Saturday, October 16, 2010

"Charity Doesn't Solve Anything"

As you know, Bill and Warren have set out on an excellent adventure.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have been traveling around America and the world trying to persuade their fellow billionaires to join them in pledging half of their assets to charity.

Now you know that Bill and Warren are very generous people. They will not merely be remembered as obscenely rich, but as paragons, as paladins, as champions of progressive causes, as men of unimpeachable moral standing.

If we are not feeling quite so charitable ourselves, we would note that we are witnessing the spectacle of two men who are so rich that they can burn money. It does not really matter how much they burn.

After all Bill himself lives in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe he is just reviving the old Native American custom of potlatch.

Half of an infinite amount of money is still an infinite amount of money. Bill and Warren can burn half of it and still, if they wish, ensure that their descendants will always be richer than everyone else.

If they have decided not to make their children and grandchildren absurdly rich, because they understand that living off of trust funds does not promote human initiative, self-reliance and self-respect, then why would they want the same rules to apply to non-family members?

For all I know, Bill and Warren are just avoiding taxes. They do not trust the government, and want to have a say in how their money is spent.

Ironically, both Bill and Warren tend to favor high taxes. When you are a billionaire you do not effectively pay taxes, so no matter what your tax rate your lifestyle does not suffer.

The best irony here is that while Bill and Warren are off on their grand adventure, Bill, Sr. father of the Microsoft billionaire, is promoting an initiative in Washington State to raise state taxes on wealthy people.

Is this part of the Gates philanthropy business? To make sure that others give more money to the government, the better to make up for the money that the Gates family is sheltering from taxation.

Unfortunately, it is also public policy. As Arthur Laffer pointed out, state income taxes tend to stifle economic growth. Maybe, having gobs of money blinds you to reality. Link here.

All things considered Bill and Warren’s excellent adventure looks like a self- promotional junket by people who have too much time and money on their hands.

Yesterday, the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, answered Bill and Warren's initiative. Slim responded: “Charity never solved anything.” Link here.

Slim continued: "'The only way to fight poverty is with employment,' he said. 'Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything.'"

Charities do create employment, mostly for administrators and for do-gooders. But they do not create the kind of economic activity that sustains a prosperous society, and allows people to arrive at a point where they do not need charity.

The point is very obvious. It has been repeated over and over again. Apparently it has made no impression on Bill and Warren. As the Journal reports, Slim’s: "… point seems to be that society would benefit more if the wealthy channeled their creative energies and talents toward building job-creating businesses rather than doling out cash."

Here’s an idea. What if Bill and Warren dedicated ten percent of their fortune to providing seed money for new businesses in poorer American neighborhoods. What if they set up cooperatives that would train and help prospective entrepreneurs run these new businesses?

Human societies have always had charities. After all, religions have been on the front lines of charity as long as they have existed.  Christian love is called agape in Greek, caritas in Latin, and charity in English.

When the New Testament says that you should love your neighbor as yourself, it uses the word: agape.

But how much of the money that Bill and Warren and their friends are going to be funneling into charity is going to be given to religious organizations? How much of it do you think will go to Catholic charities or Hadassah or the United Methodist Committee on Relief?

Don’t hold your breath.

Bill Gates wants to cure malaria. It is certainly a worthy goal. Of course, you would think that given the prevalence of malaria, pharmaceutical companies have plenty of incentive to find a cure.

I will guarantee, without even looking it up, that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is not involved with research that would produce new pesticides that could kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. Progressive values would preclude such funding.

Carlos Slim was pointing to the simple fact that if you send boatloads of food to feed the world’s hungry, you are going to feel very good about yourself, but you are also going to destroy local agriculture.

No one can compete with “free.”

Gratifying your philanthropic urges can easily create a cycle of dependence, one that saps initiative, self-respect, and demeans individuals.

Keep in mind, no matter who begins these foundations, and no matter whose name is on the door, ultimately they will be run by people who are in the business of philanthropy, and that means, people who have made it their life’s work.

These people are not champions of the free market; they are not especially interested in building businesses. They are interested in assuaging guilt, their own or someone else’s, by giving away money.

