Cryptocurrency, Peter Singer, and Catholic Social Teaching

Peter Singer’s most famous paper is “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” which was published in 1972. In this influential essay, he argues that affluent people have a moral obligation to donate a significant portion of their wealth to prevent suffering and death from poverty and famine around the world. He uses the famous “drowning child” analogy to illustrate this point, suggesting that if we would save a drowning child even at the cost of our expensive shoes, we should also be obligated to help the world’s poor with our money. 

The paper asserts that if we can prevent something very bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we are obligated to do so. Some have argued that Singer’s argument leads to a reductio ad absurdum. In essence, if Singer were to be followed, the argument would be that every time you spend money on non-essential items, that money could instead prevent suffering or death (e.g., through famine relief). To act morally, you must give away nearly all your disposable income until you are just above subsistence level. You should also devote most of your time and resources to helping others, even at the cost of personal projects, hobbies, or relationships. Ergo, you must live an extremely austere life, abandoning almost all personal pursuits, and possibly undermining your own well-being. Even Singer realised that this conclusion is impractical and conflicts with widely accepted moral intuitions about reasonable obligations. It would make ordinary life morally impermissible. Structurally, for everyone to follow this route, it would mean abandoning life as we know it and reverting, unintentionally, to something akin to Pol Pot’s Year Zero.

Singer unfortunately gained infamy for his other famous logical argument that it ought to be permissible to kill newborn infants, as they do not have ‘personhood’ or ‘agency.’ Singer’s beliefs—his morality, so to speak—come from his commitment to utilitarianism—the approach of maximising happiness or well-being. Utilitarianism has been eviscerated as a theory repeatedly since its introduction by Jeremy Bentham and refinement by John Stuart. These arguments do not need repeating beyond that it can justify harmful actions if they produce greater overall happiness, the problem of measuring and comparing happiness across different people, and that it can lead to morally counterintuitive outcomes, such as sacrificing one innocent person to save many others.

I was reading Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis, a book that explores the life and mindset of a cryptocurrency gambler who was a professed utilitarian, on the same weekend that I was reading Pope Leo XIV’s recent Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te: On Love for the Poor. That weekend, Catholic social teaching collided with cryptocurrency and Peter Singer. What? Let me explain.

The protagonist in ‘Going Infinite’ is Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was (is?) a committed ‘effective altruist’ inspired—on the surface—by Peter Singer to make as much money as possible in order to give it to good causes. His logic is that it is better to make a heap of money to pay for lots of doctors rather than be a doctor yourself. On the face of it, it makes sense.  But in reality, like Singer’s arguments, it falls down if everyone takes this route and no one becomes a doctor.  Another reductio ad absurdum. I digress. But let me digress a little further.

JD Vance’s recent comments on ordo amoris—the “right ordering of love,” a concept rooted in Augustine and Aquinas—relate to Singer’s argument in an interesting way. Vance argued that compassion should follow a hierarchy:

family → neighbours → community → fellow citizens → rest of the world.

He invoked ordo amoris to justify prioritising domestic concerns (e.g., immigration policy, foreign aid) over global ones, claiming this is a “very Christian concept” and common sense. Critics accused him of distorting Christian teaching, while supporters said he was reaffirming traditional moral obligations. One of those apparently criticising Vance was Pope Francis, who said, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups.” Attempts have been made to connect a social media account criticising Vance with Pope Leo XIV. Our instincts support Vance’s view that we have greater responsibility to our children than to someone unconnected to us. We would decay into some dystopian world of disconnected automatons if we were to abandon the flesh-and-blood attachments that give our lives concrete meaning and substitute them for emotional, cosmopolitan responsibilities. 

Dilexi Te, Pope Leo’s first official letter to the Church, was commenced by Pope Francis before he passed to his eternal reward. It was completed by Pope Leo, who fully endorsed the initial draft received:

I am happy to make this document my own—adding some reflections—and to issue it at the beginning of my own pontificate, since I share the desire of my beloved predecessor that all Christians come to appreciate the close connection between Christ’s love and his summons to care for the poor.

Dilexi Te does not delve explicitly into the complexities of competing ethical theories but does touch on the sensitive question of our responsibility to strangers through the parable of the Good Samaritan and the section on migrants, claiming that “where walls are built, she [the Church] builds bridges”, which can easily be assessed as a broadside at Donald Trump and JD Vance. 

Catholic Social Teaching is rich and profound, developing and evolving through its history, summed up easily in the phrase ‘a preferential option for the poor,’ reminiscent of John Rawls’ difference principle, which permits only inequalities that work to the advantage of the worst-off. Unfortunately, ‘a preferential option for the poor’ is a pithy phrase that hides the complexity of the Church’s social teaching and also the individual versus structural considerations that lead to better outcomes rather than simple concepts. Critiques of Peter Singer’s reductio ad absurdum version of utilitarianism expose the risks of ill-considered ideas. Reducing Catholic teaching and moral responsibility to hortatory proclamations, disconnected from concrete reality, fails to address how to avoid ending up at Year Zero or what level of immigration states are obligated to accept and manage. Popular intuition is that it is not unlimited and that open borders are impractical and a recipe for societal collapse. There is a practical, if not a theoretical, optimum, or workable, balance that brings moral responsibility, individual and social well-being, and societal stability together.

