If you insist that charity and abundance are both measured in dollars, then charity isn't really a good thing, because it can only start with sucking up a bunch of resources, far beyond what you need. This model of charity is a farce: having accumulated resources they have no right to, the rich get to do good when and where it's convenient for them, giving away resources that weren't theirs to give. Bill Gates accumulated billions selling the results of other people's labor during the height of the AIDS epidemic, the Rwandan Genocide, the crack epidemic, the war on drugs, rising homelessness, etc., only founding the Gates foundation in 2000. We're supposed to applaud him for ignoring problems for 25 years so he can look good taking on a few politically uncontroversial problems now? No thanks.
As it turns out, skilled labor is a resource that can be given charitably, without having to amass vast resources at other people's expense. Paul Farmer or Jonas Salk have changed more lives than the Gates foundation, without accumulating "abundance"--Jonas Salk even refused to patent the polio vaccine.
Free time is also a form of abundance. Generally this surplus is achieved by living within one's means. Producing more than one consumes is the basic form of profit. Individuals can realize this through leisure or savings. The surplus can be applied for their subjective charitable ends or reinvested into the market. Even there, I'd caution against divorcing charity from the market. Despite screeds to the contrary, charity has a market value unto itself.
Gates is a problematic figure for other reasons, but the idea that all profit is theft and therefore abundance is impossible within the market is a bit absurd. The profit motive is what creates abundance. How individualschoose to spend their profits is an individualdecision.
Before you can act charitably, you need the requisite resources. Obsessing over the units of measure is completely besides the point. Time, skills or goods must be acquired in advance. Hard leftists have a penchant for misconstruing market incentives. Greed, uncharitable hoarding and immoral behavior is an option in the market. However it is not a predetermined outcome. The article speaks to this. The charitably minded auto-mechanic is free to deploy his resources in the way that best suits his ends.
Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. Central planners have little to no incentive to create abundance. Class based subsidies often create resentment and divide communities. As you observe, inter-class and inter-caste conflicts are often used in service of the state's largess. Voluntary market systems have no issue with voluntary charity. To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
> The profit motive is what creates abundance.
Abundance for whom? Surplus is allocated by the few at the top (board of directors, c-suite, etc.). Why should they choose to give it to the workers? Walmart and McDonalds certainly understand this -- pay your employees low enough that they qualify for food stamps, and you'll be able to make the taxpayers foot the bill ("government largesse").
There is obviously nothing wrong with charity per se; GP is simply pointing out the obvious inefficiency in using charity to improve the lives of the poor (for example). Why not just pay them more to begin with (say through a democratic organization of the workplace in which no worker would ever choose to pay themselves below-subsistence wages)? Instead, we let money accumulate at the top, and then charity sometimes trickles a tiny bit of it back down.
> Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit.
By state-mandated coercion do you mean taxes to fund welfare programs? Violence is already implicit in the creation and perpetuation of the working poor. Welfare is a necessary tool to make sure that the poor are not so starved that they might rise up against the ruling class, "having nothing to lose but their chains". Again the inefficiency here is clear -- welfare would be unnecessary if our basic needs were met. Welfare would be unnecessary if workers had democratic control of their own workplaces. Instead, we have a "voluntary" market in which the worker is coerced to participate at risk of starvation and rewarded by wages that have not kept up with increases in productivity for 40 years. The market thus violently creates the _need_ for charity.
> [T]he idea that all profit is theft and therefore abundance is impossible within the market is a bit absurd. The profit motive is what creates abundance.
I didn't say "all profit", and I didn't say "within the market". Profit is fine and can even be necessary to meet one's needs--the problem arises when people begin accumulating well beyond their needs while others are struggling to meet their needs. If you want a more accurate representation of what I'm saying it's this: Abundance is theft. Abundance and scarcity cannot coexist in a just society.
The way I see it, labor is what creates value. Organizing labor is itself a form of labor which creates value, but often the organizers are self-serving, structuring things in such a way that they receive a disproportionate portion of the results of the collective labor, far beyond the value that their organizing labor provides.
Profit motive is one way to incentivize labor, but there are other reasons why people perform labor. One such reason is simply because we want to provide value to each other: pro-social motive. And unlike profit motive, pro-social motive doesn't motivate people to amass gigantic amounts of resources while others suffer in scarcity.
> How individuals choose to spend their profits is an individual decision.