These charities will be promoting liberal and progressive causes; they will become advocacy organizations. They will not be promoting capitalism.

It is a good thing to fund education. It makes you feel good to fund education. Except that the problem with education has very little to do with money.

Education is a system that has been run by liberals and progressives, with precious little interference from moderates and conservatives. More and more it has devoted itself to inculcating the values associated with political correctness and self-esteemism, rather than teaching children.

All the world’s money is not going to change that.

It’s one thing to give money to the poor and the indigent. Religions have always done as much. It’s quite another to create a special class of people who can promote their own ideology under cover of philanthropy.

And who are not answerable to market forces or even to God.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, Gates Sr. has been fairly consistent in his progressive politics.

Gates Jr. tends to flip back and forth and often publicly opposed to one another on various local bills such as state estate taxes.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: Dr. Schneiderman
RE: Too Phoney

Bill Gates wants to cure malaria. It is certainly a worthy goal. Of course, you would think that given the prevalence of malaria, pharmaceutical companies have plenty of incentive to find a cure. -- Stuart Schneiderman

If anyone was really serious about curing such things as malaria and, even better, cancer, they'd simply have to 'look around themselves'.

Case in Point....

There IS a cure for cancer. At least most forms of it. It was discovered in research at Purdue U in 1997 when researchers discovered that something in a broad-leaf evergreen from the Amazon killed cancer cells in vitro while leaving healthy cells alone.

The plant is known as graviola.

Since then the pharm companies have been scrambling to synthesize the active agent.

Why? Because you can't make a billion dollars off of a naturally occurring substance. Something to do with patent laws.

However, they've failed.

In the meantime, over half-a-million Americans die every year from cancer.

There is a northern hemisphere counterpart to graviola. Of the same family. It's the pawpaw tree. And, for some unknown reason, it has four times the active agent in it.

I've SEEN the pawpaw product KILL an aggressive squamous carcinoma. The former president of my garden club had it last January. [Note: Not 'former' because she has passed on. Rather, she is now the club secretary and I AM the club president.]

The b-b diameter growth had sprung out of her arm by a quarter inch in one week. She'd seen them before. She knew what she was talking about.

I suggested she look into pawpaw.

She got some and started taking it. Her report was that withing 24 hours in insane itching had stopped. Then, over the course of a month she watched it whither and slough off.

So....

....if you know someone with a cancer....

....tell them about pawpaw. AND, if they know someone with a tree in their yard, suggest they get the stems and leaves, dehydrate them, powderize them, and drink a cup of tea made from a teaspoon of the powder ever day.

After all, would you expect an oncologist or radiologist to give up their lucrative practice in order to open up a 'tea shoppe'?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[God made the Earth and everything therein for Man. Our problem has been in trying to figure out how to use it all....properly.]

Bozoer Rebbe said...

Dr. Schneiderman,

Look up Maimonides' hierarchy of charity. There are eight levels. The lowest is grudgingly giving when the recipient and giver both know who each other is. The highest form of charity is to loan or give someone someone money to start a business, hire them with gainful employment, train them in a trade or take them in as your partner, so that they should not have to ask others for help.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Thank you, Rebbe, for reminding us of the thinking of Maimonides on this topic.

Anonymous said...

train them in a trade or take them in as your partner, so that they should not have to ask others for help.

Give a man a match and he is warm for a while. Set him on fire and he will be warm the rest of his life....

I've got charity burnout: Half my income is already confiscated and given to people who would likely try to rob me at knife-point if they didn't have government thugs doing it legally for them!

Bill and Warren can kiss my ass. I want better plutocrats!

--Gray

merkur said...

But how much of the money that Bill and Warren and their friends are going to be funneling into charity is going to be given to religious organizations? How much of it do you think will go to Catholic charities or Hadassah or the United Methodist Committee on Relief?

A reasonable amount. The Foundation regularly funds Catholic Relief Services, and also funds a joint effort with Lutheran World Relief and UMCOR. Other faith-based organisations also receive funding from the Foundation through various streams.

