The Rich Have a Moral Obligation to Donate to the Poor - *Fall Tier Tournament - Round 1*

My opponent starts out by making a few assumptions that I'll agree with for the sake of simplifying both of our arguments and moving the debate along easier. Just a note, so that I give credit where it is do. My arguments are almost entirely derived from Ayn Rand's ethical theories and are almost entirely from memory. I'll quote from Geogeer here and use this assumption. "The second part is what is a moral obligation? I contend that we are morally obligated to do that which is keeping with our nature. That which is in keeping with our nature will ultimately provide the best outcome for our species and thus forms a natural law which governs our species. Thus fundamentally speaking that which is moral"So according to Geogeer the best moral code is the one keeping with our nature. For the purposes of this debate and in accordance with just about every dictionary you can find morals are really just a system for determining right and wrong. Now let's explore the question: of what is morals according to human nature? As my opponent has stated determining morals according to human nature is the correct way to do so. More on this later. VALUEValue isn't something that exists outside of life. It's life that gives a property it's value. A computer no matter how powerful or advanced it is has no value unless a conscious being comes into the picture, to google porn or whatever computers are used for now days. Without the individual, it's just a collection of atoms. The same can be said for anything. Replace the word computer for whatever you like. This is the natural and only way to determine value, our own subjective interpretation and usage of the collection of atoms. PAIN AND PLEASUREHow do us humans assign value to something? It starts when we're just little babies. We use the feelings of pleasure and pain to assign a value of right or wrong. When you're a kid and touch the hot plate you experience the burning sensation and your brain interprets it as pain. When you play with a toy it brings you joy and you interpret it as pleasure. The earliest determining factors of what is right and wrong, what is morally correct, the most natural way of determining morals is the pleasure and pain principle. Touching a hot plate is wrong and playing with a toy is right. One is moral and one is immoral. MORALSWhat's moral is to maximize the amount of pleasure in your life and balance that with minimizing the pain. Some people first hearing this get left with a bad taste in their mouth, but it's not quite as horrific as it might seem. Maximizing pleasure isn't about doing the first pleasurable thing that comes to mind. If you see a beautiful woman, I wouldn't recommend running up and humping her leg. We're not animals. There is a difference between a compulsion and an indulgence. Ultimately a compulsion would typically lead to more pain than pleasure and would be immoral. Remember those natural guiding moral values from when you were a child, pain and pleasure. It is your goal in life to be as happy and have as much pleasure as possible. If giving to the poor helps you to achieve that I say go for it, but I think typically it's just something done out of a sense of obligation. We've been brainwashed into some backwards altruistic type of philosophy, where everyone does stuff for everyone else. It's like Christmas where everyone buys each other stuff and exchanges gifts, instead of just going to the store and getting whatever they want. Geogeer, why do you want to exchange gifts with each other instead of us just each buying what we want? Which moral framework is better? Living your life for everyone else or living it for your self? What will you choose, my opponent's backwards altruistic philosophy or one that values selfishness as it should? OTHER MORAL THEORIESMy opponent is right. We do get a lot of our current system of morality from Judea Christian culture. We also get a lot from other influences. Most people don't give much thought to ethics, they just go with the whims of society. People often say stuff like "you should give to the poor, it's the moral thing to do". Usually people forget to ask; Moral according to who? According to what standards? When you examine these premises behind what society deems as moral, you'll see they have a shaky foundation or none at all. It's just people caving to social influences. I say that society shouldn't get to tell you what is right or wrong, what is moral. Your morals shouldn't be based on the whims of the masses, but based on what brings you pleasure. CONCLUSIONWhen we look at what ethics and morality should be based on, we can see that there is no moral obligation for the rich to give to the poor. The rich are morally obligated to do what brings them pleasure. If they are giving out of a sense of obligation than they are being immoral. If they gain nothing from it, they are being immoral. The only moral obligations are the ones derived from the senses and interpreted by the brain as pleasure. Typically giving money to strangers, to the poor, gives no such pleasure and should be avoided at all costs. The next round, I'll show the flaws in my opponent's moral code and show that even if we adhere to my opponent's sense of morality that it is still better for the rich to avoid giving money to the poor.