My Concept of Charity

Philanthropy can be a dangerous concept

2010-06-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

Money is power right? Well it depends? But if we accept the governments are not debasing it by printing it too quickly, and other people recognising the value of it, then it certainly has power. So what is the impact of giving it away?

Recently some of the world's billionaires got together in the USA to discuss the topic. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were calling upon the billionaires of the world to give the bulk of their wealth to charity. There are of course good reasons for them to do this and associated benefits:

1. You cannot take it to the grave with you.

2. You can give it to your children, but in so doing you might be denying the value of developing a sense of efficacy for your children. The same is true for any benefactor.

3. There are people whose basic needs are not being met

4. Better having successful business people giving than politicians taking.

The problem I have with this style of promotion is:

1. It tends to make a virtue out of giving - not of creating. In that respect I think we lose sight of the gift of capitalism and the underlying value of self-interest. These people I think are looking for some sense of 'social pride' which I think communicates a dangerous message.

2. These business people were good at some commercial endeavour. Might it be possible that when it comes to social policy, they are really bad. I just look at how governments deal with issues of morality, public policy, and the idea of them channelling their money into welfare is really dangerous, given the prospect of inefficient investment. It is scarier than emissions trading schemes and other community minded projects. I need only refer to my Parenting blog, where I commented on Bill Gates ideas of parenting. Do you want him bestowing mis-education upon the poor? If the choice is 'instead of government', maybe its not so bad, but I caution. You tend to expect a bureaucrat to be incompetent....you should also expect the same of business leaders. After all, its common for a business person who ventures into a new industry to lose money.

The problem with welfare is that there is no 'profit-loss' when you stuff up. There is only the greater incidence of crime when Bill Gates teaches us that wealth is not created, it grows on the trees outside the Gates Foundation for Bad Advice.

There is a problem with this program on the level of ethics.....it might actually drive us towards fascism. Always count on unthinking business people to do that. How pray tell? Well, every collectivist tyranny in history was lined with good intentions. In this scheme there is the risk that these business leaders will make a virtue out of generosity....which is fine if generosity is something you do from a position of efficacy and material surplus. But if they are saying 'selfishness is bad', we need to give more....then I say these 'captains of industry' are ethically deprave....that they do not understand their own motivations. The inherent problem is the social ethic which considers production selfish, but philanthropy as 'virtuous'.

I thought the decision of these two men to give their money a logical thing to do at the end of their lives. If they make a virtue of it, they will give me reason to repudiate that praise because they will have done far greater damage to our society. Wealth is created by self-interest, not renouncing your mind or material wealth for the sake of others. If we make a virtue out of giving, we will end up extorting wealth from people for the sake of some misguided virtue. Who am I kidding - we already are!

More problematic however when business does it, as they would otherwise be creating more wealth, sustaining the growth in productive capacity which is the engine of the US and other Western countries. My concern is that Bill and Warren will flood the United States V6 engine with crappy fuel. What will happen when that happens? Will people argue that people were not giving enough, like government, or will they reflect on their misguided values.

If you are thinking things will be ok because they will be guided by researchers or scientists. Ok, that is fine if those advisors are people from industry, like strongly empirically-minded psychotherapists, but if they are rationalising academics, then it is a truly scary idea. Even still, those industry people can be driven by poorly conceived ideas which originated with deluded, detached academics. I hope there are some critical thinkers out there. The good news is that so few people cannot spend so much money without help....and its good that its not politically-motivated spending. It is a great opportunity....I hope it is well directed. Hard to believe any such effort will be as bad as government. But again I caution...this philanthropy is not substituting for government, it is substituting for 'real' investment.

