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This is the problem brought up in David Stove's What's Wrong with Benevolence? His answer to the title is: nothing, if it is combined with other virtues. The elevation of benevolence to the status of fundamental virtue, which began around the 18th century and which was accelerated by utilitarians.
What is required is the recognition that other virtues have a fundamental value, e.g. justice and prudence. This is not easy, even if the arguments are good, because most people are highly agreeable (in the Big Five sense) so they fear conflict, and they tend to see benevolence as a route to conflict-avoidance: "If only we are kind enough to the unhoused darlings, they won't cause any trouble to us."
It's the same dynamic with a lot of woke activism. Disagreeable radicals can bully around most people, because most people's default model for handling such conflicts is to bend the knee and hope it saves their own necks.
So elevating benevolence as the sole virtue has the persuasive power of elevating most people's submissive natures into approved virtues, and hence it has both philosophical arguments and self-interest in its favour. That's also why people's benevolence tends to extend to e.g. accepting misbehaviour by the homeless, but not Peter Singer-style austerity of living like a monk and donating all your income to the poor. Accepting abuse is much easier to market than undertaking privation.
I'll add one more explanation, beyond most people are highly agreeable: most people are lazy. Figuring out what is just and prudent takes more mental energy because it involves trade offs. It's way easier to assign a vague benevolence label onto some idea or policy. Hence, it's easy to be pro raising the minimum wage because it's benevolent! Takes way too much thinking to figure out the second order costs that make it unjust and imprudent.
An example of this is labels for legislation. The reason why they tend to have fuzzy "apple pie" names like "Inflation Reduction Act," "Patriot Act," "Social Justice Act" etc. is because a lot of voters will never think too far beyond the labels.
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ಠ_ಠ
Maybe "Peter-Singer-essay-style austerity", to ensure accurate phrasing just in case those allegations aren't all faked?
Is it? I'd argue that there's a popular "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute" philosophy that points exactly the other way. Even if the first-order utilitarian analysis might judge a particular instance of abuse to be cheaper than privation, a second-order look at incentives suggests that rewarding abuse might merely engender more abuse.
I fear the real distinction here is that abuse of other people (the ones who can't afford to isolate themselves from crime) is easier for most people to accept than privation of themselves.
Although, in this analysis, "donating all your income to the poor" is deprivation that's also often tainted with various levels of abuse. The guy who takes your donations to buy food because some combination of his employer/family/government/health screwed him over is merely depriving you. The guy who takes your intended-for-food-and-shelter donations to buy intoxicants is abusing you. The guy who blew off high school and was then surprised to find that he can't get or hold a livable wage is in between.
I was thinking specifically of his ideas about giving aid rather than his sex life, but yes.
That's certainly easier, but people also seem willing to tolerate e.g. volunteering their pronouns when it's required for the job.
Depends on the poor people in question. Singer was thinking of starving children in the Third World, IIRC. However, as you say:
Malthusian logic would suggest that the response of many of the Third World parents would be to have more children... At this step, serious benevolence-only types might start consider measures to encourage smaller families, such as "More education for women" or "More encouragement of contraception."
Garrett Hardin was big on this. He thought standard charity to 3rd world countries was net negative. It merely lets them have more children and be further food insecure. If you want masses of starving people, give food to the poorest Africans.
I once tried to explain Garrett Hardin's point in a college anthropology class discussion and the TA became very mad. Her face frozen in anger glaring at me. Pointing out second order negative consequences doesn't make you thoughtful, it apparently makes you evil.
That was one of the formative experiences of my life watching that anthropology grad student lock up in anger because I said that dumping food on Africans whose agricultural capacity was decreasing due to desertification was actually a bad thing. Some large portion of Africa getting screwed by desertification was a major point of that class. So what happens when you send them food aid? One of my only failures to hide my contrarian nature in college.
Yes, one of the marks of bad social science (and other sciences, but it's particularly tempting in complex open systems) is not to ask the question, "And then what?"
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