Capitalist Thinking

[andrewducker]

One of the reasons behind the poll this morning was the discrepancy I see between talk and action in many people.  I was wondering what percentage of people would say they were willing to have less so that others might have more - with the possibility of a follow-up asking why those people weren't _already_ giving up a higher amount of their resources to other people with less than they have.

It is in some ways ridiculous that movie studios spend hundreds of millions of dollars on producing silly entertainment while people starve to death.  But that only survives because (overall) we'd rather hand over money for entertainment than buy food for the starving.

I'm certainly happy to give up some of my money to charity, and I'd be up for higher taxes that affected me, but I'm definitely selfishly putting my interests in front of other people when it comes to resources, despite being aware that I'm remarkably lucky to have been born in a country that spent hundreds of years pillaging the rest of the planet so that their great-great-grandchildren couild spend what was left on Nintendo.

And this, to me, seems to be an essential part of the emotional makeup for most people - attempting to change it has precious little effect, and trying to build societies where everyone works together only reduces it somewhat (while causing mass cheating on the system under the covers).

So, having outed myself as capitalist scum (along with 2/3 of the voters on the poll), I'm curious as to why those people who are willing to give to those worse-off than themselves aren't doing so more?

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

One possible reason: not many guarantees that if we give money/stuff, it will GET to the people who need it - or that it will be used for purposes we deem 'worthy'. (Which is another discussion topic, perhaps.) How much of the aid to impoverished countries/famine relief gets siphoned off, for instance? Does that guy with the 'money for food' sign actually take your spare change straight to the off-license? What percentage of the donation goes to administrative overheads? Will the charity shop dump your stuff in landfill, even if it's in good condition, just because they have too many books?

You can argue there are ways to limit the misuse of funds, of course, and I have a standing order set up (15+ years) to an organization I feel does this sort of thing as well as it can be done. But it's a factor.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

This is why I like Kiva (which I fully acknowledge I should give more to). Loans are traceable, and I know EXACTLY where my money's going - currently, it's helping a family in the Phillipines buy fertilizer, for example.

It's a really good point. Half the problem is that we just don't trust charities. And, sadly, a lot of people who deal with charities report that, yep, indeed, they're not all all that trustworthy.

Also, it's often or usually the case that we can't see how our reducing our living standards in whatever way will benefit us in the long run. Can I say with considerable certainty that if I stop flying, we won't have to deal with global warming problems? Nope.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I saw a report on Channel 4 news a few days ago about how some UN WFP food in Somalia is being sold rather than being given to those who need it. I don't know what /I/ can do to help prevent anything I give to charity being misused in that kind of way. It doesn't stop me from donating to charity when I can afford to, but it makes me rather cynical about it.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Eh, I dunno. Speaking only for myself, I use "will it get misused" as an excuse not to give, rather than a solid reason not to give. I know that if I made an effort, I could find ways to give which would get misused less or not at all.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Well, I try, but I don't have a huge income. I monitor myself hard about unnecessary things and try to be strict. This doesn't always work (I am weak when it comes to books), but I boycott producers who exploit their labour force, I don't really have the 'ooh, shiny' button about tech or hot new destinations and so on, and I give what I can when I can. I could be better, of course I could, and I hope too improve year on year.
Not sure why you're asking this, though. Those who like their comfort will probably stay that way, while people like me are easy to guilt-trip. Does that change anything, though?

[andrewducker]

Just interested in people's reasons.

I know, for instance, that I could be better - but feel no particular need to be so. I'm aware that I'm selfish, and I'm (mostly) comfortable with that.

I'm always intrigued to hear other people's feelings on things - like yours, or pisica's (that she doesn't trust the money to make a real difference).

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

I think the problem of equivalency drops in massively. People need to feel like they are living an equivalent life to those of others, and we are all raised to think that we deserve nice things because we work for them. People are willing to give up a % of what they earn, but if you ask how many are willing to genuinely suffer comparatively to give - it will be a small percentage.

I always find conversations like this massively unhelpful as well. People should be encourage to give more, not chastised for not giving enough. The expectation should always be higher than what they give... that encourages them to give more at a later date.

If they start 'suffering' and becoming charity martyrs they will be unpalatable amongst friends and probably end up giving less in the long run.

[andrewducker]

I always find conversations like this massively unhelpful as well. People should be encourage to give more, not chastised for not giving enough

Is someone chastising for not giving enough?

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

It'll go that way... I can see it! hehe.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

I help as much as I can, but I realize that by the very virtue of living in America that I'm better off than 70% of the Earth's human population.

