Altruism as Atonement for Profit

"Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in hour stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others. Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?" - Rand, AS, p. 1031.

I was watching Wimbledon tennis today, and a commentator said that local residents were renting out their driveways for parking space, but promising to give the money away to charity. God forbid that they should spend the money on themselves! Evidently, charging money for the use of their driveways is morally permissible only so long as the proceeds go to others. Another commentator added cynically, "Do you really expect them to give the money to charity? How do we know they will?" -- said as if someone should make sure that they don't do the unthinkable by spending it on their own interests!

Despite its self-refuting absurdity, altruism continues to claim the moral high ground. Spending one's earnings selfishly is considered amoral at best, and as positively immoral if one earns a large enough amount and spends it entirely on oneself.

Observe that the moral acclaim accorded Bill Gates comes not from his revolutionizing software technology and providing home computers to millions of people, but from his philanthropy in which he donates large sums of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs. In other words, it comes not from his selfish, business activities which have made him the richest man on the planet, but from his unselfish, unremunerated gifts to others. It's almost as though he were trying to assuage his own guilt and deflect public criticism by demonstrating that he's really not a greedy, money grubbing capitalist, after all, but a noble philanthropist whom everyone should admire for his generosity.

Just once, I'd like to see a rich, successful entrepreneur stand up and say, in the spirit of Hank Rearden, "Philanthropy be damned; I earned this money for myself, and it is that, and that alone, which I regard as morally praiseworthy! Furthermore, I'm not giving one penny of it to charity!"

That I would love to see!

- Bill

Post 1

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - 8:27pm

Bill,

Using Gates� Excel, I just did some quick calculations.

If he likes the new car from Lotus, he could have 830,000 of them.

If he likes two-million-dollar homes, he could spend one day in each and it would take him 68 years to see them all.

If he likes twenty-million-dollar homes, he could have 2,500 of them. Spending a night in each, it would take only 7 years to see them all.

If he couldn�t decide between these, and opted for a weekly new Lotus, new two-million-dollar AND twenty-million-dollar homes, it would still take 44 years to spend all the money.

Post 2

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - 10:54pm

The point is, he is being praised for giving his money to charity, not for earning it through his creative genius.

As for how to spend it, he could invest it in new enterprises, which is preferable to philanthropy, because it rewards productivity. Charity does not, and is praised precisely for that reason -- on the grounds that it is given without demanding or expecting anything in return.

But the main point of my post was to emphasize the moral right to keep what one has earned. I would love to see a rich entrepreneur make this point in the kind of dramatic way that I mentioned.

- Bill

Post 3

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 12:58am

Fair enough.

My point was that Gates doesn�t have a chance in hell of spending his earnings �entirely on [him]self.�

Observe that even my hypotheticals involve investments in homes and cars, which leave him with the same huge wealth to bequeath to someone at the end of his life. Same goes for your suggestion of investing in new enterprises�there is still the huge wealth to leave to someone, (or to the state if he doesn�t name someone.) That someone may or may not do with the money what he would consider smart. And even if they find a miraculous way to spend it all �entirely on [them]self,� it will yet be spent on someone other than himself.

Gates would have to spend about five and a third million dollars a day to get it all spent by the end of his expected lifetime. How could he possibly CONSUME that much? There simply are no meals, masseuses or whores that cost that much.

He has no choice but to leave vast wealth behind. The only choice he has is to leave it with other, younger people to consume and give away, or to commit now to its eventual disposal toward the specific uses he can choose now.

Post 4

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 7:11am

And Warren Buffet complains that his secretary pays more tax than he does.

Post 5

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 8:05am

If Mr. Buffet wants to pay more taxes, he should write a check to the U.S. Treasury.

His secretary paying a tax rate of 30% on a $60,000 salary is absurd unless (1) Bufffet is including taxes both she and her employer pay for Social Security and Medicare or (2) she and maybe a husband have substantial other income, like $500,000 or more. Of course, most of Buffet's income is not subject to tax for Social Security and Medicare.

In any case, he compares apples and oranges.

Post 6

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 8:56am

�I�m making $80 million a year �
God must have intended me to have a lower tax rate.�

That's how I see it, too, given that by "God" we mean the natural order of the universe.

