Singer Against Luxury Consumption

For the past two decades or so, Bernard Arnault and family have been listed by Forbes as one of the richest families in the world. The luxury market, in general, has been consistently growing and, if forecasts are accurate, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (Statista, 2024). People now, at least the few who can afford it, can buy such lavish products as a AUD 1550 pair of Balenciaga sneakers, a AUD 800 Gucci t-shirt, or, why not, a AUD 147000 Louis Vuitton ping pong table, or a (used and discounted!) AUD 319130 Hermes handbag. The market success of luxury products, I claim, is a patent reflection of the failure of states to educate their citizens. Real education, according to some views, such as Paulo Freire’s or Michel Foucalt’s critical pedagogy, should encourage a critical outlook on societies’ power structures and systems—and the inequalities created by them. I concur. Literacy rates and attainment of tertiary education degrees, both of which have been growing worldwide, have managed to coexist with a lack of depth or a critical outlook. Universities are representative in this respect. As stated by Chris Hedges (2009): “universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent, and often subversive. They organize learning around minutely specialized disciplines, narrow answers, and rigid structures designed to produce such answers” (p. 89). Thus, students, graduate knowing how to, for example, differentiate a function or code a regression model in Python, but rarely know who people like Edward Snowden, Joseph Stiglitz, Noam Chomsky, or Virginia Woolf are. At the risk of sounding cocky or arrogant, despite their degrees and university education, they are, in the words of George Akerlof and Robert Shiller (2015), “phools”, the perfect target for marketers ready to “phish” for them, by offering luxury products. In this post, however, my main goal is not to defend the idea that luxury usage/buying cannot coexist with real education. That claim should be sufficiently obvious to anyone barely familiar with some of the various issues societies currently face, from poverty to global warming to war and social conflict, among many others. Instead, I want to analyze some of the ideas developed by Peter Singer in his brilliant essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, specifically the following principle (hereafter “Singer’s principle”):

Singer’s Principle. Everyone has a duty not to spend money on luxuries or frills, and to use the savings due to abstinence to help those in dire need.

I will then focus on a normative question instead of a descriptive one about the potential reasons accounting for people’s luxury consumption (e.g., lack of a real education. As a side note, I should acknowledge that, in some marginal scenarios, luxury consumption could be driven by a real education. An expensive product, for instance, might result from a brand’s efforts to reduce or eliminate negative externalities, for example, low wages or environmental degradation. Again, I don’t think this is common; luxury consumption is mostly the result of other factors, such as status signaling, and corporate social responsibility endeavors in the real world are often marketing and tax gimmicks instead of altruistic practices). I intend to respond to some of the points advanced by John Kekes in his essay “On the Supposed Obligation to Relieve Famine”, where Singer’s principle is criticized.

First, a semantic hurdle must be cleared out of the way. Luxury consumption, as it is understood here, reflects the more common-sense conception people have of it. Take Miller’s (2004) reading of Singer. He says: “no one outside of the inevitable monitory of eccentrics could claim that I make a morally significant sacrifice if I buy a plain, warm department-store sweater for USD 22.95 instead of a stunning designer sweater […] for $ 49.95.” (p. 358). In this post, I won’t consider an item that is around twice the price of another at a regular department store as luxurious. USD 49.95 equals today approximately USD 83, inflation-adjusted. A USD 83 sweater is not classified here as a luxury item. This could be self-serving (I have clothing around that price, a jacket) but I believe a convincing case can be made that buying clothes in this price range does not imply a failure to fulfill a moral duty (see Miller, 2004), even if cheaper, functionally equivalent alternatives exist. Also, importantly, I believe most clothing in this price range does not serve the status signaling function usually linked to luxury items. A similar argument can be made about other consumer products (food, hotels, etc.), mutatis mutandis.

