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People in other countries (note: I'm anti-nationalist, and prefer to just say "people", or if I need to distinguish, "people distant from me") starving is not under my control, but I can have a slight influence that makes it a small amount better for a lot of them. To me, this absolutely puts it in bounds for ethical consideration
Put in decision-making terms as opposed to ethical framing, "my utility function includes terms for the lives of distant strangers". For me, ethics is about analyzing and debating (with myself, mostly) the coefficients of those terms.
Okay. Imagine two versions of you: In one, you were born into a society in which, owing to nuclear war, the country you live in is the only one remaining. It is just as wealthy as our own current society owing to the point this hypothesis is leading to.
The other version of you exists in a society much more like the one we live in, where poor people are starving to death.
I'll observe that, strictly in terms of ethical obligations, the person in the scenario in which the poor people didn't exist is ethically superior, because fewer ethical obligations are ... (read more)