Comment by pimentel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pimentel | Hacker News Reader

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Whenever I see rich guys forfeiting on more money so they can help the poor, I remember this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others...

TL;DR:

If a high-powered lawyer who makes $1,000 an hour chooses to take an hour off to help clean up litter on the beach, he's wasted the opportunity to work overtime that day, make $1,000, donate to a charity that will hire a hundred poor people for $10/hour to clean up litter, and end up with a hundred times more litter removed. If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it. And if he wanted to help people, period, he's chosen a very wrong way to go about it, since that $1,000 could save two people from malaria. Unless the litter he removed is really worth more than two people's lives to him, he's erring even according to his own value system.

If he feels it's unfair that he makes so much more many than others, he should make even more and give out what he think is enough to make it fair.

Statement fails to take into account all factors by using a contrived example. It isn't just about cleaning the beach. It's about cleaning the beach in the same way as everyone else. It's about a long-term sustainable solution. What happens when the lawyer is gone? Should you find another funding lawyer or is it better to have everyone get into the habit of cleaning the beach? Then once it becomes a community activity, it doesn't matter if the lawyer exists or not. It becomes a thing that people do.

To address your second comment, we must consider the possibility that people are interested in long-term solutions to problems. What happens when the person who thinks that his profession makes too much money has given away all his money? Is the problem fixed?

The world isn't binary. When someone says "I want to help the poor", there's a world of meaning you can gather from context. We aren't AliceBot, we're humans. And humans are fairly good at understanding statements like that. After all, one way to help people is to kill oneself in a manner that preserves organs for donation, but you'd dismiss this kind of meaning even coming from a down and out guy who makes nothing and has no family. Why? What's he implying when he says he wants to help people?

That sounds completely logical, but misses the human element.

Your story only works if the people making all the money actually spend it on helping others. Most of the time, they do not. One of the things that will trigger people to charity and generosity is going out and doing some charitable work on their own. It lets them see the results, show them the personal satisfaction that can be gained by it, and sets them up to have the desire to contribute in other ways.

Better yet he should be taxed at a 75% marginal rate.

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