I agree that the numbes are fudged. The 30% tax rate of his secretary including two taxes that he can avoid -- and that she could, too, if she made more.

That raises another point: my mom was a secretary. She took it seriously. So, I have to wonder how one of the richest men in the world gets by with an amanuensis worth only $60k. I mean, that's $30 per hour, and nice for a "secretary" but considering the level of responsibility, is there some structural limit to what that is worth to him. I mean, OK, I have worked as a temporary receptionist for $10 per hour and lost a few calls and forgot to file a few things, you know, it happens, and you fix it. So, if I drop, say 3 calls a week for $10/hour, then does that mean she only drops 1 a week -- and that's all right? What if the call was from Bill Gates? Oooops! Sorry... Or how about memos? At $10 per hour, everything I wrote was read by someone else for approval. But then I was a temp. So, he cannot tell her to reply to someone without making sure she said the right thing, handled it the right way, cc:ed the right people? Or how about scheduling? For $10 per hour, I scheduled for a VP. I had his calendar on my desk. But, what was the downside? For $30/hr, that person is entrusted with evey penny of the multiple billions that swirl around the boss.

Perhaps the reason that I am not wealthy involves my perception that if I make a billion a year, then I need a secretary worth at least a million. I would have paid my Mom a million, but she never let me down, so I guess if my Mom is worth a million and his secretary is only worth $60,000 then she is only one-sixteenth as committed to his success as my Mom was to mine. Maybe he should hire his mother... or pay his secretary the incremental amount to take her out of social security and medicaid.

The market is always right and certainly no one knows markets like Mr. Buffett, so if he said that this is a $60K job, then I guess that's what it is worth.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/28, 9:00am)

Post 7

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 12:19pm

Have you ever noticed how purveyors of luxuries, like Porsches, bread, and spaghetti dinners, all conspire to charge the rich a smaller % of their income than the poor for exactly the same good/service?

How fair is that? The rich have more, so the rich should pay more. We are told that, on average, once every 12.8 seconds during our lifetimes.

I saw exactly this the other day at a Porsche dealership.   They don't even wait to qualify the buyer, they just imediately size you up when you so much as drive by and look at the price.

I can imagine the conversations in those salesrooms.

"Hey, here comes Bill Gates. He's a rich guy.   Let's only charge him 0.125% of his income for that new Turbo Cayenne."

"Uh-oh, a working schlep.   Quick! Jack the price up to 300% of his income for this slacker. Hurry up, before he sees us changing the price."

Prices: aka, the most regressive instrument of tribal torture ever invented by evil capitaleeeeeeeeeeests.

This isn't fair.   Folks should fairly pay the same % of their income for everything.

OTOH, the rich have more, so they should in fact pay a higher % of their income for everything.   Surely not less. Who the Hell came up with that scam, aimed squarely at the hides of slacker pump pullers not nearly pulling their fair share? I mean, the True Working Men and Women of This Land?

Can you imagine the look on the guy who owns the little diner when Bill Gates walks in for the Blue Plate Special?   It would go like this:

1] "Holy Crap! He so much as buys a cup of coffee, and I'm going to be Rich!"
...
followed immediately by

2] CRAP! He so much as buys a cup of coffee, and I'm going to be Rich!"

This is not really the world that the Berkloids are whining for. The one they want is the one where the rich are precisely yet smart enough to be rich, so they can be ridden like endlessly renewable ponies, but stupid enough not to get the crux of the latest reindeer games and adjust their lives accordingly.    Logic apparently isn't the Berkloid's biggest skillset.

regards,
Fred

Post 8

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 10:56pm

My point was that Gates doesn�t have a chance in hell of spending his earnings �entirely on [him]self.

Okay, I see your point, and it's well taken, but that's not why he's contributing to charity. He's contributing to charity, because he thinks that Microsoft must atone for its capitalist sins. (See my latest news item, "Bill Gates Should Exist the Guilt Lane."

In any case, suppose that Gates were not so rich that he couldn't spend it all on his own consumption. Do you think for one minute that he wouldn't be condemned as immoral if he did?! Of course, he would. We live in a society that worships altruism as a moral ideal and condemns "conspicious consumption."

