>>719828785
It follows then that you have an obligation to save a child if the alternative is going on vacation.

This argument has, since I’ve heard it, struck me as obviously, irrefutably correct. We certainly have an obligation to make saving children—when we can save hundreds at comparatively minor cost—a significant life project. If a person can save a life a year, without majorly jeopardizing their welfare, just by tithing to effective charities, failing to do so seems clearly immoral.

If you’re convinced by this, I’d encourage you to take a Giving What We Can pledge or give to GiveWell charities. Most people are, inadvertently, doing things as bad as walking past drowning children. We have significant reason to stop doing this.
>>719828774
Almost all of the donations to against malaria foundation go directly to mosquito nets. Research and development, administration etc etc are all covered by a small group of wealthy donors.

>>60672137
Utilitarians are often accused of being excessively fixated on animals—their sheer numbers mean that nearly all the welfare in the world is experienced by animals. But I don’t think this is some troubling feature unique to utilitarianism. It’s follows automatically once one has even a modicum of empathy for animals. Once one does not arbitrarily discount the interests of animals entirely, the moral urgency of animal welfare becomes clear.

John Rawls famously proposed a procedure to evaluate the importance of the world’s issues impartially and without bias. The proposal: imagine making decisions behind a veil of ignorance, unsure which of the affected parties you are. For instance, suppose Jeffrey Dahmer is deciding whether he should kill and eat people. Well, if he wasn’t sure whether he was the one who would be doing the eating or the one being eaten, he obviously wouldn’t support the killing and eating. No one in their right mind would take a 1/2 chance of being killed and eaten for a 1/2 chance of deriving whatever benefit Dahmer got from cannibalism.

In short, the veil of ignorance makes sure your decisions are impartial. It’s very easy to be biased to overrate problems that affect you. By imagining you don’t know who you are, you can no longer tilt the scales in favor of problems that affect you. You must include everyone behind the veil—a white person couldn’t justify anti-black racism by arbitrarily excluding black people from the pool of possible identities. You have to count everyone’s interests.