Also, giving just to give isn't always helpful. True giving comes from the heart, and that's not something that you can command.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure whether the recipients of food aid, for example, are that bothered whether it came from the heart of the wallet. :)

[drplokta]

I'm willing to give up a little if everyone else does (who is as well placed to afford it). That means that higher taxes to fund more poverty relief, not individual acts of charity.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

What. He. Said.

I'm not, in general, an enthusiast about paying more tax. I pay enough as it is. However, if confronted with a significant rise, say 5% on the upper marginal rate of income tax (which bracket I'm in), I'd be unable to bring myself to protest if it was earmarked for [actual] aid for the poor.

(Now, if it was earmarked for bailing out managers of failing investment banks, hear me howl ...)

[andrewducker]

I think that investment bankers have their pension policies nicely set up in advance, so they shouldn't need too much of a handout from you...

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to admit that, in some ways, I'm a cold-hearted and selfish bastard. I'm not willing to take a hit on my standard of living... because I feel I'm still clawing my way out of a pit I dug in my post-student days, and the future's looking somewhat bleak given what my RRSP (USAians, think 401k) did last fall and that my last raise was a COLA adjustment that was a couple of years overdue. It's tough to be terribly generous when you can still remember, vividly, having trouble keeping a roof overhead. (Literally, in my case, as the SOB landlord didn't fix a roof leak properly and the blasted ceiling collapsed before I could afford to move out.)

I do give to charity, not a lot I admit and not very much internationally save for a pittance to UNICEF at Halloween. I tend to give to either "greedy" charities (hey, I might need that cancer or heart & stroke research someday, and I like having public TV and libraries) or charities whose efforts I can have some oversight over (Boys & Girls club I pass by every day, and the Food Bank is committed to transparency).

My problem with private economic development or humanitarian charities is that too often it ends up as an superficial aid that disappears as soon as it's given, with no lasting effect; the problems of the developing world are too vast to solve by papering them over with "indulgences for guilty consciences" donations. I'd much rather see more money, either private or governmental, going to breaking the poverty cycle for everyone as opposed to a few lucky (?) recipients.

-- Steve's also thinking that "outsourcing" problems in Western economies are in essence penalty fees for the generally dismal state of Western governments' foreign aid programs.

PS: Given the above, I think my unease with Bono's tithing system is going to be obvious; it concentrates too much on getting the money, and not enough on making the money work to solve the root causes of poverty.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with "I am willing to get by with less than I currently do" is that it recurses.

I'm willing to get by with less than I earn, so I give to charity, and that's all fine and consistent.

But am I willing to get by with less than I currently have left, taking into account my existing giving? Well, yes, in theory, but if I made that change and gave away more, you could just ask me the question again, and I could give more again, and there's no obvious point where the cycle would stop.

(I heard about someone like that, a friend of a friend, last weekend. She wouldn't even buy herself biscuits, because she gave away every spare penny. But even she could have skimped further and given away more.)

I, and probably many others, have reached an equilibrium with which we're mostly happy and about which we feel slightly guilty; and I think the nature of the question means that moving the equilibrium point wouldn't lower the guilt.

[ami-bender.livejournal.com]

I'm actually in favour of an extra "make the world better means tested tax" which is dispensed by an independent group (which translates to not politicians).

I also think its very easy for people to have an intellectual understanding of an issue, but not an emotional one. I suspect you would find everyone a lot more generous if we were all forced to live of the same amount of food for a week as the UN hands out in charity to a person.

I would also wonder how much game theory is involved here, Namely Iwant to give/be seen/be good vr I dont want to be a sucker/taken advantage of plus time/emotional investment of trying to find the right charity.

[darkoshi]

I agree with the woodpijn's comment.

Another reason that I don't give more than I give (and I do give quite a bit to charities) is that I have to consider that I'll need money in my old age, or if something unexpected happens to me before then. So I want to keep a sizeable amount saved, as well as building up a sizeable amount for my retirement.

[aliiis.livejournal.com]

Like some of the other people I do not have a lot of disposable income, and am sometimes unsure/uneasy about the difficulty of knowing how exactly my money would be spent if I did give more of it away.
One way that I manage to make myself feel I'm doing some small things to improve other people's quality of life is through my voluntary work - for several years I've been regularly working with Positive Help, an organisation that focuses on giving practical support to people living with HIV and AIDS in Edinburgh. Yes of course it's not saving the world, and of course I could do much more, we all could - but just wanted to make a quick point that it's not always about money, and it's not even always about 'sacrifice' - although it does often feel like a chore and 'giving up' some of my time, I've also gained a lot of experience, some great training and new skills from the work.

