Daddy Warbucks

The big difference is that water has basically zero cost, and that dumping water on the person has a very real impact on saving the dude's life.

How do you save starving people with money? Which charity? How much will actually help? How can you make sure the aid's actually getting to the people in need and not going into some dude's Swiss account? It'd be like having a big bucket of water, except with a huge amount of people, half of which are pretending to be on fire, and another bunch ARE on fire but are simply being held hostage by some farmer who wants his field to get watered. It's a much more complicated process than just telling people that they're conscienceless bastards for not giving money to starving people in Africa.

 

Not at all. I have a shitty old fan that my parents gave me. To say that it has no value to me is to not understand that it is the only thing keeping me cool through the summer. Whether I'd gone out and bought a brand new Dyson bladeless fan or just kept using this one, they have the same value because they do the same thing. I also have a motorcycle in rather good condition that I got for cheap on a very rare deal: if I sold it for the amount that I got it, I would have to spend perhaps twice as much to get a motorcycle in similar condition using conventional channels (autotrader, craigslist, etc.); nevermind the time spent trailering it to my place, registering it with the ministry of transportation, etc. The bike, strictly speaking, is worth more than $1500 to me.

Getting something for free doesn't mean that you take it for granted.

 

So if one could hypothetically invent a near-perfect charity related to world hunger, there would be a moral imperative for the rich to give to it? I'm not sure that's it. There seems to be an innate belief, particularly amongst American thought., of a moral right to keep one's money and waste it if one chooses.

I'm not trying to be holier than thou, for what it's worth. I have the same gut instinct, and probably give less than my fair share. I just find this difference weird. And it seems to go deeper than mere selfishness.


In other news, MoreCowbell is an annoying shit-stirrer who gets too much pleasure from playing Devil's advocate.

 

How can you say water has zero cost? The Saudis spend over $8 billion per year on desalination. At some point in your life, you traded dollars for water, or someone has for you. What if you'd just spent $5 buying a couple gallons at the store, and ran across a guy on fire in the parking lot - the water would have literally cost something then, no?

Everyone agrees it's contemptible not to douse a guy on fire with water when you're standing next to him. But who knows how bad the burns are? There's a good chance the guy will die from them anyway, and there's a drought in your state, and you're thirsty. The water might be better used elsewhere; you don't know if it's going to save the guy. Similarly, The $20 you thought about donating to charity, or the $300 million that Indian might have used to start a charitable foundation, might not have saved any lives, and been better spent on the Slap-Chop or a fourth or fifth helicopter pad.

The reason for expanding the (imperfect, hyperbolic) analogy was to emphasize the arguable moral principle. If you can save someone's life, without bearing an unreasonable hardship yourself, should you be obligated to do so? No doubt, tons of charities are useless, and even with the good ones, you'll probably never know if your dollars made an impact. I won't deny that someone suffering in front of you has more visceral impact than any theorizing about children starving in Africa. But if you value one life, why do you discount another just because you can't see it, or physically act to save it?

I understand the attitude that no one has any right to your dollars but you. I agree with it. But you have to admit that when you choose not to donate, or a billionaire chooses to horde money so that his progeny will enjoy more money than you or I can imagine for the next few centuries, you could both potentially be helping people instead.

On a way less preachy note, if I ever run into a girl like the one from the original post, I've got one strategy: Bust inside for the win!

 

Every time I hear about someone who is filthy retarded rich, I think about writing them a letter asking them to pull me out of debt. I don't want a bunch of money, I just don't want to owe anything anymore. Right now it would take less than $100,000 to put me ahead. For a billionaire, that's like throwing pennies at a homeless person.
Please pay off my house and my truck, rich person. You won't even feel it. I promise.

 

In regards to the girl in the original video, she's apparently not some vapid waste, she does some charity fundraising, which is commendable, but it's hard to juxtapose that against the purchase of a fucking $85M house. Insofar as do the rich have the obligation to help those with fewer means? No, of course they don't. Some of the titans of American industry didn't even leave much to their own children, although in those cases they generally did donate most of their cash to colleges or charities. But hey, if you start out making plastic flowers in a factory like Li Ka Shing and wind up with 26 billion, it's your money, spend it on hookers and blow or building schools, your call.

My only experience with a person with that kind of serious money is my Godfather, who is an officer in ExxonMobile, and earns nearly eight figures per year. He doesn't fit into the norm though, he's intensely Catholic, so he's spending quite a bit of his fortune to build a cathedral in Kenya, not because he feels he has to do something just because he is wealthy, he truly thinks that God wants him to do it.

