The Oppressive, Arrogant, and Entitled Charity of the Rich
By: Walter Rhein
Tags: Christmas, Slavery, Charity, Poverty, Humanity

The Oppressive, Arrogant, and Entitled Charity of the Rich

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

There is nothing worse than when rich people develop a desire to see themselves as charitable. For the most part, they are ruthless people and don’t care who they have to snuff out in order to feel good about themselves.

If wealthy elites truly cared about charity, they’d give away all the money they’ve stolen by draining pensions or receiving government bail outs, and live paycheck to paycheck like everyone else. Our media enables these terrible people by fawning over the amount of their donations instead of the percentage of their wealth they give away. Rich people don’t engage in charitable actions because they’re genuinely good, they’re essentially just paying for positive headlines. Also, it’s a write-off.

A good person will give you the shirt off their back knowing that s/he will never receive any praise or adulation for the act. That sentiment is the essence of charity. An individual who insists on public adoration for sprinkling out what amounts to the change in their pocket is being arrogant rather than charitable. If you want to be truly charitable, you should dedicate yourself to the restructuring of our society so that charity isn’t necessary.

Taking advantage of the slave wage class

I have a friend lives in an apartment building in a affluent area in a South American city. In that city, impoverished people subsist on what truly amounts to slave wages.

Most buildings hire only two doormen who split the day into two twelve hour shifts. For this they get paid maybe two-hundred to two-hundred and fifty dollars a month. They have a regular set of duties that they must perform, but every building has at least one or two residents who consider the doormen as their personal servants.

You can see these evil rich people coming from a mile away. They’re the type of people that will barge right by you if you are waiting in line at a store. If you call them out on it, they recoil as if shocked because they genuinely did not see another human being. They saw only an obstacle that they felt entitled to trod upon.

The Christmas donation

My friend in South America told me about a recent series of events that took place in his building that left the doorman basically penniless and destitute leading up to the holidays.

The affluent residential buildings always have an organization of property owners that doesn’t do any work but have to stick their nose into any discussion that requires a decision. These discussions are usually done over email.

In the building in question, the most obnoxious property owner is an elderly woman named Coco. Coco is the type of person who sizes you up when she meets you in order to determine whether she needs to make the effort to be courteous or not. Nobody knows why she does this because she invariably determines everyone she meets is beneath her.

But Coco considers herself a philanthropist, because even evil people always prefer to have a positive self-image. Every year, Coco receives donations for a group of impoverished women who, as Coco puts it, have the decency to live far away where nobody has to actually look at them. Coco loves these women enough to pressure other people to give her money which she then turns over to the impoverished women probably after taking a small administration fee. Something fair like 51%.

I wrote that last line as a joke, but the only joke is that they’d take a fee so small. In truth, it’s probably upwards of 90% what she takes for herself. Rich people just hate the idea of giving to the poor, even when they’re being charitable.

The emails

Leading up to Christmas, Coco had been sending out a bunch of emails scolding everyone in the building for requiring the doorman to come to individual apartments. There had been some problems with theft in the building, and it was important for the doormen to stay at the desks.

Nobody suspected the doormen of the thefts or they would have been removed. In fact, everyone knew that the people responsible for the thefts were a couple of arrogant rich kids who only lived in the building because their parents rented or bought it for them to get them out of the house.

These kids liked to steal things just out of mischief. Rich people can always steal things and laugh about it because they have the funds to hire lawyers to get them out of any real trouble. It’s hilarious for them.

So, Coco didn’t want people telling the doormen to leave the front desk except to attend to their regularly scheduled duties. She told this to the building managers who, in turn, provided the instructions to the doormen. What Coco didn’t reveal was that she had no problem requesting that the doormen leave their post to come and assist her, it was just that she didn’t want them to do that for anyone else in the building.

