[extropy-chat] Charity/was Re: EDU: Public Schools

[Technotranscendence]

I hope all of you don't mind me changing the subject line since it seems
Harvey and I are focusing on a wider issue.

On Tuesday, January 20, 2004 11:32 AM Harvey Newstrom
mail at HarveyNewstrom.com wrote:
> > >> I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression
> > >> that your life, career, works, example, spending
> > >> and creating (non-exhaustive list) already give
> > >> back amply to your community and beyond it.
> > >
> > > You are not mistaken.  We are very active in
> > > volunteer work and spend huge amounts on
> > > various charities we support.  This attitude is
> > > only possible because we believe in our
> > > community and in helping others.
> >
> > Hey, good for you.  However, it seems you're using your so
> > called charitable works to boast about your moral superiority, no?:)
>
> No.  Where did you get that idea.  I did not
> bring them up.  I answered a direct question.

Just a hunch.  Sometimes they're wrong, you know?:)  I put the smiley
after the original comment as a sort of wink that it only seemed that
way -- and I don't mean to disparage you...

> My point is that being comfortable with
> taxation and public schools is not
> incompatible with charity work.

Well, this brings up a wider issue: the nature of charity.

> Where did I mention anything about my
> moral superiority?  (If anything, I have an
> inferiority complex that drives me to do
> more to try to prove myself.)

It wasn't a direct comment, but something I felt in the way you wrote.
Your parenthetic comment actually lends support to my hunch here.  How?
Well, you seem to be saying the doing charity compensates for some moral
inferiority.  You don't use "moral inferiority" above, but it's implied.
The implication is that charity makes you a better person -- less
inferior or makes you feel less inferior -- than otherwise.

This implies that if there were two people, X and Y, who were both
morally identical and then X did charitable works -- say, spent time in
the local soup kitchen dishing out food -- while Y did not, X would be
morally superior to Y.  Do you agree with this?  Or are X and Y still
morally equal despite X's doing some charitable work?

>> The fact is that actually working, creating,
>> etc. does more overall to help others than
>> charity.
>
> This is a false dichotomy.  We don't have to
> choose between working, creating or being
> charitable.  We can do it all.  I believe in the
> non-zero-sum game, or the win/win situation.
> It is this attitude that encourages me to be
> charitable.

Actually, I'm not setting up a false dichotomy.  I do not think one has
to either work or do charity and never the 'twain shall meet.  My point
was only that working does more overall to help others because you're
actually creating new wealth as opposed to passing around existing
wealth.  In order for it not to be a zero sum game, new wealth has to be
created.  Just reshuffling existing wealth does not make for more wealth
overall.  To put it bluntly, someone has to make before anyone else can
take -- or before the initial someone can even share.

Add to this, in a market economy -- the context most of us exist in to
some extent, however regulated or stifled -- people don't work in a
vacuum.  They work by exchanging their labor for money.  That means
trading values with other people -- not creating values and consuming
them without trade.  So, creating more wealth usually means that there's
more wealth to go around.  For example, if I work harder and earn
more -- assuming it isn't all taxed or regulated away -- I'm eventually
going to spend more.  I'm also earning more because I'm trading my
services for someone else's wants.  That person is paying me more
because she or he gets more benefits.  That's the positive sum nature of
market interactions.

As Adam Smith and others have noted, this increases the overall wealth
of society and improves standards of living overall -- even if each
individual only intends her or his own wealth maximization.

This is not to say that's it, no need for charity.  However, it is to
state pretty much the facts.  If you don't increase wealth, then charity
will always come as a decrease in wealth and be harmful overall.

>>> If I were a bitter old Libertarian clutching
>>> my gun and grumping about all taxes
>>> being theft, I would be so busy wallowing
>>> in my self-pity and victim mentality that I
>>> would not give back anything to anyone.
> >
>> I'm sure there are a few people like that
>> out there, but almost all of the libertarians
>> I know are not like that.
>
> Maybe not that extreme.

Well, do you know people who are professed libertarians who fit your
caricature of the Misery, Gun-Toting Libertarian?:)  I don't.  I do know
several non-libertarians who come close, but I don't assume that all
non-libertarians are therefore miserly nuts.:)  Certainly, not you.:)

> But you are already arguing that charity is
> not as important as working, creating and
> making your own money.

The social benefits of people producing wealth should be obvious.  Also,
one way to help humankind out is not be on charity yourself.  Yes, I do
believe it is more important than charity.  Again, charity must come
from somewhere.  That somewhere is out of productive work.  If not, then
it really isn't charity is it?  More on this below.

> You seem to actually look down on charity
> or see it as a bad thing, think I am a morally
> smug (bad) person for doing it, etc.