[belovedjohn.livejournal.com]

i quite often look at it like this. We have a responibily to help people. Assuming we should help everyone equally we some way of divding how we use what resources we have. one way of doing this is looking how effectivily we can produce "goodness". As we can most effectivily (normally) effect ourselves we should therefore spend most of resouces creating goodness in ourselves, decrease the resources we use as distance or our ability to effect things decreases (more resouces on family, then friends, more resources on friends then local causes and so on and so on. This of course isn't the only factor, but it should be one,
Another is investment. By investing resources in myself (such as keeping myself happy, having a place to live etc etc) i can get more resources to help others (Bill Gates being a pretty good example of this). I will give more to others over my life if i try to be happy and get a good job and education then if i'm homeless and depressed because as soon as i get anything give it straight away.

Looking after yourself is an increadbly import thing and doing it properly is generally selfish however that doesn't by default make it bad. Also being a "capitalist" doesn't make you scum. I don't want to get into a aurgement about the merits and flaws of capitalist but it has some merits (personally i believe capitalisum can be both a force for good and bad depending on how it is used).

anyway before my mind wanders to much....

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I tithe 10% of my 'net' income (what's left after tax/rent/food/clothing), split equally among microloans, charitable organizations that work in a systemic, long-term fashion to increase education, alleviate poverty, and increase technical infrastructure, and organizations that support free speech and human rights in the US. I'm pretty comfortable with that.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem with giving more is that it's just not easy.

I think if most people were to see someone in genuine need, that they could help without harming themselves, they would help.

But when it comes to, say, charity, things get complicated. Some of the issues you face are:

* Is the charity legit or a scam?
* Are they going to use my money well, or is too much going to overhead?
* Does the charitable organization have an agenda that I wouldn't agree with?
* Am I putting myself at risk or making myself a target by pulling out my wallet?
* Is the money going to make a significant difference, or is it just trying to put out a fire with an eyedropper?
* Can the charity even reach the people I'm trying to help?
* Are the people who are getting the money the people I want to help, or are they turning to charity because it's easier than solving their own problems?
* Is there some better use for my money that I'm overlooking? Should I really be donating money to fix stray cats when people are starving in Africa? Or maybe I should be protecting the rainforests, or helping disadvantaged schools, or...

None of these are insurmountable problems, but they throw friction into the momentum of charitable giving. And considering there's basically no tangible advantage to giving charity, any friction at all can send things to a grinding halt.

My favorite charitable sites are those that let you buy specific things for specific purposes. Brad Pitt's charity built houses in Ward 9 in New Orleans, and you could buy, say, a solar panel or a water heater for a house. DonorsChoose.org lets you pick specific projects to fund for specific students, and then they buy the supplies and send them to the schools. You even get a letter afterwards. That's right up my alley.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

It is in some ways ridiculous that movie studios spend hundreds of millions of dollars on producing silly entertainment while people starve to death.

I take it you mean Bollywood?

Man does not live by bread alone...

[andrewducker]

But if the £200m that was spent on Termination Salvation was spent on hospital supplies then it would save thousands of lives.

And while man cannot live by bread alone, if he's not alive at all then all the circuses in the world don't help him.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

If the profits the pharmaceutical companies make was diverted from their shareholders to hospital supplies, that no doubt would save thousands times thousands of lives too.

Focusing on what you consider to be trivial just acts as a diversion. There's no difference between those making popular movies to make a buck and those scavenging rubbish tips to make, oh, a Somali shilling, shall we say.

I suspect the main reason most in the West don't give much to charities is because they don't think it achieves much and probably think the real solutions need to come from the governments of the countries in question. ie. if the root cause of the problems aren't addressed, they'll go on forever, charity or no charity.

Hee - and I was reminded of this singer today...



Note the lyrics.

The Marshal Plan worked in Europe, but there was nothing of comparable size done for Japan, but the Japanese found their own solutions. The important point is that those running the countries got things right, whereas charities just feeding the starving wouldn't have made much long-term difference.

[andrewducker]

I don't think that anyone thinks that just giving food to starving people is going to solve things long-term.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

And there's your answer to the disjoint between 'talk and action' with regards to charity. Apart from the likes of natural disaster relief, people do want long-term solutions.

But as to Capitalist Thinking, I think Bill Gates has the biggest disjoint...

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1828069,00.html

Capitalism has been very unkind to the poor over the years.