If you ask me...what is more important?..... Further investment in a car factory in China or investment in youth? I say it depends on the values of the Chinese government (and people) versus the values of the youth. Bill I trust will make the investment conditional upon importance. Anyway, reason for concern....Bill Gates did not exactly create the world's most reliable operating system...maybe his 'education of kids' will spread a terrible cultural virus. Fortunately, there will doubtless be some traditional conservative billionaires out there who will not jump on the same train of thought. That is a good thing.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax Australia

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Charity is ill-conceived

2009-03-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

When I look at charity it is readily apparent that it is such a flawed concept because it assesses the moral worth of any action on the basis of intentions rather than performance. A business man would not make such a mistake. He would not invest money in a project if the sponsors had no credibility. Yet religion will teach you that the 'neediest person is the most deserving'. Really? By whose standards?
Charity is flawed because it is based on altruism rather than selfishness. You should not give because you feel guilty or you want some moral sanction or credibility. You give because you take selfish pride in helping others, because you have been validated, and helping others is just one more problem to solve, and perhaps you don't need the money. Frankly I can't see why anyone would want to give money away when you can help people by enlisting them in productive effort. If you give people money there is a transfer of wealth. If you enlist them in productive effort you are giving them a capacity not only to help themselves for a lifetime, but you are contributing to wealth creation, and reinforcing healthy values.
The altruistic base upon which philanthropy is based is actually undermining virtue. You don't help people through self-sacrifice, by thinking less of yourself. You make your own enslavement more likely in your lifetime. Religious institutions are basically taking advantage of their followers so that they can profit from book sales. If they were selling healthy values, and honestly disclosing their real intent, and that that intent was consistent with their philosophy, and if their philosophy had any applicability to the real world, then that would be ok. But as you will read in my religious blog, religion is highlly flawed. Well meaning? Not at all. Its perhaps the biggest fraud perpetrated on humanity for the sake of power. Its closely followed by democracy. See my political blog.

My Philippines Project Proposal - educating the poor

2008-01-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

I am a great thinker. If I didnt have so many great ideas I would be a billionaire by now. I am very good at coming up with ideas, even developing them into business plans. But actually I care little for getting my hands dirty with execution. Interestingly that is my Filipino girlfriend's strength. So that might auger well for the future.

But I thought here was a good opportunity in the Philippines. Its actually a distraction for me - one of many. But here is the idea. Hopefully a Filipino airline executive will read my blog. Hopefully people will send books, if not on their own initiative, then through Philippine Airlines.

According to the Philippines Inquirer, a young mayor of Tabango Municipality in Leyte Province, the Philippines has been overseeing the development of a P5.8mil ($US120,000) modern library for his community. The municipality has been promised between P0.5-1mil to complete the construction, and its finished. I think alot of credit goes to the mayor for keeping this project alive for 6 years. The municipality has an income of just P30mil ($US700,000). The library has the capacity to hold 20,000 books, and today it has just a few hundred. I dont think this project needs any money. What it needs is people prepared to give books and for Philippine Airlines to distribute the books from around the world to fill the library.

The reason this is important is because Filipinos are poor thinkers. I get a sense of why theyare poor thinkers when I look at the way they are raised. They are not intellectually challenged. Worse still is that they are not raised with any sense of structure, or what we would call normalcy. They are without a doubt the most self-indulgent laxed people on the half of the earth - but thats just the poor ones. A great many of the aspirational ones are climbing over each other trying to build their own sense of security. I dont sense much empathy in this 'seemingly' Christian land. The reason I know its stuff is because I have a reasonable confortable life here. I live in a 3bedroom apartment, but I have blaring stereos on one side, planes flying overhead, 6-10 barking dogs in the street, 3 cocks next door, kids playing in the street, a pig feed factory next door. Actually I live in a subdivision, but this country is chaos, so you could end up with a factory operating out of your neighbourhood as I do next door.

Now I am an abstract thinker, and I find it hard to find peace in this country. My GF was raised by Americans, albeit Chinese ones, but she was raised from 19yo and she's amazing. Some credit has to go to her parents, as all three of their kids are successful, and all from a modest background. The kids in this country need a place to learn. A quiet place. Most dont live as I do. Many of them live in 1-2 room houses with 7 people - just 40-50m2 in area, on small 50-100m2 lots. Its noisy, its smelly, its disruptive. But what if there was a place - a quiet, air conditioned place which would attract kids because this place was too poor to have a shopping mall - just to experience the cool air lest theyever have the opportunity to buy anything. Parents are loving in the Philippines, but they are not the greatest intellectual role models. For this they need a library to escape to. Many kids dont go to school because there is no quiet home place to work.

