If only we could barter directly in hedons

There's something charmingly earnest about the kinds of practical deliberations one is forced to undertake as a utilitarian. These passages from a Salon interview with Peter Singer made me laugh. (The first is from the interviewer's introduction; the second is Singer's final piece of advice on how to eat responsibly.)

#1: We have a moral obligation, he says, to do all we can to alleviate the suffering of others up to that point where the suffering of our sacrifice is equal to the suffering of those we are trying to help. (Singer himself donates 20 percent of his salary to Oxfam and UNICEF.)

#2: Avoid factory farm products. The worst of all the things we talk about in the book is intensive animal agriculture. If you can be vegetarian or vegan that's ideal. If you can buy organic and vegan that's better still, and organic and fair trade and vegan, better still, but if that gets too difficult or too complicated, just ask yourself, Does this product come from intensive animal agriculture? If it does, avoid it, and then you will have achieved 80 percent of the good that you would have achieved if you followed every suggestion in the book.

Of course, there are many ethical observations in the interview that are hard to disagree with, and I think his advice in the second passage is actually quite good, although I probably would give it on the basis of different considerations (at any rate, I think there are more reasons to be vegan that are relevant than he seems to). But it is still comical, the way numbers and percentages figure so prominently.