 

Money is for the most part just printed paper. Or purely digital in the case of a credit card donation. The cost is getting it. Which makes the getting it form the well analogy more applicable I think.

The difference isn't logical. It's to do with how we relate psychologically to other human beings. Charity advertising researchers have shown that you get substantially higher donations when you highlight a single starving child, than if you try and show how incomprehensibly big the problem of third world hunger is. People can identify with one child, right in front of them on the TV. People can't relate to a starving population half a world away. We just don't scale that way in terms of our psychology.

I know some pretty rich people - comfortable multi millionaires. I've met a few staggeringly rich people. Bill Gates and a few other IT types with insane money. I've never thought about just grovelling for their pocket change before. It might have some merit.

 

Call me naive, but I think you could potentially solve a good amount of the problems in Africa by completely banning the sale of Arms to African countries.

 

Are you trolling or just not thinking? There are already a huge portion of the world's AK47's in Africa, and every part of the replacement parts and ammunition manufacturing process can be (and often already is) done entirely within Africa. It's also a massively problematic ban to enforce and the most likely to get screwed by such a ban would be the legit farmers and relatively peaceful nations who have a real need for firearms, not only for self defense, but because Africa is full of predators that trash food production - baboons alone are a massive problem for keeping any farm viable. Predators eat livestock. The list goes on.

The only viable (and by viable I mean still massively problematic, but at least with a potential positive end point) solution to Africa's level of fucked up is to promote a larger middle class. Nothing stabilizes a region like giving the majority of the population something to lose. Poor people with no hope see a lot of appeal in violence. They're angry and hopeless, and dead isn't that much worse than starving and fucked. The only plausible way to do that that I've ever heard, is to give Africa a chance at an agricultural economy. And the only way to do that is to lift export restrictions on food crops. Currently the most viable agricultural export economy in Africa is barley for stock feed. If the same farms could produce wheat to sell for human consumption, the excess food produced would be suitable to feed a massive percentage of the population who are currently starving, and the economies of those producers would be substantially benefited.

Live 8 successfully increased aid to Africa, but didn't actually do a damned thing about reducing the barriers to trade that prevent the kind of economy that produces a stable social environment. Inter tribal hate and existing militias and dictatorships are a massive problem, but unless there's an economic path that produces a middle class, they're not fixable. Aid policies are wonderful for dictators and the existing political control structures - but do fuck all to help the majority of the population except keep them alive long enough for the next aid package, and then far from perfectly. Protectionist policies aimed at sheltering the non competitive agricultural markets of the western first world, and funding in particular unprofitable cattle farms in Europe, corn farmers in north America and wheat farmers in Australia are what cripple Africa's ability to develop to a stable economic model.

 

In a similar vain I always contemplate trying to sue Mark Zuckerberg. For what? I don't know, maybe say I was the one who came up with the news feed idea or tagging people in pictures or something. I'd only go for something like $4 million, enough to solve any problems, but not enough for him to want to go to court and fight it.

 

QFT. Take a look at farm subsidies in the US sometime - it's one of those subjects that slips under the radar because it sounds boring, but has a disproportionate impact.

 

A billion dollars and it still looks a like gaudy hotel/banquet hall. They may as well have moved into the Marriott.

 

I'm not really feeling all these opinions on Africa. Africa is not a homogenous entity. Many parts of Africa are seeing excellent economic growth, while others are not. Africans as a population are more genetically diverse than the rest of the world combined so it is incredibly stupid to use the phrase "The African People." For the areas that are not seeing growth, there are many different causes and explanations for their issues. If you are going around saying "Africa needs this" or "Africa doesn't need that" you are demonstrating a profound ignorance of the heterogeneity of the situations.

 

I find it funny that people don't get mad when you earn/steal/conjure a lot of money, but get mad when you spend it. No objections to the process by which money gets taken out of the hands of others and put into your hands (either through legitimate means or illegitimate means), but lots of rage when it flows back into the economy via you spending it, because that's when people are able to fixate on their jealousy.

 

Edit: MC's comment below is much more on point.

 

Public attitudes about investment bankers' bonuses seem to call that conclusion into question. And no one ever takes issue with professional athletes' salaries.

 

I meant more in instances like these. Obviously this fortune was amassed over a long period of time and has existed for number of years, yet suddenly it's a big deal when she buys a house.

 

We sure do love our aristocrats.