From: robert@slipknot.rain.com (Robert Reed)
Subject: Re: Ignorance - Was Re: VOTE, BABY, VOTE!
Reply-To: robert@slipknot.rain.com.UUCP (Robert Reed)
Organization: Home Animation Ltd.
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:53:57 GMT

In article <VEAL.506.722030455@utkvm1.utk.edu> VEAL@utkvm1.utk.edu (David Veal) writes:
|In article <BxutA9.7t3@slipknot.rain.com> robert@slipknot.rain.com (Robert Reed) writes:
|>|Altruists had *better* be in the majority.  We *were* discussing the
|>|majority.
|>
|>This is irrelevant to the discussion of charitable benefactors.
|
|The discussion was revolving around government social programs versus
|private charities.  I'd think whether altruists were in the majority would
|be very relevant.

You're right, it is relevant.  But you're wrong, altruists--that is, those who
have an unselfish concern for the welfare of others--are in the minority.
Otherwise we'd have no needy people, because the benefits of the majority would
show upon them.

|>|Does not giving money to one thing disqualify somebody?
|>
|>Once again, you're missing the point.  Public broadcast survives by fostering
|>the altruistic inclinations of its audience, but those who pay for public
|>radio are the ones who acknowledge that they are paying for a service--the
|>rest are all welshes.  They fail the altruism test even when they derive a
|>benefit from it.
|
|So there are people who gain benefit from other people's generosity.
|Is that wrong?

There is nothing wrong with being a beneficiary.  There is something wrong with
letting others pay your way when you have the means to do so yourself.  It's
called selfishness.

|But even so, does it devalue other good they might do?  Other contributions
|they might make?  If I give all my spare money to the March of Dimes, am I
|a bad person if I watch PBS?

No, no, and yes, although I prefer to express it in positive terms.  You are a
good person if you give to the March of Dimes.  You are a bad person if you,
having the means to support PBS, watch PBS without supporting it.  You are not
as bad as the non-PBS-supporter who also does not give to the March of Dimes,
or any other charity.  But I admit that all of this is somewhat suspect.  What
we seem to be doing is trying to put a quantitative measure on the quality of
selflessness, a basic requirement for altruism.

|>we've had twelve years of time for people to show how trickle-down
|>works, or to demonstrate themselves as one of the thousand points of light,
|>and in that time, 
|
|What does trickle-down economics have to do with anything?  If [you're]
|condemning, as many people do, "Reagonomics" in your bid to portray the 
|average person as unwilling to give to charity, you're barking up the wrong 
|tree.  The primary objection to "trickle-down" is that it used money from 
|the middle class and poor to subsidize the rich.  That would seem to 
|indicate, then, that it would, by lowering the amount of disposable income 
|"normal" people had the amount money they have available to give to 
|charities would also be lower.

The objection you note was certainly the effect, but part of the promise of
"trickle-down" was that increasing the profits of the rich, that they could
afford greater challenges to their charitable natures.  That promise was never
fulfilled, while simultaneously the segments of our society with the record for
the greatest charity as a percentage of their wealth, the middle class, were
stripped of more of their disposable income.  So the charities suffered that
loss, which was not compensated by the "thousand points of light."

|>corporate donations have generally fallen (for example in arts
|>funding), or have been shifted to PR (resource companies painting the golden
|>image of the small ecological benefits they've been begrudgingly forced to do,
|>rather than whole heartedly mitigating their assaults).
|
|Wow.  I get the impression that if, say, Pepsi Cola wiped out hunger
|in Africa you'd cynically denounce it as an advertising scheme.

No, I would applaud them if they could be so selfless, but I don't expect to
see that in my lifetime.  If it did, I would also expect to see their board of
directors sued for failure of fiduciary responsibility.  They are a for-profit
institution, after all.

|So lemme get this straight.  If a corporation gives funding under its own
|name, its cheap advertising.  How could they give money without it being
|effectively advertising?  Contribute anonymously?  At which time you'd 
|point to the drop in corporate sponsors?

I wouldn't, because the anonymous donorship would put them on the same footing
as all the private donors.  I couldn't care less whether any charity gets
corporate sponsorship, but I do care whether they get sufficient funding.

|you above claimed that altruism was, at its heart, a selfish act, which would 
|seem to indicate it does follow, at least partially, a free market model.

Perhaps I should have clarified that altruism, as practised by many, is a
selfish act.  For example, most people contribute to public radio stations
during their fund drives, where the announcers hawk all kinds of premiums to
entice donors.  Our government offers a tax deduction for charitable
contributions in order to entice taxpayers into charitable acts.  True altruism
is selfless, without expectation.

|>there will always be a much greater gap between charitable needs and
|>their fulfillment than between business needs and their profitable
|>mitigation.
|
|Unless you can prove to me that businesses are the primary (and can 
|only be the primary) source of charitable contributions, I don't see how it 
|matters.  People (most anyway) don't give money to see their name in lights 
|or to have cheap advertising.  And they give (even if you apparently don't 
|see them) anyway.

I'm not trying to suggest that businesses are primary sources of charity.  I'm
merely stating, with justifications, that free market purists cannot expect
that a pure free enterprise system will meet the total needs of the common
good, because its competitive nature implies an ordering--there has to be a
bottom economic rung--and altruism, the basis of the only mechanism to blend
the economic strata, is not based on need, and so doesn't have the same driving
force as profit.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed			Home Animation Ltd.		503-656-8414
robert@slipknot.rain.com	5686 First Court, West Linn, OR 97068

I have a message machine on my car phone.  
The message is, ``I'm home right now, so I can't come to the phone.
But if you leave your name and number, I'll call you when I'm out.''
--Steve Wright
________________________________________________________________________________
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