And when people make bad decisions, they should be treated accordingly.
> Before you can act charitably, you need the requisite resources.
Sure, but the requisite resources isn't billions, or even millions of dollars. Nothing is stopping you from helping people right now, with the resources you have.
> Greed, uncharitable hoarding and immoral behavior is an option in the market.
There is no such thing as "charitable hoarding"--the phrase "uncharitable hoarding" is redundant.
The question is, why are hard rightists so insistent that greed, hoarding, and immoral behavior must be options? Why is it desirable to have that as an option?
> However it is not a predetermined outcome. The article speaks to this. The charitably minded auto-mechanic is free to deploy his resources in the way that best suits his ends.
A few selfish people siphoning off the majority of the profit from millions of people's labor can both drive millions into scarcity, creating a greater need for charity, and take up the resources created by their employee's labor which otherwise might have been used charitably. Sure, a few people here and there can find ways to buck the trend, but with rent-seekers on all sides, it can be a great deal of people's charitable labor is sucked up by greed rather than need.
> Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. Central planners have little to no incentive to create abundance. Class based subsidies often create resentment and divide communities. As you observe, inter-class and inter-caste conflicts are often used in service of the state's largess. Voluntary market systems have no issue with voluntary charity. To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
I'm not proposing state mandated coercion, so you can drop that straw man. Collective labor and cultural change that causes greedy people to be ostracized are much better solutions.
In a democracy, central planners are incentivized to create value by threat of (non-violent) removal from their position. This breaks down, of course, when you start allowing people to amass huge amounts of resources and then invest a portion of it in buying elections.
I'll add that the contrast between authoritarian communism (which, again, I'm not proposing) and unbridled capitalism, is not as large as you seem to think. Class creates resentments now, because so many are living in scarcity while a few accumulate resources far beyond their needs or contributions to society. Violence is implicit now, with wars driven by greed, prisons driven by profit creating a slave class, and violence driven by poverty and disfranchisement. You're worried about charity being involuntary, but what we have now is that instead of charity being involuntary, giving a portion of your labor to the already-rich is involuntary.
None of the problems of communist authoritarianism which you point out, are solved by capitalist authoritarianism where the rich rule.
> To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
To reiterate, abundance, as in billionaires, is not necessary for charity, and in fact, charity is hampered by this sort of abundance.
Judging by your comment history, you appear to live in the US.
As a brit who grew up during her time in power, I want to say the Thatcher was a vile, vindicive. and spiteful person who blighted countless lives in my country and community. Using her as an exemplar of morality is abhorrent.
Talking about ideals is nice and all, but unfortunately we live in reality. Bob can't help Chuck over there unless Bob can afford to be charitable.
Put another way, you need both will and power to do something. Just wanting to be charitable never helped anyone, you also need the means to be charitable.
...which very few people have, because that ability has been disproportionately allocated to a few people who often choose not to be charitable.
The power to take charitable action does not require vast resources to be concentrated in a few individuals, and in fact concentrating vast resources in a few individuals often prevents charitable action from occurring.
It doesn't take "vast resources concentrated in few individuals" to effect charity, but a given individual needs to have most if not all of his own needs and desires satisfied first before he can start giving to others.
The Good Samaritan helped because he was doing well in life and could afford to help someone out. If he was a beggar he wouldn't (read: can't) help. The Good Samaritan is remembered because he had good intentions and money to turn his good intentions into good actions.
I'm no Christian, but do you get it that the parable of the Good Samaritan is allegorical? It's not about a historical "remembered" event, or about money as a necessary precondition for moral behaviour, or about "will and power" [1] as you put it upthread. It's about how compassion displayed by a member of an excluded group, despite their being oppressed, to a member of the parable-teller's group demonstrates our universal vulnerability and mutual dependency.
Thatcher was so inured by her own harsh, judgemental worldview that not only couldn't she properly recognise the point of the story, but her misinterpretation actually contradicts its essential meaning.
[1] were you intentionally referencing Nietzsche there?
Here's the thing everyone seems to not understand or deliberately ignore: The Good Samaritan can't be compassionate if he isn't sufficiently well off first. No one can be.
Whether the Good Samaritan wants to be compassionate to someone is irrelevant, he could be compassionate because he could afford to. Without the means, his desire to be compassionate would end as just a desire and we wouldn't be here talking about him.
>were you intentionally referencing Nietzsche there?