The first argument advanced by Kekes is that, if we were to follow Singer’s principle, many people in developed economies would be guilty of failing to fulfill a moral obligation or duty to help others in dire need. This argument, which Singer acknowledges, does not work because crowds are not necessarily moral. Using descriptive facts about how common a behavior is as evidence of his moral permissibility does not work. Indeed, facts about the ubiquity of a behavior can even distort moral judgment, as research has found that people tend to believe that common behaviors are more morally permissible than less common ones, other things being equal (Lindström et al., 2008). Be that as it may, if asserting that immoral but common behavior can be immoral sounds like moralizing or pretentious virtue-signaling, as Kekes suggests, then so be it. The fact of the matter is that those in the financial position to buy luxury items might have directed part of the wealth they copiously spend on these items to help others; that many other people engage in luxury consumption as well is beside the point.   

The second argument by Kekes is that helping is a paternalistic attitude towards people who, first, might have a significant share of responsibility for their dire situation and, second, are not asking for our help. Kekes elaborates on the first point:

“It is an easily foreseeable consequence of their actions that if they increase the size of their families, they will have to divide their resources among more people. If they live in poverty, absolute or other, this will worsen their condition. No reasonable person can fail to see this. If people nevertheless increase the size of their families and end up in or perpetuate their absolute poverty, then they are responsible for their own and their children’s easily foreseeable suffering. Increasing the size of their families is clearly a voluntary action because they could refrain from sexual intercourse, they could enjoy sex without it leading to conception, they could practice such traditional methods of contraception as are available in their context, and they could abort unwanted fetuses. […] it is the imprudent voluntary actions of people living in absolute poverty that is a major contributing factor to their own and their children’s suffering.” (p. 513, emphasis added).

I would like to mention several things. First, many people in dire conditions cannot be made responsible for their situation, for example, children or people with cognitive impairments. Secondly, Kekes’ argument is psychologizing on steroids. He uncritically assumes that a multifaceted and complex phenomenon—how many children poor families end up having—is exclusively the result of adults’ voluntary decisions. “Want fewer children? Just stop having sex.” This is ridiculous; the reality is that public institutions and strong education systems, among other factors, are fundamental determinants of reproduction rates in a society. Under most theoretical responsibility paradigms, voluntary action is informed. Hence, I am of the opinion that a paternalistic attitude might be justified in many cases, at least to a certain extent. On the other hand, it is stupid to require consent from those who are in dire need. Saying that not helping those in need it’s okay because they are not asking for aid is both entitled and indicative of a lack of understanding of basic psychology. It is entitled because it assumes that those in a position to help have a moral right to their wealth. This is not true. As Derek Parfit has pointed out: “the great wealth that we rich people have isn’t in a moral sense ours to give; it is legally ours, but is not morally ours. I’m not entitled to this vast wealth compared to this two billion [poor] people in Africa”. Thus, even if wealth is the result of hard work, people are not entitled to it compared to others in less advantaged positions as long as the dynamics that explain their wealth are mostly circumstantial (e.g., being born in a rich country, having access to education and a job market that generously rewards that particular kind of education, having access to resources or opportunities that allows the individual to invest in a business venture, etc.). Kekes’ remark is also a naïve view of how basic psychology functions. What are people in dire need supposed to do? Fill out a form requesting help? Or does he think that those in dire need have higher-order needs they would rather fulfill and want to demonstrate, while hungry, that they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps? This appears to me the opinion of someone who has always had his basic needs covered (food, shelter, etc.). As Abraham Maslow, among others, has suggested, basic needs are prioritized in hard times (that’s why they are basic!).

The third argument by Kekes consists of two parts. First, he insists that there is no reliable way to know if people in need are responsible for their situation and, second, that even if they are not, the responsibility for helping them lies with their governments and does not fall on those who can help (such as consumers of luxury products). Two points in response. First, establishing responsibility, as Kekes is probably aware, is not easy. He does not elaborate but his arguments about reproductive rates are a clue to the overall outlook he embraces, where dire circumstances are, presumably, mainly the result of voluntary choices and behaviors. I won’t return to this point because my counterarguments also apply here. In general, human behavior is strongly influenced by a myriad of factors many of which are beyond individuals’ control. Following Singer, I observe that the existence of governments does little to absolve luxury consumers of their moral duties. As long as they can help and help is needed, I don’t see how the mere existence of (inefficient and/or under-resourced) governments would make it any less morally wrong to decide not to help (or to omit considering helping). As Singer says: “one feels less guilty about doing nothing if one can point to others […] who have also done nothing. Yet this can make no real difference to our moral obligations.” I grant, on the other hand, Kekes’ point that moral theories could favor the ingroup when it comes to deciding who to help.

