring out which track is which, is difficult. Humans are concerned with ethics, but we have to practice to be discerning and virtuous. Ethics are not (just) a math problem.
I don't know if that follows from what you said. I can see why foreign aid isn't a consideration in a vacuum. But I would think that if helping people who are far away at a low cost to ourselves is considered a good thing, it is a consideration that a society and its government can make on a grand scale.
Yes I know, my point was in agreement with yours. That's why I said the original is an 'un'trolley problem. My point in describing some additional opportunity cost was exectly to illustrate that opportunity cost ruins the thought experiment.
And that's why it has very little to say about foreign aid or most other real world charitable activities that are abstracted from time and place. Because outside of immediate and present opportunities (like saving a drowning child right in front of you), opportunity cost does have to be considered.
And as you've agreed, it becomes different than the thought experiment, thus the thought experiment is no longer relevant.
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