The donation envelope

The donation envelope filled with the funds for the women in the mountains arrived and the doorman dutifully called Coco to tell her that it had come. Coco, who has nothing to do all day but watch television, told the doorman to bring it up at his convenience. That’s how charitable she is. She let him pick the time when he could do the extra work she demanded of him, as long as he didn’t wait too long.

Well, the doorman was confused because he’d been specifically told by the building managers not to leave his desk and bring things to apartments. This was because of Coco’s request.

So, the doorman didn’t take the envelope up to her room, and got busy with the other demands of his job. Imagine his consternation when he came back to the desk after cleaning the cistern or whatever, only to find that the envelope had been stolen.

The theft

The thing I forgot to mention about the doorman is that he has a sick mother, so most of his wages go to medicine. One advantage is that in South America, medicine doesn’t have the crushing, corrupt price tag that it does in the US, but that’s little comfort. The fact is that this guy is basically a slave who gives half his life to a bunch of repugnant people for essentially no compensation, and what he does earn he needs to keep his mother alive.

When Coco discovered that the envelope of the charitable funds she was giving to people in need had been stolen, she went straight to the building managers and insisted that they take the money out of the doorman’s wages. This she revealed in an email to the rest of the building.

It didn’t go over well.

The tepid defense

The simple fact is that most of the people in the building find Coco pretty reprehensible. However, they still remain part of the same rich class so any actions they take to help the doorman will probably only result in further suffering for the guy.

In response to Coco’s message, several people brought up the fact that Coco specifically said the doorman couldn’t bring things to apartments. Another said that she was a lawyer and that she was going to defend the doorman for free against this injustice.

Coco, tone deaf as always, determined she was being horribly mistreated. After all, her only concern was that the poor women in the mountains got their money.

There were questions as to how much money was actually in the envelope. Few people put it past Coco to add to the sum knowing that it would be coming out of the doorman’s wages. In her mind, the money was going to a good cause, so why not pad it a little? Never mind that the doorman who lives right under her nose is also a vulnerable person in desperate need of help.

It’s still unresolved

The way the matter stands now everything is in limbo. Maybe the lawyer will actually stand up for the doorman, maybe not. Coco will most certainly demand that the money is accounted for from somewhere, even though it represents a pittance to her and an unattainable sum for the doorman. Nobody’s going to investigate the terrible, entitled rich kids whom everyone knows is guilty of the crime. It’s much easier to pile on the poor doorman.

In the meantime, the doorman is miserable. He doesn’t have the money. He is working for free this month. His mother is still sick. The other problem is that Coco now hates him, so even if the lawyer stands up for him, Coco is going to make his life miserable.

This is what rich people do. They don’t accept fault. They keep applying pressure, and if they don’t get their way they have a temper tantrum. Coco sees the doorman as a non-human. She’ll dedicate the sum total of her experience to have him removed.

Don’t ever get between a rich person and her good deed.

Slipping the guy some money

People are going to read this and think that we should crowdfund for the guy, but even that’s not a practical solution. My friend in South America already confided that he’d slipped the doorman the purported amount of cash, but he told him not to tell anyone. You see, this is an ever present scenario and it can’t be fixed by giving the guy money.

The doorman is basically a member of a slave class. If this story got national attention and raised $100,000 or more, that money would never go to the doorman. A thousand other “charitable” jerks would take their cut before it ever got to him. Even if by some miracle a certain amount of cash trickled down to the guy, somebody like Coco would just take it away again.

The sad fact is that Coco has had her pride piqued, so she’s going to crush the doorman now. It’s horribly ironic that all of this started by an impulse on Coco’s part to feel she was a good and charitable human being. We all are aware stories like this transpire all the time. They surround us. People hear them, feel a brief surge of injustice, then they lose interest. If you really want to help people in need, you can’t give them a few coins. You have to give them such power that they stand level with you on the field of play.

Unfortunately, that result is something that rich people will NEVER allow. The concept of charity is a lie rich people tell to cover up the fact that they oppress and exploit the vulnerable people of the world. Merry Christmas everyone!