As an illustration, he writes that a $100,000 gift could save 1,000 people from losing their sight to trachoma, an eye disease common in tropical developing countries. So, he suggests with a thought experiment, giving $100,000 to an art museum instead is tantamount to depriving those 1,000 people of their sight. By such calculus, giving $50 million to a university -- or even to a poor, struggling teaching college -- would be tantamount to blinding 50,000 people. Who would do such a thing?
Singer’s crude utilitarianism starts from the assumption that cures for trachoma already exist and must simply be allocated according to his God’s eye view. But a civilization that actually produces cures for dread diseases can be neither so single-minded nor as predictable as he thinks. It has room for, indeed demands, both art and medicine, both exploration for its own sake and the deployment of knowledge for the relief of man’s estate. Reducing that civilization’s complexity to a single metric would destroy its richness -- the restless curiosity, passion and inspiration that foster practical progress and make life more meaningful. The self-denying asceticism of a Mother Teresa can at best comfort the impoverished and dying. It cannot make them less poor or sick.
Fortunately, philanthropists are not as “rational” as some of the philosophers who benefit from their largesse. They give partly out of a desire to do good, but also out of sentiment (the Ballmers' support their alma maters) and personal interest (Steve Ballmer cares about computer science). The result is that a wide variety of causes get funded. Some are undoubtedly a waste of money. But it’s hard to know in advance (and often even in hindsight) which ones those are, and in any case, individuals will disagree about what’s important.
The public critique of charity can be useful, because people with money to hand out tend to get too much flattery and too little disagreement. But that judgment shouldn’t simply replace the tastes of philanthropists with those of critics. And critics should remember that excellence, as well as need, is worthy of support.