Ethics of doing good

[billwald]

An advertisement for a charity noted that in one country they were helping, owing one cow made one rich.

Are rich people happier than poor people?

Say a rich do-gooder took the message to heart and shipped 1000 cows to the country. How should the cows be distributed? Will that cause 1000 families to become instantly happier?

In the US, half the people who will the lottery file for bankruptcy within 3 years. Does this teach us anything?

Recent story about happiness in the Economist described a simple experiment. People are asked if they would prefer earning $100,000 if their friends earned $150,000 or earning $150,000 if their friends earned $300,000. A large majority wanted to earn more than their friends even if it meant cutting their income in half. What does this tell us about human nature?

Say, thanks to the discovery of free energy and robots, every person could have any sort of consumer good that he wanted. Would this produce happiness? Social equality?

What is the proper use of charity and foreign aid?

 

[2ndRateMind]

It's a good point you raise. Is wealth the way to happiness? What is the ethical way to distribute wealth? If it were so distributed, would that increase the sum of human happiness? I think that to tackle these questions we need distinguish between relative and absolute concepts of poverty.

Relative poverty is simply being poorer than your neighbours and friends. It's not an ideal situation, since one will be excluded from their activities, and the concept is at the heart of many programs in the developed nations to eradicate 'poverty' within their borders. It's a moving target though: as I move from relative poverty to relative wealth, inevitably others move from relative wealth to relative poverty. This does not, however, invalidate such projects, as the net effect of their success is to raise living standards for all, in a most egalitarian fashion.

Absolute poverty, on the other hand, is the lack of wealth below which fundamental human needs cannot be addressed. It involves going without food, clean water, shelter, sanitation, primary health care and basic education.

Whereas one may preserve one's dignity, and even find a sort of austere happiness, and be relatively poor, absolute poverty is deadly. One cannot sustain life, let alone be happy, and be emaciated, dehydrated, exposed, disease ridden and too ignorant to avoid or resolve such want. In such a state, misery is unavoidable.

In answer to your question then, the correct priority of charity and foreign aid at this point in time is to eradicate absolute poverty, and provide a basic level of susistance beyond which it is up to the individual and his or her application and/or luck to decide whether they are to be relatively poor or relatively wealthy. We can only hope that our free choices, liberated from the dictates of necessity, will lead ultimately to maximum happiness.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Are rich people happier than poor people?

I reduced your post to the essential question. All other scenarios that you presented are non-sequitors to the fundamental question.

Many, including myself, can answer this question. But this is only possible if one has been both poor and also rich. Without this experience there is no basis of comparison. The question is one of comparison. One who is born rich and remains so cannot possibly know how happy or unhappy a poor person is, and vice-versa.

Speaking from personal experience, I am happier being rich (a relative term, meaning that I have much more than I need). When I was struggling I wasn't unhappy per se, but less happy than I now am. Wealth makes all the difference, and in many, many ways.

My advice: Get rich, you will be happier.

owg

 

[billwald]

Generally seems that way. We never hear of poor people becoming rich and then wanting to revert to poverty.

 

[2ndRateMind]

Generally seems that way. We never hear of poor people becoming rich and then wanting to revert to poverty.

Indeed, I have heard of such cases. There was a TV program over here not so long ago that traced an individual who retired, and deliberately gave away his accumulated capital beyond that which he required to make an average wage out of income from his savings. Similarly, many rich people give the excess to charity, out of knowledge of what want involves. As for rich people renouncing wealth, the most famous case is probably the Prince Gautama, who became the Buddha. And Jesus, I think, never got into the trappings of riches at all, and had a pretty dusty attitude towards those that did.

There is a simplicity in poverty, and a discipline in poverty, that is valuable, despite the blandishments of the advertisers to consume more and more, and the social pressure to exceed the lifestyle of our neighbours.

Seems to me, we have hit the environmental limits of general wealth. The Earth cannot sustain the third of the world's population that currently lives on less than $2 a day consuming at the rate America thinks appropriate for it's citizens. We need to get back to the idea that life is about quality, not quantity, and an ethic of 'enough is enough' is badly needed to replace the current ideas that 'more is better', and 'most is best'.

Best wishes, 2RM

 

[70x7]

"There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men. "
-Billy Graham

 

[2ndRateMind]

"There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men. "
-Billy Graham

It's trite, and untrue. Given that there are only a certain amount of riches to go round, and that we see people suffering from malnutrition, preventable disease, lacking in basic education and housing and access to healthcare, and condemned, in short, to precarious lives of unremitting hardship, there is everything wrong with possessing riches. One simply cannot come to possess them, and retain them, in the face of absolute poverty, without a very dubious set of moral priorities.

Kind regards, 2ndRateMind.