I only see it as bad if you're doing it for the wrong reasons or with
the wrong results.  If you're doing it for morally superiority or out of
a sense guilt, I think this corrupts the charity.  If you do it with the
wrong results, well, you might be a well-meaning person, but the end
result will be wrong.

> This kind of zero-sum libertarian thinking
> tends to turn selfish.

There's the rub.  You seem to oppose rational self-interest against
charity -- and treat rational self-interest as a bad thing.  My personal
ethics -- basically Objectivist -- do not see self-interest as
inherently evil or opposed to charity and generosity.

> It leads one to believe that there are
> limited resources, so "I have to make
> mine first" and "there isn't enough to
> share with anybody else".  I think it
> also leads to selfish justification
> that "I help others by holding my own
> job and keeping my own money".

Well, you do help others by trading with them as opposed to either not
trading with them -- in the Crusoe fashion of each man or woman being an
isolated economy (which does not really happen on any great scale
anyway) -- or by living off them -- being a charity case yourself
because you're unproductive or underproductive.

Also, above I argue that market interactions are basically a positive
sum game.  Yes, resources and wealth are both limited -- no one has an
infinite quantity and seeing how people are always consuming more, few
or none seem to have enough.  Allowing for voluntary acts of generosity,
I don't see where your problem is.  People do give to money and time to
charities.  You've admitted you do.  I assume no one comes to your door
and drags you to the soup kitchen for your shift there.  How is that you
do this voluntarily but you don't believe anyone else will?

Also, just anecdotally, I haven't met any libertarians who fit your
caricature.  Why is it that libertarians -- who you think would all be
misers because that's where you believe their political philosophy would
lead -- are charitable types?  (I'm not arguing that they're more
charitable than the average person.  Maybe they're average.  Maybe not.
I don't know.)

> Sorry, but I don't believe in trickle-
> down economics.

I'm not sure what you mean by the term.  I believe people should be
allowed to freely interact -- which includes both market interactions
and private acts of generosity -- as opposed to being forced to interact
in ways they would not otherwise -- including being taxed to pay for
whatever, where the "whatever" can be corporate welfare, foreign wars,
public schools, or what have you.

>>> It is this very fact that I have been blessed in
>>> my life that empowers me to help others.
>>> If I really felt that I had to claw and scratch out
>>> every single penny with no help from anyone,
>>> seeing the government and social institutions
>>> as enemies, I would bury all my money in the
>>> back yard and never help anyone.
>>
>> I think you're setting up a package deal here --
>> meaning you're packing together things that
>> don't necessarily go together.  I see nothing
>> wrong with making wealth and deciding what
>> to do with it -- i.e., not having the government
>> come in and take some or force you to use
>> your wealth in certain ways.  As long as you
>> don't harm others, you should be free to
>> produce, create, trade, give, and consume
>> as you see fit.  If you agree with this -- and
>> this is basically the standard libertarian
>> ideal -- then why can't you be charitable?
>> Many people I know who call themselves
> > libertarians do just this.
>
> The ideals you are promoting under the
> "libertarian" banner are all about freedom to
> get more for yourself.

What is wrong with me keeping more or all of what I earn?  I don't see
that as wrong, corrupt, immoral, or whatever.  What's also wrong with me
deciding who or what to be generous to -- or even not to be generous?

> Sure, there is nothing in it that precludes
> charity.

I'm glad you admit that.

> But all of its specifically stated goals are
> pretty much the opposite of charity.
> Libertarians worry so much about getting
> more for themselves, that many (not all)
> never get around to helping others.  Or
> they set their priorities that they will work
> toward a free state, and help others later.

Not the ones I know.  They're giving charity now, when they are
basically taxed at very high rates and certainly not as free as they
want to be.

Also, libertarianism is a political philosophy.  As such, it deals with
the role of force in society.  Its basic view is that force as such
should only be used in defense of individual negative rights -- rights
like those of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
Charity does not fall under political philosophy as such -- not as I
define it above -- but comes under personal morality or personal
preferences.

This goes to the deeper nature of charity I hinted at several times
above.  Charity, in order for it to truly be charity, must be voluntary.
Force charity is an oxymoron.  If you disagree, imagine, again, two
people, X and Y -- forgive my lack of imagination in naming them.:)  X
lives in a free society and gives nothing to charity.  No time, no
money, etc.  She doesn't go out of her way to help anyone and keeps to
herself.  She won't even hold the door open for another person.  She's
the miserly type you fear would be the majority in a libertarian world.
I think we can agree that X is not charitable.

Y lives in America now and he's taxed to give to various causes, such as
to fight AIDS in Africa, poverty in his city, school lunches across the
nation.  He doesn't give -- except when he's forced to.  Is Y
charitable?  In my view, he's not.  He's basically the same as X.  He's
as uncharitable as she is.

