The correct moral response to the king's sadistic choice (in any of the 4 forms mentioned) is not sacrifice yourself OR to let the other 10 die instead. The correct answer is that you, knowing the king was doing this, should have founded/joined/assisted an organization devoted to deposing the evil king and replacing him with someone who isn't going to randomly kill his subjects.
So to with charity. The answer isn't to sacrifice all of your comforts and wealth to save the lives of others, but to assist with, petition for and otherwise attempt to inact sanctions, reforms and revolutions to force the leaders of the world's most impoverished nations to end the policies that are leading to their populations starving to death. There is already enough food to feed everyone in the world twice over, it is simply a matter of making sure that nobody is prevented from obtaining it by a cruel or uncarring outside institution.
There is already enough food to feed everyone in the world twice over
Really? That sounds like it should mean we have a massive waste problem. Enough food to feed (entire world's population + everyone who is not being fed now) is constantly being discarded. In that counterfactual world we really should be using food leftovers to produce fuel.
I'd be really interested to hear what the Less Wrong community thinks of this. Don't spoil it by reading the comments first.
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