Philanthropy seems like a good thing, but its goodness seems pretty thin and cynical just below the surface, offhand, to me. Maybe I’m missing something.
A truly good philanthropy would have a benefactor be more integrated in their life, it would seem. So that instead of having an excess of money that they choose to give away to some worthy cause, they would just two do other far more immediately good things. They would charge less for their product and would pay more to their workers. Then they’d have no excess to give away and less injustice in their life.
But, again, maybe I’m missing something.
As it stands, in a usual case, a philanthropist may well gain their excess wealth via ruthless competition in the market, where they destroy their competitors and pay their workers the minimum they can and still keep them. This indicates a split or contradiction in the very values that philanthropy purports to address, to me.
But maybe justice isn’t what they’re interested in, after all. Maybe it’s not a relevant value. I mean, it always is, in human life, but maybe philanthropists have suppressed this aspect in their struggle to conquer, defeat and crush other people so that they then have an excess to give away as they please.
Obviously, a cause for a benefactor doesn’t have to be worthy in any sense other than for the giver to be willing to give.
Of course, it’s great that we have public libraries and parks and that the 3rd world gets schools and hospitals…but at what price?
And, sure, maybe there’s no better way to do these things NOW. But is there a direction of change or of improvement that we can see?
Another relevant aspect of philanthropy seems to be that it maintains a Master / Slave relationship within the giver and within the society. Is this a good thing? This relationship implies a split or contradiction in the person and would seem to lead to bad and injurious results that would likely offset the benefits of giving.
If I’m crushing my rivals then giving away my excess, aren’t I doing it to try to make myself feel better? Better about what?
If a person is good at making money by building software, isn’t it likely that they could do the most good in the field of software? They must understand the pricing and other relationships. If they wanted to be the most just and wholesome that they could be, it seems like it’d be best if they acted in the field of their most immediate experience.
But maybe someone wishes to rebuild a slum or defeat poverty and disease in some Country X and they know that they can make the most money to do this work by selling software in Country Y.
However, it seems like the goodness of helping Country X might be offset by the badness of bankrupting your software rivals and driving your workers hard in Country Y.
How does the desire to share with some group relate to the desire to keep your work secret from your closest peers?
Competition is an interesting thing. The need for secrecy and the wastage resulting from both the fight and from whim are all worth considering.
There’s a need to compete to keep good workers. There’s also a need to keep them and their pay to a minimum. It’s a balancing act. Where should the equilibrium be? –Where the employer has enough excess to do global-sized projects as they please?
I wonder where the line should be drawn for “enough.”
Well, it seems like there’s a lot to consider here.
And there’s probably a lot of room to grow and improve.
Marx said that money itself works to reduce the role of caprice, so that in the end both owner and worker are reduced to being the slaves of money itself. To be rich, the rich eventually end up having to work long, hard hours and having less choice in what they do, as the demands of money gradually assert themselves more and more. The idled leisure classes fade away as do the capricious rulers. There are forces at work…
