Is this the right place to engage in thread necromancy? We’ll see.
I’ve been troubled by the radical altruism argument for some years, and never had a very satisfactory reason for rejecting it. But I just thought of an argument against it. In brief, if people believe that their obligation is to give just about everything they have to charity, then they have created a serious disincentive to create more wealth.
It starts with the argument against pure socialism. In that system, each person works as hard as he or she can in order to produce for the good of society, and society takes 100% of the production and distributes it to people according to need (or utility, as best it can figure it out). This is appealing in many ways. The main determinants of a person’s productivity are factors beyond his or her control: genetic endowment, early childhood experiences and what ideas you’re exposed to. Even free will is suspect. So if what you can produce is due to factors beyond your control, why should you benefit from it? Distribute according to need instead. It’s really a very nice idea. The only problem is, it doesn’t work. People in general seem to be not at all perfectible, and when you change the incentives, people’s behavior changes. They stop working hard, see others working less hard, see a system that’s broken and work even less hard, and eventually everyone loses. I’m hoping there are few enough pure socialists out there that this won’t become a political battle, which I realize is discouraged here.
Anyway, the same reasoning could apply to extreme altruism. If a person believes that their obligation is to give just about everything they have to charity, then they have created a serious disincentive to create more wealth. Sure, a noble individual could resist that, just as some few people under communism worked their hardest. So each person can ask if they are that noble or not.
I’m actually in favor of coerced altruism: taxes. My “cheating detector” that evolution has endowed me with is alive and well, and I don’t really want to volunteer to redistribute my wealth unless other people are going to participate too. Yeah, it’s part of a huge, messy, inefficient political process to determine how much redistribution to do (a tiny fraction of 100%) but the idea of getting everyone to contribute instead of a small minority of not-very-rich people makes it worth it. This may well be an unpopular view. Pointers to where this has been discussed elsewhere are welcome in lieu of reopening some old issue.
Is this the right place to engage in thread necromancy? We’ll see.
I’ve been troubled by the radical altruism argument for some years, and never had a very satisfactory reason for rejecting it. But I just thought of an argument against it. In brief, if people believe that their obligation is to give just about everything they have to charity, then they have created a serious disincentive to create more wealth.
It starts with the argument against pure socialism. In that system, each person works as hard as he or she can in order to produce for the good of society, and society takes 100% of the production and distributes it to people according to need (or utility, as best it can figure it out). This is appealing in many ways. The main determinants of a person’s productivity are factors beyond his or her control: genetic endowment, early childhood experiences and what ideas you’re exposed to. Even free will is suspect. So if what you can produce is due to factors beyond your control, why should you benefit from it? Distribute according to need instead. It’s really a very nice idea. The only problem is, it doesn’t work. People in general seem to be not at all perfectible, and when you change the incentives, people’s behavior changes. They stop working hard, see others working less hard, see a system that’s broken and work even less hard, and eventually everyone loses. I’m hoping there are few enough pure socialists out there that this won’t become a political battle, which I realize is discouraged here.
Anyway, the same reasoning could apply to extreme altruism. If a person believes that their obligation is to give just about everything they have to charity, then they have created a serious disincentive to create more wealth. Sure, a noble individual could resist that, just as some few people under communism worked their hardest. So each person can ask if they are that noble or not.
I’m actually in favor of coerced altruism: taxes. My “cheating detector” that evolution has endowed me with is alive and well, and I don’t really want to volunteer to redistribute my wealth unless other people are going to participate too. Yeah, it’s part of a huge, messy, inefficient political process to determine how much redistribution to do (a tiny fraction of 100%) but the idea of getting everyone to contribute instead of a small minority of not-very-rich people makes it worth it. This may well be an unpopular view. Pointers to where this has been discussed elsewhere are welcome in lieu of reopening some old issue.