From an economic perspective, there is a similar argument summed up using the Laffer curve, a theoretical concept illustrating the relationship between tax rates and total tax revenue. It suggests that tax revenue is zero at a 0% tax rate and also zero at a 100% tax rate (since there would be no incentive to work or produce). Between these extremes, there is an optimal tax rate that maximises government revenue. And assuming that government is good and has the right policies to benefit society (and the poor), then it maximises government impact. Presumably there is some optimum point between closed and open borders that gives a similar result.

Beyond the Laffer Curve, there are the arguments about what are effective government policies: what level of welfare is optimal, and for whom? What level of targeted investment in education and training is best? Are school breakfasts good, or do they create dependency? Are private schools good for society? Do scholarships offer the poor a ladder up? The list of questions is endless. 

As is the question of the effectiveness of spending taxpayer money. The economist Milton Friedman talked about the four different ways you can spend money.  You spend your own money on yourself. This is usually the most efficient spending because you’re motivated to get the best value, and you care about both cost and quality.  You spend your own money on someone else. You care about cost but not as much about quality (since it’s not for you), and the recipient might not get exactly what they want. You spend someone else’s money on yourself. You care about quality but not about cost, which can lead to overspending or inefficiency. You spend someone else’s money on someone else. This is often the least efficient form of spending, as you care less about both cost and quality. Friedman argued that this reflected government spending of taxpayer money on public services.

Unfortunately, Dilexi Te does not help answer any of these questions—nor even give any real considerations to anything like the Laffer curve, arguments about the ordo amoris, utilitarianism versus other approaches to morality, or big or small government. This is frustrating because what it does say is already well established and known by most in and outside the Catholic Church. Almost half the document reminds us of the Gospel examples that reference ‘the poor’ as well as the many historical efforts the Church’s religious have made to provide for those in need. But we are never really told what all of this is supposed to mean.

We find in the document, reminding us of both Pope Francis’ and Pope Leo’s close connection to Latin America, that teachings reflective of liberation theology are heavy in the second half of the exhortation.

Faced with a situation of worsening poverty in Latin America, the Puebla Conference confirmed the Medellín decision in favor of a frank and prophetic option for the poor and described structures of injustice as a “social sin.” … Unjust structures need to be recognized and eradicated by the force of good, by changing mindsets but also, with the help of science and technology, by developing effective policies for societal change.

Unfortunately, the big question of what is ‘social sin’ and what are “unjust structures” is left substantially unanswered and unaddressed. What are effective policies for social change? These are not questions only for Catholics. These questions have been debated for time immemorial. Rawls and Nozick were having these discussions in the 1970s. Thomas Hobbes (nasty, brutish, and short—the Leviathan) or John Locke (property rights and the social contract), Jeremy Bentham (rights are nonsense upon stilts), and many more were dealing with these issues in the 17th and 18th centuries. Catholics and other religious were devoting their lives to the poor and continue to do so as consecrated and lay religious. What one can do, and what many religious choose to do, does not imply what we ‘ought’ to do, especially when nice ideas and inspiring examples are uprooted from the reality of family and community. 

Religious believers continue to give more generously to charitable causes in the present day than their non-believing counterparts. This is well established. If you were to ask church-going Catholics, I doubt there are many—if any—that do not understand there is a need and a responsibility to the poor and that society should be structured to provide some form of effective social protection. They may not know what the best approaches to address ‘social sin’ are, and they may meaningfully disagree, sometimes fervently, about the best structures, tax systems, government investments and our individual obligations to the poor in concrete situations. Dilexi Te offers little in practical guidance for them. Pope Leo refers to social justice almost interchangeably with the preferential option for the poor, without reflecting on the limits—and the uncertainty—of structural solutions in relation to solving the challenges of poverty.

Rather, the Exhortation moves its focus to unnamed bogeymen who apparently dissent from a Christian understanding of the common good. 

At times, Christian movements or groups have arisen which show little or no interest in the common good of society and, in particular, the protection and advancement of its most vulnerable and disadvantaged members. Yet we must never forget that religion, especially the Christian religion, cannot be limited to the private sphere, as if believers had no business making their voice heard with regard to problems affecting civil society and issues of concern to its members. 

I struggle to recognise who these groups or people within the Church are. Naming and shaming would help give some clarity and help us to understand, by example, what type of behaviour is unacceptable. 