As for charging the rich more because they can afford to pay more for the same good or service, it's called price discrimination and sellers do it, if they can get away with it. The problem is that if Lexus decides to charge Gates 1000 times the MSRP, because he has 1000 times the net worth of the average person, competing sellers would bid down the price, and he'd end up being charged the same price anyway.

- Bill

Post 9

Friday, June 29, 2007 - 6:54am

Bill:

You are referring to that yet reasonable world where competitors are free to set their own prices.

I was referring to the world that the Berkloids would build for us, the one based on Schadenfreude.

I mean, Social Justice.

I mean, their view of Social Justice, if we once again ever decide to live under Emperors.

regards,
Fred

Post 10

Friday, June 29, 2007 - 7:24am

IOW, Bill Gates is left holding societal IOUs for value delivered that the balance of society could never possibly repay as actual value in return.

Maybe those worthless(to him)IOUs have some kind of heating value, should he burn them?

Yes, Society is filled with slackers, free riders, deadwood, and folks asking others to live for them.

By not demanding all his value IOUs be repaid(I mean, spending all his money, exchanging his IOUs for value in the economies), Bill Gates is letting all of us ride his back.   Our pump pulls yield us IOUs that are worth more without additional effort or value creation of our own, simply because he eats his value IOUs. I mean, can't possibly redeem them for their value.     We all get part of our ride for free, to the degree that he is forced to exchange value for worthless/can't possibly redeem them all IOUs.

So to the extent that instead of simply burning those worthless(to him) IOUs, he instead shovels them out of the back of his GulfStream at good causes, either for the entertainment value, the warm fuzzies, or God forbid, because he wants to and is able to, then that is barely yet his to decide and choose to do.   At least, until the Berkloids insert themselves as Social Justice Emperors.    They aren't pissed that Bill Gates is spending Bill gates millions on charity. They are pissed that they aren't spending Bill gates millions on implementing their utopic vision of the world.    They need to figure out a way to get Bill Gates to wake up every day and say, "How can I better exist only to serve the Berkloids visions today?"

The irony is, he is making his billions in a market where the 'cost' of his biggest competitors is essentially 'free.'   That's got to piss off the Stallmans of the world bigtime, who I am sure would have thought by now we'd all be quoting "Chairman Richard & Friends" on their latest Five Year Plan, as opposed to wondering about them decades out of college still rattling around that very same Cambridge that Gates left in the 70s 'Sticking It to The Man.'

regards,
Fred

Post 11

Friday, June 29, 2007 - 10:38am

I would reject the notion Bill Gates has too much money for him to spend on considering time constraints. As Bill pointed out he could invest the money, build a skyscraper office building, build a stadium or what have you. That would be a far better contribution to society than some worthless charity.

Post 12

Friday, June 29, 2007 - 9:13pm

I can see only two types of valid large-scale charity; education and disaster relief. The problem for a rich person setting up an educational non-profit is the question of how it will be run after he is gone. A good example here is Rand/Peikoff/ARI.

Disaster relief is best handled on an ad-hoc basis.

If one truly wishes to put money aside for charity it should be to buy books for libraries.

Rand should have directed that all her monies go toward having her works translated and disseminated.

If one wants to help poor people, give them a job at a profitable company, and fire them if they aren't willing to do the work.

Ted

Post 13

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 11:26am

John:

That would be a far better contribution to society than some worthless charity.

1] But worthless to whom? I believe when anyone is spending "Bill Gates"' money, the only worth that matters in the least is "Bill Gates."    Subsitute "O.P." (as in "Other People's) , and this applies to government as well, at least, in a free nation.

2] Contribution to 'society?'    When we folks use that term, what we have been instructed to think we mean is some higher authority/entity "S"ociety. We aren't referring to anything like a group of people who meet once a month to discuss bird migration, which might in fact be an example of a worthless charity or not, depending on how much the donor valued it, and nothing else.    No, what we mean by "S"ociety is something else altogether, and that thing is a purely religious totem.

