Ethics and Charity Chris Sabolcik Area II GSW

Ethics and Charity Chris Sabolcik | Area II GSW, West Forsyth HS 2015

Quickchat with a partner ●To what extent (if any) should those who are not in need help those who are in need? ●Should we have a duty to help others in need?

Definitions of Ethics ● Moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior ● 1. 1 The moral correctness of specified conduct: �the ethics of euthanasia

Definitions of Charity

Essential Questions to Consider ●What is the global (and local) picture of poverty? ●What is the nature of charity? ●Are some people obligated to help those in need? Who are these people? ●What, if any, considerations should we give to nationality, geography, and other identities?

World Wealth Levels

Population by Nation Living Below UN Threshold for Poverty Published in The Atlantic, May 2014

Global Hunger Picture

Life Expectancy http: //data. worldbank. org/indicator/SP. DYN. LE 00. IN/countries? display=graph - World Bank Life Expectancy 2010 -14

Has the global poverty epidemic subsided? World poverty: Share of population living for, World Bank, Thomson Datastream, DNB Markets, viewed 24 th April, 2013.

Gini Coefficient ●The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality (all citizens have the same level of wealth). . . and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income-and everyone else has zero income)

Current and Projected World Wealth Distribution http: //data. worldbank. org/indicator/SI. POV. NAHC/count ries/VE? display=graph

How Different is American Poverty when Compared to World Poverty?

A Few Facts ● 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22, 000 children die each day due to poverty. ● 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day. 1. 1 B people live on less than $1 USD a day. ●Preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia take the lives of 2 million children a year who are too poor to afford proper treatment. ● 1/4 of all humans live without electricity — approximately 1. 6 billion people. ●http: //www. unicef. org/socialpolicy/index_45357. html

What is the Nature of Charity? ●Types of charity �Time, money, training programs ●How does motivation play a part in acts of charity? �Obligation vs. Altruism �Religious duty vs. Intrinsic satisfaction ●Intersection of Government and Charity

Americans and Our Habits of Charity ●Total charitable contributions by individuals, corporations, and foundations was an estimated $298. 42 billion in 2011, up 4 percent in current dollars and 0. 9 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars from a revised total of $286. 91 billion in 2010, according to a report from the Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. ●In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1. 3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3. 2 percent of their income.

Normative vs. Positive Analysis ●Normative: how things ought to be, how we should value them; which things are good and bad, which actions are right and wrong ●Positive: how things are in the real world; empirical, fact-based ●We will be thinking about charity in a normative manner.

Are We Obligated to Help Those in Need? YES! ●Abrahamic Religions ●Secular Morality - Peter Singer

Jewish Perspectives on Charity ●"Tzedakah" is the Hebrew word for the acts that we call "charity" in English: giving aid, assistance, and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes. ●Derived from the Hebrew for righteousness, justice, or fairness. ●“In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due. ”

Jewish Perspectives ●Certain kinds of tzedakah are considered more meritorious than others. The Talmud describes these different levels of tzedakah, and Maimonides organized them into a list. The levels of charity, from the least meritorious to the most meritorious, are: ●Giving begrudgingly ●Giving less than you should, but giving it cheerfully. ●Giving after being asked ●Giving before being asked ●Giving when you do not know the recipient's identity, but the recipient knows your identity ●Giving when you know the recipient's identity, but the recipient does not know your identity ●Giving when neither party knows the other's identity ●Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant

Christian Perspectives ●“Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. ” Luke 12: 33 ●“Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on. ” Luke 21: 1 -4

Christian Perspectives ●“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. ” 2 Corinthians 9: 7 ●“But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? ” 1 John 3: 17

Islamic Perspectives ●Pillar of Zakat (1 of the 5) ●“And be steadfast in prayer; practice regular charity; and bow down your heads with those who bow down (in worship). ” ●“Those who (in charity) spend of their goods by night and by day, in secret and in public, have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. ” Further Religious Support ●Buddhism and Hinduism = Daana, giving and expecting nothing in return, regardless of recipient of aid

Peter Singer ●Australian philosopher ●Animal Rights ●Utilitarianism ●“The Singer Solution to World Poverty” (1999)

Singer’s Basic Argument ●Premise 1. If we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, then we ought to do so. ●Premise 2. Death by starvation is bad. ●Premise 3. We can prevent many people from dying of starvation by sacrificing our luxuries, which are not as important. __________________ ●Conclusion: We ought to prevent people from dying of starvation by sacrificing our luxuries. *outlined by James Rachels in The Right Thing To Do, p. 154