Now, we can just as well posit an X' and Y' -- both charitable
individuals, but X' lives in a libertarian society while Y' lives in
America today.  Both give money and time to various causes and are
generally generous.  Y', of course, is limited is his giving because a
large amount of his personal wealth is taken from him to pay for causes
he might not like or agree with.  Even if Y' agrees with them, suppose
he notices that one of the so called charities is actually
counterproductive -- that the money to fight AIDS is really just lining
the pockets of big drug corporations.  He can't do much about it.  They
money is taxed from him.

>> The package deal is that you are assuming
>> that that libertarian ideal must make you
>> out to be a Scrooge-like character and
>> that only people who support government
>> welfare schemes can be truly generous.
>
> No, libertarian philosophy does not make
> you a scrooge, but it is the perfect philosophy
> for an already scroogy person to hold.

If you recall "A Christmas Carol," Ebanezer Scrooge argued that he
already paid his taxes and these were spent on the poor.  Dickens seemed
more interested in the story not in Scrooge supporting government
welfare, but in him truly embracing generosity as personal trait.
Scrooge's transformation is partly him coming back to humanity -- not
his becoming a welfare statist.:)

> And, no, you don't have to love the government
> to work through their charities, but a deep hate
> or distrust of the government will probably
> lead people to not support government
> programs in any way.

I hope you wouldn't assume that a hate and distrust of government --
healthy, in my opinion, given that governments do things like oppress
and murder people wholesale not just retail -- means that one can never
ever have private charity.

>> I'm sure many people who believe in
>> government welfare mean well and
>> feel it's the only way to help others.
>> They're wrong, misguided, and their
>> efforts are counterproductive.  Likewise,
>> not everyone who is allowed to pursue
>> his or her happiness is going to be
>> charitable.  There will be misers, but
>> misers tend to be rare anyhow.  They
>> actually tend to do less harm because
>> they don't stop the rest of us from being
>> generous.)
>
> I agree with the first part.  But I disagree
> that misers are rare.  I do auditing for a
> living.  I find rampant fraud almost
> everywhere I go.  People cheat people
> all the time.

In what sense do you mean "cheat" above (to the extent you can elaborate
without violating a fiduciary agreement)?

> These misers do hurt other people all the time.
> Enron is not an exception, it is the rule.
> These people do the opposite of trickle-down.
> They destroy value for many others to enhance
> their own stockpile.

That's another matter.  Someone who steals or cheats in that sense is
violating libertarian principles.  that such people exist in the modern
welfare state should tell us about its impact on personal character.

Also, I wanted to bring up two more points.  One is that when people are
free, they will often do things you don't like or agree with.  For
instance, people in America are generally free to do a lot of things,
but they don't all pursue high culture, learn new skills, improve their
character, knowledge, physique, and the like.  E.g., freedom of the
press doesn't mean everyone's reading Chaucer, Milton, and Plato.
Instead, the few who do read are all over the board and, I bet, more
sales are made of trashy romance novels and "true crime" stories than
great literature.  Does that mean we should curtail freedom?

Two, you're making the argument that without a welfare state or some
kind of "forced charity" (in quotes because I believe it's an oxymoron
for the reasons stated above) appears little different than a theist
arguing that atheism must lead to immorality.  Yes, again, free people
might abandon many of the assistance programs -- a good thing in many
cases, since I don't think Boeing needs that Import Export Bank (your
tax dollars at work) support to sell jet liners to the Saudis:) -- but
that's life.  Some will, a lot won't.  I know I won't and I bet most
people who are truly charitable won't.

In closing, since you hinted that you do charity out of guilt -- I bet
this is not true -- this brings up the problem of why a person does
charity in the first place.  I know we have no way of looking into
people's minds and divining their motives, but to do charity out of
guilt seems the wrong reason -- as wrong as doing it to feel morally
superior.  I think the right reasons are out of generosity and out of
fellow-feeling.

(Leonard Peikoff once gave a talk where he said there was nothing wrong
with charity provided you remember three things.  One, charity does not
have any moral bearing on the giver.  One is not morally better for it.
Two, charity must never be a sacrifice.  E.g., you don't starve your
children so you can feed a stranger.  I.e., you don't damage your values
to do it.  Three, the recipient of charity must not be the cause of his
or her own misfortune.  E.g., you don't give money to a lazy person who
doesn't have his own money because he's lazy and won't work.  He is, of
course, talking inside the context of his morality which is basically
Objectivist.  I'm not sure I agree with his three criterion and only
offer them as food for thought.)

Okay, I hope the above did not seem hostile in any way and I apologize
for my earlier comment where I tried to divine your motives.

Cheers!

Dan
  See "The Hills of Rendome" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Rendome.html