The final argument by Keyes, one I have often heard in conversations, is people’s skepticism about the efficiency of their potential donations:

“[People] would have to be able to judge whether the aid is going to result in superficial short-term relief that merely prolongs suffering or whether it brings about long-term structural changes that would relieve suffering in the long run. If they could not make reasonable judgments of this sort, they would have to accept the judgments of various local politicians and aid workers, and they would have to decide whether these judgments are trustworthy. Since both the politicians and aid workers have a vested interest in attracting aid, there would be a prima facie reason not to take their judgments at face value. […] The hard fact is that the aid that may be given will only be window-dressing that produces, at best, short-term relief and perpetuates the conditions that produce absolute poverty. For the children who are helped will grow into adults who will have children. The temporary improvement of their condition will make the population living in absolute poverty grow faster than it would without aid. And that will make poverty worse in the long run, not better.” (p. 516).

This is, as far as I can tell, mistaken. First, Kekes says that it is quite uncertain whether any aid given would have the desired effects (after all, politicians’ and aid workers’ interests constitute only a prima facie, not conclusive, reason to withhold any aid). However, Kekes, somewhat inconsistently, is bold enough to state that any aid given will do nothing but perpetuate poverty. This is, evidently, an empirical question that Kekes has failed to address properly. Second, I don’t see any reason why the aid could not be used to work on the structural or systemic factors Kekes is so eager to bring up. Finally, consumers nowadays can easily access resources that can provide them with an accurate idea of what sort of difference their aid can make. They have access to information about the effectiveness of charitable organizations too. See, for example, givewell.org or effectivealtruism.org. In consequence, when people say to themselves that, for example, they doubt their donations will make any difference, they are likely expressing a thought that keeps the cognitive dissonance of not helping at bay (“yeah, but what about SBF and FTX?”). No one likes to think they should be doing something they are not.   

I finish with some caveats. First, in this post, I have tried to argue in favor of the view that luxury consumption is immoral, and the counterarguments I developed are targeted at those who engage in this type of consumption. Many people, even from developed nations, might not be able to provide much financial help, especially due to increasing levels of inequality and cost of living pressures due to, for example, inflation. Most people, though, seem to be in a position to provide some aid. I do my part; I recognize, though, that it is not much and I could probably do more. Second, I intended to defend a moral viewpoint on luxury consumption, not to delve into the justifications people might use to engage in this type of consumption (though, as I said, I have heard the last argument, about the potential inefficiency of providing aid, occasionally). Most people engaging in luxury consumption, I suspect, don’t even consider that there is a moral dimension to this activity. In neoliberal societies, the customer is always right. I don’t think negligence is a valid excuse, and I believe many of the justifications people could give when pressed are based on rather shallow rationales, such as style and fitting in, among others. Finally, following Singer, I have discussed the failure to help those in dire need but could have also zeroed in on other issues that support the position that those who engage in luxury consumption fail to fulfill a moral duty. I believe a convincing argument can be made based on these other issues (e.g., environmental degradation), though the issue chosen by Singer is paradigmatic and surely more intuitive.

The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless. (Ambrosius, Decretum Gratiani)

References and further reading

Akerlof, G. & Shiller, R. (2015) Phishing for Phools. The Economics of Manipulation and Deception. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Freire, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York – London: continuum.

Hedges, C. (2009) Empire of Illusion. The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York: PublicAffairs.

Kekes, J. (2002) “On the Supposed Obligation to Relieve Famine”. Philosophy, 77(302), pp. 503-517.

Lindström B, Jangard S, Selbing I, Olsson A. (2018) The role of a “common is moral” heuristic in the stability and change of moral norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(2), pp, 228-242.

Miller, R. (2004) “Beneficence, Duty, and Distance.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32(4), pp. 357-383.

Singer, P. (1972) “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3), pp. 229-243.

Statista (2004). Luxury Goods Worldwide. Market Insights: Consumer. Available at: https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/luxury-goods/worldwide#revenue

Stiglitz, J. (2019) People, Power, and Profits. Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. New York – London: W.W. Norton & Company.