In these poor areas, a library could be a 'mecca' for kids to learn. As long as they are prevented from talking, I think they would discover the merits of an education. But they need books. I know how important books are. I had few friends when I was young. I was different. I ended up in a library. Its a great place to start a life. Some people never get to one. In a library you can explore the world, get exposed to many 'secular' ideas. Libraries contain the greatest minds that ever lived. But they have to be used, and if they are going to be places of learning, then they need books!

If you work at Philippine Airlines, if you know someone that does, or if you have books which greatly influenced your life and you dont read it any more, consider taking it to Philippine Airlines or sending it to this school on your own initiative.

My concept of charity

2008-01-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

My concept of charity derives from my code of ethics. I had a Christian upbring. My grandfather was a church minister. He died when I was 3yo so dont know if he was a serial abuser. I think he was too strong for that. I rejected Christianity when I was 19yo after reading a philosophy book by Ayn Rand called "Capitalism - the Unknown Ideal". Then I went on to read another one of her non-fiction books "The Virtue of Selfishness".
So within the space of a week I went from believing in altruism to believing in selfishness. Thats quite a reversal - considering the fundamentality of ethics. Apart from the fact that I'm a very courageous thinker, I think because I spent alot of my youth in the school library reading science books, I had a huge respect for reason and the objectivity of reality. For me there were not contradictions.

Since then my value system has chanced a little. I still believe in selfishness, but its not the type of selfishness where you achieve values at others expense - that is through the initiation of force. My concept is that I invest in myself, I create the security and values that I need to expand my realm of influence. So I start life very narrowly focused on myself, my education, my goals. When I am secure in myself, confident in myself, then I start investing in others. Not because its moral or noble to help others, but because it makes me feel good to identify and connect with people who share the same values. So selfishness involves helping oneself, then charity begins in the home, and grows. Although thats what some Christians do, their rationalisation is much different. They need the act of giving to be on altruistic terms. There has to be a sacrifice for it to be moral.
I think most of them have no ambition to follow through with their quest because their values are not theirs. It turns them into hypocrits. But more important look at the abuse at the institutional level. Child abuse, misuse of church funds. Evasion of what is considered their altruistic duty.

So my goal is to give selfishly where I get something in return. When you think about it. If you truly know how to help people, then the poor villages of Bangladesh or the Philippines are a gold resource to harness. Strangely education is a 'controlled' resource in the Philippines, even though this country was founded by missionaries. Its become an outmoded means of educating. Hard to believe it - the Philippines is actually rejecting investment in its education system. It will only accept unqualified financial assistance. so I say give them books you dont need anymore. Maybe Philippine Airlines could offer to distribute books from wealthy foreign countries to Philippine villages. It has a commanding position in distribution. So where are the books and where is the will?

What is wrong with charity?

2008-01-20T18:40:00.001-08:00

I am not a Christian. I haven't got a mystic bond in my body. Some people ask me - What do I live for? The question seems strange to me. I can still have a sense of purpose without believing in some after-life. In fact I would argue that values that are personally held have more meaning than values blindly accepted on faith.
They argue that just because I dont believe myself to live beyond my death, that I could not have any reason for living. Maybe thats why they invest so much time in material prosperity because they think they can take it with them. Or maybe its just more selfish to give wealth to your family members than strangers. Well I have studied philosophy and psycholohgy, and I know that people have a Hierarchy of Values. So I can't rationalise that 'Charity Begins In the Home' because that it where it for the most part seems to end.

Actually I am not advocating that people give away there fortunes to the poor. I am advocating that people act with integrity. I think if people did that - there would be less poor. Some of the examples of poverty - like the following story on the Philippines is caused more by a lack of integrity than anything else. There is an enormous concentration of wealth in this country. Though this country has more 'name-plate' Catholics than any country on Earth, though they when it comes to integrity - they must be one of the most maligned. Of course its a case of ignorance.