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Lawliet comments on So you say you're an altruist... - Less Wrong
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Personally I'd keep myself alive, accept 20 years jail, but refuse permanent poverty which I consider a worse-than-death (those preferences make sense since I hope to live a very long time). And I don't think that "not maintaining life" is the same as killing - any more than I think "not creating life" is the same as killing. Other people's survival is not automatically my problem, and I am certainly not obligated to beggar myself to keep a hundred war-impoverished Africans in rice. They had better look out for themselves.
Do you mean you would rather commit one stranger to poverty than kill ten people, or that you being in poverty is worse than ten strangers dying, but a stranger in poverty is not?
The scenario was quite contrived - truly permanent poverty, enforced by a king. Every non-coerced form of poverty has at least the hope of benefiting by economic improvement, and most forms of poverty are something you can work your way out of (allowing for difficulties with time, energy, education and lowered IQ). Ordinary poverty is not a worse-than-death.