Thought Experiments ●Bob and his Bugatti

Thought Experiments ●Child Drowning in Pond

What We* All Can Do ●Obligation and Duty to Sacrifice Luxuries ●Give difference of (income – necessities) to overseas aid organizations �Oxfam and UNICEF ●American household with income of $50, 000 �About $30, 000 a year spent on necessities �Donate rest ($20, 000) to charities ●American household with income of $100, 000 �About $30, 000 a year spent on necessities �Donate rest ($70, 000) to charities �*assuming you have more than you need

From Singer ●“We seem to lack a sound basis for drawing a clear moral line between Bob’s situation and that of any reader of this article with $200 to spare who does not donate it to an overseas aid agency. These readers seem to be acting at least as badly as Bob was acting when he chose to let the runaway train hurtle toward the unsuspecting child. ” ●“When Bob first grasped the dilemma that faced him as he stood by that railway switch, he must have thought how extraordinarily unlucky he was to be placed in a situation in which he must choose between the life of an innocent child and the sacrifice of most of his savings. But he was not unlucky at all. We are all in that situation. ”

Doctrine of Negative Responsibility ●People are responsible not only for outcomes that they deliberately cause, but also for outcomes that they knowingly fail to prevent. ●Legitimate?

Fair argument? =

Are We Obligated to Help Those in Need? NO ●Ayn Rand – “The Virtue of Selfishness” ●Oscar Wilde – “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”

Ayn Rand ●Philosopher, novelist ●Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem ●Objectivism

Altruism ●What is the relationship between altruism and charity? ●What is the relationship between altruism and selfinterest?

Some Premises ●The ultimate moral value and obligation for an individual is his/her own well-being. ●From this, we see the primary importance of selfinterestedness. ●Altruism is the obligation that people have to help each other. * ●If helping each other conflicts with self-interest (which often it does), then we reject altruism. *Altruism =! kindness. Kind acts can be committed in the service of self-interest

Against Compulsory Altruism ●“The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets: ●(a) that any concern with one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and ●(b) that the brute's activities are in fact to one's own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors). What concerns us here is altruism's default in the field of ethical

The Objectivist Ethic ●“The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational selfinterest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the function of moral values in human life-and, therefore, is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral principles which define and determine his actual self-interest. ”

“The Virtue of Selfishness” ●“The fact that a man has no claim on others (i. e. , that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance. ”

Against Compulsory Altruism ●“Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value-and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes. Hence the appalling immorality, the chronic injustice, the grotesque double standards, the insoluble conflicts and contradictions that have characterized human relationships and human societies throughout history, under all the variants of the altruist ethics. ”

“The Virtue of Selfishness” ●“My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a

Rand’s Conclusions ●“The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one’s own rational self-interest and one’s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one’s own happiness. ”

Rand Summary ●Libertarian ●Capitalist ●Egoist ●A right to only our own bodies and its creations gives us a right not to intervene in the affairs of others out of respect to their autonomy. ●You can still give to charity, but you should not be morally obligated to do so.

Oscar Wilde ●Novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, socialite ●The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) ●Marxist views of charity

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” “The wealthy try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. ”

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” ●But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. … Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it… They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Immorality of Charity in Capitalism “There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair. ”

Attitudes of the Poor ●…Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.

Wilde Summary ●Charity prevents the realization of an unjust economic system ●It is immoral to assuage the problems that come from private property with private property ●Charity “demoralizes and degrades” ●Cure the disease, don’t treat the symptoms

Where do you fall? ●If you do feel that you do have a responsibility to help those in need, then we have a few more considerations.

Does Geography Matter? ●Do we have obligations to help Americans before those abroad? ●Dunbar’s number/Monkeysphere (150) ●Which social spheres should we consider when we donate?

Do intentions matter? ●Does the U. S. tax system and “write-offs” for charitable donations skew the morality of giving? �Is the person who donates strictly for the write-off less ethical than the person who wants to feel good about himself? ●Should the person who donates to the arts be considered less ethical than the person who donates to charity relief? ●How do we prioritize the needs of others? �Genocide vs. Famine vs. Women’s Rights vs. Education vs. The Arts

Is it ethical to give with strings attached? ●Governments and some charities sometimes attach conditions to gifts of aid. �“Let us remember that the main purpose of American aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves. ” President Richard Nixon, 1968 ●Does it make a difference to the ethics of conditional giving if the conditions are imposed to ensure that the gift produces maximum benefit? ●Or if imposing the conditions on a chaotic or corrupt country is the only way that the poor will receive any benefit at all? ●Should we consider �Autonomy? �Self-Determinationof the recipient �Human rights and/or politics?

Further Questions to Ask ●What is the individual’s role in determining viable philanthropic contributions? ●How can we shift or reconstruct social patterns in order to make charity obsolete? ●Is it necessary to have poor people in order to have rich people?