The argument extends the duty of rescue from the emergency case to the world's misery; but what made the duty obvious, uniqueness, urgency, certainty, vanishes in the global case.

Objects to

Pogge · World Poverty and Human Rights · 2002

The argument draws from an emergency case, the child drowning before me, a general duty to rescue all the world's destitute.
But the two situations differ on what gave the first case its force: at the pond I alone can save, the need is here and now, the act one-off and its effect certain. The world's misery is permanent, the business of billions of agents, and the effect of my donation uncertain.
What made the duty obvious, uniqueness, urgency, certainty, vanishes in the global case: to carry the same obligation over is to treat a lasting condition as a string of emergencies, and to lay on the individual what belongs to collective action.

Therefore So from the pond one cannot conclude to an unlimited individual duty: the true answer to the world's misery is a matter of justice and institutions, not each person's endless sacrifice.

Possible resolutions of the objection

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Challenges

Preventing harm when one can

Problems

The drowning child, the starving child Charity or justice