Philosophical Questions: Morals

[ysabetwordsmith]

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Do people in wealthier countries have a moral obligation to help those in poorer countries?


If you want to hold all the money, you have to pay all the bills. If you don't want to pay all the bills, make sure other folks have enough money to pay their own.

Also, there is no Planet B.  Climate change affects everyone -- but the people in wealthy countries who are causing it have thus far suffered less than people in poor countries who haven't caused it.  If you don't make it feasible for them to stay in their own countries, they will leave so they don't die, and wash up in wealthy countries.  This is already happening some, but you have seen nothing yet.  It will be like the waves of the sea beating the shore, over and over again, until people think they would give anything to make it stop.  And then it will stop.  And then people will wish, just as desperately, to have that many people ever again as the losses pile up and there aren't enough hands  left to hold up civilization.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

This can be applied on an individual level. I learnt recently that just 8 people have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population. Just. Eight. People!! With more wealth, and resources, than half the world.

I'd say it's a ethical imperative for them to help out... but I suspect they don't have any, just a ledger where their moral compass should be.

[greghousesgf]

Does your source name names?

[siliconshaman]

Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffett, Carlos 'Slim' Helu, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg...

The usual suspects in other words. Although that's based on a 2017 report, so I'd imagine the names have changed a bit, Elon Musk being at the top probably.

[greghousesgf]

I definitely know who most of those people are but I'll have to google Amancio Ortega, never heard of the guy.

[siliconshaman]

Yeah, me too. Some of those people don't like the spotlight.

[siliconshaman]

Actually, I did some maths myself. The current top ten richest people are:
Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, X)

Mark Zuckerberg (Meta Platforms)

Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin)

Larry Ellison (Oracle)

Bill Gates (Microsoft)

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft)

Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)

Larry Page (Alphabet/Google)

Bernard Arnault & Family (LVMH)

Sergey Brin (Alphabet/Google)

Their collective wealth is Approximately $2.18 trillion. Making them richer than 60-70% of the global population

Again

[dialecticdreamer]

It's assets, not take-home pay that's making the chasm wider and wider.

How many people use products from Alphabet/Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Blue Origin, or Meta Platforms EVERY DAY. Many TIMES a day?

That leaves a luxury goods empire, an electric car empire, and Warren Buffet to round out the list.

But here's the thing... Alphabet doesn't have offices in every major city. They don't have a trillion dollars in infrastructure. The money comes from leasing, investment assets, AND the base company infrastructure.

The medical software that my doctor's office uses is leased from a software company, and that is replicated around the world, not just in America. (The cost to translate the interface and user manuals into other languages is an absolute PITTANCE.) That's just one expense that gets itemized and incorporated into what my doctor's office charges my medical insurance per visit.

The gap is absolutely insurmountable, to the point that owning five or six homes as rental income properties may not push one out of middle class and into the upper class, let alone into the stratospheric levels of the big ten you list.

Yet, I also morally object to "collectivizing" their wealth toward civic infrastructure, free clinics, or solving world hunger, because, well, if my government can come after Bill Gates for "excessive wealth," well, FIRST they have to DEFINE that.

Which is the first hurdle of a long, slippery nightmare ride down to individuals who own a home suddenly having it, too, "reassessed to guarantee full occupancy," just as one example of bureaucratic nonsense which COULD be pushed through within a single generation. Or, less than ten years if a world economic crisis strikes the wrong fuse.

I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. Follow my example for a moment: the crisis is HOMELESSNESS, so "excessive wealth" is focused on and geared toward equalizing "living space". A single person lives in the three-bedroom home they mortgaged at thirty, with a spouse, and then raised children who are now off with their own families. Say it's 1800 square feet, but the new regs DEMAND that the other two bedrooms be properly occupied, so the homeowner now has to either choose or accept by government bureaucracy anywhere from two to five additional people in their home. HOWEVER, the average, I mean AVERAGE size of a home in Los Angeles is 3400 square feet, DOUBLE that of my example. If they're also generally three bedrooms, then the inequality simply continues in a new form, because the residents have twice as much living space in total than in the first example.

So, I'll paraphrase RA Heinlein's voting advice: don't think about what good YOU can do with a particular law if it's enacted. Instead, think about what your worst enemy could do with the exact same law.

Yeah, It means that the system is going to have to well and truly BREAK before something new begins to replace it, and that's something that the species may not survive in any practical sense.

I'm so tired that I can barely muster the energy to type: I hope that it doesn't fall apart in my generation, but I'm not particularly optimistic.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

And they're all penis people, mostly techbros. For a while, there was usually at least one woman in the top 10.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Nobody gets that rich without being evil. Even if you inherit a ton of money, a decent person will find things to do with it beyond pure personal benefit. I used to have a list of Fun Things to Do with Entirely Too Much Money. One of them was buy enough habitat for a wolf pack, put some wolves in it, and put a cabin on one corner for scientists to study the wolves. And so I could occasionally go out and listen to them singing.

Re: Well ...

[dialecticdreamer]

Optimism like that doesn't come naturally to me.

Thinking smaller, if I had an extra $100, I could do more good than the technical value of the objects purchased, quite easily. Paying off a bill hanging over someone's head means improving their sleep and stress levels, possibly for weeks afterward, or until the next rock hits their grindstone, and I can quite easily find that rush of satisfaction something that I'd want to experience regularly.

So, I'd find ways to do it again.

Thinking bigger and bigger might begin to happen, or it might not.

But isn't it interesting how 1 in 4 Americans volunteer in some formal setting (food banks, libraries, reading programs, et al), although the individual number of hours served is declining on average, and many are only serving forty hours or less per year?
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/11/civic-engagement-and-volunteerism.html

That sounds like the survey includes community service penalties in court proceedings. Which is neither optional nor truly voluntary, yet contributes significantly to the 167 BILLION dollars of total economic value for the year analyzed.

I'd love to be more optimistic, but again, I'm finding wage and time theft going on. Community service penalties SHOULD NOT be included among general volunteer hours, period.