Of course, you would think that given the prevalence of malaria, pharmaceutical companies have plenty of incentive to find a cure.

You wouldn't think that if you understood how the pharmaceutical industry works. The Gates Foundation naturally partners with pharma companies in order to produce improved drugs. (http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2010/07/05/daily22.html)

I will guarantee, without even looking it up, that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is not involved with research that would produce new pesticides that could kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

Maybe you should have looked it up, since research into pesticides and pesticide resistance is a core part of their approach.(http://www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/Pages/malaria.aspx#)

It's no crime to be ignorant, but parading your ignorance as if it was wisdom does you no favours.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Thanks for the corrections.

I see that the Foundation does make grants to pharmaceutical companies. This is surely a good thing. I suspect that most of the research on malaria drugs is driven by market forces, with an assist from charities.

There are, however, diseases that are not being researched because they are not sufficiently prevalent to justify the research expenses. Surely, those are good places to invest foundation money.

I looked up your reference to the Foundation's funding for pesticide research, and was interested to find out that it has funded research that aims at pesticides that cover bed netting and that can be used inside of houses.

Which is well and good. And is also, as they say, not very effective.

In the old days, when the world had conquered malaria, pesticides were used outside the home to destroy mosquito breeding grounds.

As most people know, once this form of pesticide control stopped the mosquitoes and the disease came back.

merkur said...

I suspect that most of the research on malaria drugs is driven by market forces, with an assist from charities.

You might suspect that, but once again you would probably be wrong, since that was part of the reasoning behind Gates' decision to focus on malaria (and other diseases of the poor).

There are, however, diseases that are not being researched because they are not sufficiently prevalent to justify the research expenses. Surely, those are good places to invest foundation money.

This presumably being the reason why the Foundation invests in efforts against malaria, tuberculosis, polio, and a range of neglected diseases such as leishmaniasis, dengue, sleeping sickness and so on. All of these – yes, including malaria – are diseases that don't “justify the research expenses” of pharmaceutical companies – because they mainly affect the poor.

I looked up your reference to the Foundation's funding for pesticide research, and was interested to find out that it has funded research that aims at pesticides that cover bed netting and that can be used inside of houses. Which is well and good. And is also, as they say, not very effective.

I'm glad we have your expertise to guide us, rather than the medical and public health experts who believe that impregnated bed nets are the most cost-effective way to prevent the spread of malaria.

In the old days, when the world had conquered malaria, pesticides were used outside the home to destroy mosquito breeding grounds.

False: the elimination of malaria in the US was primarily through the application of DDT inside residential premises. (http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html)

Seriously. This is not difficult. You have access to the internet, so why are you continuing to make incorrect assumptions rather than spend five minutes educating yourself?

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Thanks again, for the corrections.

Surely, we all agree that foundations should fund research into diseases that are no longer cost effective for pharmaceutical companies.

I don't much see the point of accusing me of not saying something that I said.

As the Gates foundation says, the current insecticides being used in the interior of homes are no longer very effective.

For the rest, true enough, the CDC said that interior spraying was "primarily" responsible for stopping malaria.

I did not use the word "primarily: but I did say that pesticides were used outside of the home.

As does the CDC: "It also included drainage, removal of mosquito breeding sites, and spraying (occasionally from aircrafts) of insecticides."

merkur said...

I did not use the word "primarily: but I did say that pesticides were used outside of the home.

What you specifically said was

In the old days, when the world had conquered malaria, pesticides were used outside the home to destroy mosquito breeding grounds. As most people know, once this form of pesticide control stopped the mosquitoes and the disease came back.

Firstly, “the world” never conquered malaria. Secondly, your statement makes it sound as if using pesticides outside the home was the main reason why the world had conquered malaria, and this is not the case. Thirdly, pesticide application met with mixed results globally and halting external pesticide spraying was not the main reason why the disease came back.

Obviously I'm not being clear enough. From where I'm standing, it looks as if you had already drawn your conclusions before presenting your original arguments – that the arguments, such as they are, were retrofitted to support your conclusion. Now that those arguments have been shown to be untrue, will you be changing your conclusion?