Would he be referring to cloistered nuns who devote their lives to prayer when he says, “There are those who say: ‘Our task is to pray and teach sound doctrine’.”?  I do not think that is who he means, but there are religious orders who choose a life of prayer and others who prioritise a life of charity and poverty. They are not meant to be exclusive. Perhaps these unwelcome ‘Christian movements’ exist, but I do not feel that they are representative of a Catholic perspective or of Catholics in general. This approach to criticising unnamed or anonymous people or movements was a source of division in the Church through Francis’ papacy, allowing a large breadth of deniability while creating a form of McCarthyism directed at those who could be perceived as having “ideological inflexibility and rigid approaches to religious practice”.

Dilexi Te follows with a broadside, not just at unnamed groups, but at unidentified theories or positions that are not familiar to me.

Separating this religious aspect from integral development, they even say that it is the government’s job to care for them, or that it would be better not to lift them out of their poverty but simply to teach them to work. At times, pseudo-scientific data are invoked to support the claim that a free market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty. Or even that we should opt for pastoral work with the so-called elite, since, rather than wasting time on the poor, it would be better to care for the rich, the influential and professionals, so that with their help real solutions can be found and the Church can feel protected. It is easy to perceive the worldliness behind these positions, which would lead us to view reality through superficial lenses, lacking any light from above, and to cultivate relationships that bring us security and a position of privilege.

It would be helpful for Dilexi Te to be more explicit on identifying who purports to hold these positions or point towards where they are articulated so that the reader can be better informed as to which data is being assessed as ‘pseudo-scientific’ or who proposes doing pastoral work with the so-called elite rather than the poor. None of it sounds particularly Catholic at all.

Perhaps there is a ‘Laffer curve’ of some sort for the interaction of faith and works that has not yet been discovered or articulated. I know that many Catholics struggle with the Mary versus Martha conundrum. Faith and works are both needed for salvation, but time is finite, so where is the sweet spot?  

Unfortunately, for all the attempts at elaborating Catholic Social Teaching, just as the right balance between the individual and the common good is elusive, especially in a theoretical argument, and impossible to define in a vacuum, it seems that a definitive balance of faith and works is equally unattainable. Reading Dilexi Te, there is a feeling that the authors—Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV—have something they want to say but are reluctant to. While almost falling into the trap of pitching positions on communitarian/cosmopolitanism, faith/works, charity/justice as either/or, mutually exclusive zero-sum ideas, Pope Leo thankfully stops short and reverts to a sound understanding of humanity and Church teaching, where charity and justice, as Pope Benedict XVI elaborated with greater subtlety, interact and overlap.

In Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict said, 

Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society.  There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love.  Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such.  There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help.  There will always be loneliness.  There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.  The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern …  In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.

Pope Leo ends his exhortation by reminding us that almsgiving, charity, is indispensable in the elusive search for social justice.

In any event, almsgiving, however modest, brings a touch of pietas into a society otherwise marked by the frenetic pursuit of personal gain. In the words of the Book of Proverbs: “Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor” (22:9). Our love and our deepest convictions need to be continually cultivated, and we do so through our concrete actions. Remaining in the realm of ideas and theories, while failing to give them expression through frequent and practical acts of charity, will eventually cause even our most cherished hopes and aspirations to weaken and fade away. For this very reason, we Christians must not abandon almsgiving. It can be done in different ways, and surely more effectively, but it must continue to be done. It is always better at least to do something rather than nothing. Whatever form it may take, almsgiving will touch and soften our hardened hearts. It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility. For our part, we need to give alms as a way of reaching out and touching the suffering flesh of the poor. Through your work, your efforts to change unjust social structures or your simple, heartfelt gesture of closeness and support, the poor will come to realize that Jesus’ words are addressed personally to each of them: “I have loved you” (Rev 3:9).

Pope Leo’s final, saving comment accepts the indeterminateness of Catholic social teaching and questions of ethics from a conceptual standpoint. He continues to use indefinable ideas such as social justice but implicitly rejects them as definitive by invoking the need to respond to poverty with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility rather than broad strokes and broadsides.  This reminds us why Peter Singer’s utilitarianism cannot provide the answers to all of society’s woes, just as the Church, through its own ethics, cannot take the place of the State or society in prescribing structural solutions to social justice or easily defining what is ‘social sin.’ 

Utilitarians seek structural solutions that are devoid of human feeling, bound up in cold rational concepts. There are many arguments against a utilitarian ethic, and the Church’s teaching on objective right and wrong is one of those. The ordo amoris articulated by JD Vance (and Aquinas and Augustine) is another. Pope Benedict XVI attempted to articulate the relationship between charity and justice to frame an approach that understood they were not mutually exclusive. If it were all so simple, the best thing we could all do is become cryptocurrency speculators. Michael Lewis, in his final analysis of Sam Bankman-Fried, the utilitarian crypto, said that his utilitarian outlook in essence was less about doing good than the idea that he could somehow capture and quantify it through speculative probabilities to the extent that he was unaffected by the real lives he destroyed in the process.