I've searched diligently for a working definition of "S"ociety' that was not purposefully circular (social/societal/society, mysterious world without end...) The best I've ever found is from 'still seminal' Emil Durkheim, spilling the fundamentalist religious beans:

"Society is not at all the illogical or a-logical, inherent and fantastic being which has too often been considered. Quite on the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of psychic life, since it is the consciousness of consciousness. Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther; at every moment of time it embraces all known reality; that is why it alone can furnish the minds with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them"

Good Lord. This religious nut regarded himself as a 'scientist' when he was trying to leglift the worship of the God Society above all other competing manmade religions.   If you can't see foaming at the mouth religious fervor in that eyes rolled into the back of his head nonsense, then congratulations, you are like the balance of humanity that he flamboozeld with his religious nonsense.

Outside of and above individual and local contingencies? That rules out you and I and any other localized individual.   Go into any large meeting hall. Put all the mere individuals on the right. What is left on the left is 'S'ociety, and yet, it sees, etc. Jesus H. Christ. Well, it 'sees' through the eyes of carny cargo cult science hucksters just like Durkheim and his many acolytes, who, like all emperor wannabees, are only to glad to 'see' on its behalf for us.

F**k Society.   The Societal 'Taliban' going to label me as 'anti-Social?'    Well, thank-you, I'll even have T-shirts made.   "Pro-People, absolutely. Anti-Social, definitely."

Call "Society" what it is: a totem of religious fundamentalism, and not only that, a totem of religious fundamentalism on a Crusade to wipe out all other merely competing religions, to establish itself as The One True Religion. The Social Scientologists are well into a hundred years of this onslaught, and America the nation, its state institutions and public education system, have all been totally over-run.

"Anti-Social" is what the high priests accuse the non-followers of being, and this religious nonsense is enforced even in our public schools.   F**k the high priests and their emperor wannabee political nonsense.

regards,
Fred

Post 14

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 12:21pm

Fred, I think I was too subtle in my post and I apologize for not making myself more clear. When I said building an office skyscraper building as being a better contribution to society than a charity, I was really poking fun at the supposed virtue of donating to a charity as some kind of benefit to society. And if there is such a virtue as helping society, it would be building something of economic value or some other financial investment that would increase not only the investor's wealth, but many other people also are beneficiaries of that wealth, as opposed to a charity where wealth is not created. For example Microsoft Windows didn't just make Bill Gates rich, it made everyone richer by increasing our standard of living, and increasing the wealth of those that invested with Bill Gates or work for his company.

Whether there is such a thing as a "society" or not I don't really care to debate that idea and nor did I construe to start a whole tangent on that. Besides I don't think the word society is all that religious a term Fred. I thought the word just meant the total sum of individuals within a specifically defined parameter. So for example "American society" means the total sum of individuals who reside in America.

Post 15

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 12:24pm

John,

Investing his wealth in skyscrapers and stadiums is not �spending� it. That�s just a portfolio re-shuffling. Fewer Microsoft shares, more skyscrapers, same net wealth.

I was talking about spending in the sense of consumption, i.e., making it gone. This happens when you spend $1,000 on a meal. That money is gone, it cannot be left to heirs. Putting wealth into a skyscraper doesn�t make it go away, the property has to be left to heirs (or it will go to the state.)

Do you reject the notion that Bill Gates cannot consume his wealth in his lifetime? Really? He has to make about five millions dollars go away every day�charity to others not allowed. Without resorting to cash bonfires, how could he personally consume it? Could you describe a typical day for me?

Post 16

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 12:38pm

I agree with Jon Letendre that the amount of wealth Bill Gates possesses makes it virtually impossible to consume entirely on Bill Gates.

I agree with Ted Keer that sound education would offer the best possible form of benevolent expenditure of such wealth.

I think the important distinction to make here regards egoistic spending versus altruistic spending. If I see my wealth dedicated to spreading my values even after my demise, that benefits me right now. The Ayn Rand Institute Atlantis Legacy program does just that. If I saw it committed to spreading values contrary to my own, I would call that altruistic self-sacrifice.

Post 17

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 12:54pm

�I think the important distinction to make here regards egoistic spending versus altruistic spending. If I see my wealth dedicated to spreading my values even after my demise, that benefits me right now.�

Well said, Luke.

And also, �If I saw it committed to spreading values contrary to my own, I would call that altruistic self-sacrifice.�

Post 18

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 1:01pm

Doesn't The Objectivist Center have a similar program?

Post 19

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 1:13pm