As Christians, we seem to always be ready to tell someone else what they should do. When we don’t struggle with a sin, it is very east to tell someone who does that they simply ought not partake in that sin. It is arrogant to think that simply because we don’t suffer with the desire to engage in an activity, that someone else should struggle with it either.
I enjoy being productive and my relationship with my wife can often suffer because of it. I have this need to feel like I’m doing something and am in a state of discontent when I am in the midst of incomplete work and not making progress. Someone can tell me that I ought not let my relationship suffer and be completely correct, but they are missing the point entirely. My error has benefits that are felt, and it isn’t always a clear line where I am supposed to stop work and just be present with my family.
Stopping all progress and work would lead to poverty and starvation. If we didn’t starve, it would only be due to the work and progress of someone else. That certainly isn’t Christian either. So admitting that I have a tendency to lean too far in the direction of work, that I struggle with that, is not so easy to address with some snide and passing comment that I work too hard. It might also be true that if others worked a little harder, I might not feel the need to work quite as hard. Having a significant portion of my earnings taken away to be reallocated to others, and having the value of what I’ve worked for being stripped from me by a state you voted for not being responsible with their spending means that in order to best provide for and protect my family, I have to work just that much harder.
Still, that is why I struggle with it. I know there is a line, and without knowing where it is, I push that line in the direction that my natural instincts pull me.
What does this have to do with wealthy people?
Well, it is easy to look at the millions and billions of dollars in wealth that some of the richest in the world hold, and determine from the outside that they ought to give some of it away or engage in more philanthropy.
Is it that easy, though?
Most people who have become wealthy did so by providing value to others and figuring out how to scale that value so that they can provide it to hundreds of millions of people, or even billions. They have developed products or services that masses of people desired more than the money they had, and who then voluntarily exchanged it to those now very wealthy people.
We might see someone living in poverty and understand that their immediate circumstances would be improved if that wealthy person were to feed them or provide them some shelter. That is the simple solution, but it is arrogant in the fact that it takes a strong stance in the presence of massive ignorance regarding the circumstances. For instance, why is that person in poverty? If due to circumstances entirely out of their control, and they are out there trying to provide value to others and improve their circumstances, it might serve them well to give them a small boost to improve their circumstances and the likelihood that they get over that next economic hurdle. Even that is not entirely clear, though, as the potential lessons the person might have learned in getting over that hurdle on their own may have been the kind of priceless lessons that can change entire families or cultures for generations.
If the individual struggling is doing so because of their own choices, however, providing them the assistance would actually be a disservice to them and to society as a whole. That may seem ridiculous and even evil, but it is true. Circumstances due to their choices or vices have consequences, and providing them food and shelter serves to keep them from learning those lessons.
Now spare me the calls for charity. I understand that a Christian is called to give in charity, but that calling is not to simply throw money and resources at people. It goes to a call of actually caring for them. One resource that even the most wealthy are limited on is time and energy. No matter how much wealth they have, they are still limited in how many hours are in a day, how much effort they can give, or how many days they have in this world.
Further, they have already shown that they have a pretty strong tendency to provide value to others. It might be that they could far better serve people and care for them by continuing to seek ways to provide massive value on scale. That doesn’t mean that someone in a terrible circumstance who needs some food, and asked this very wealthy person for a meal, should be ignored or passed by. It would be better for the man who could feed him for a week on his pocket change to ensure he is provided a meal. That does not imply, however, that the same wealthy person should just write a check to some other organization or charity so that they can do that on scale.
That money might be better invested in capital goods and increasing the jobs available to the community. It might be better invested in making food easier to produce and more abundant so that it costs less for the rest of us to feed the poor. Since the wealthy often seem to have shown a tremendous ability to identify those opportunities and to make them successful, why would we take the capital from those people, or coerce them by calling them immoral for not giving it away, to those who have shown a tremendous ability to squander it all away?
The worst at making wise decisions are our elected officials. Bureaucracy seems specifically attuned to growing costs and massive inefficiency while providing the absolute least value possible. So does it make sense to call for political leaders to acquire the wealth of those who have shown the absolute best use of those dollars?
I think the answer is obvious.
Calls for raising taxes or for the wealthy to pay their fair share are more dangerous and not as clear as they might seem at face value. Also concerning is that the majority of those that seem to be on the correct side of this argument do not understand why. I used to be like them. I selfishly just didn’t want to someday become wealthy and then have a bunch of other people claim a legal right to steal my property from me simply because of my success. It was a very clear moral argument, but then is complicated by the moral argument that there are massive populations of people suffering who need help as well.
So the much better and more sound argument is that unless that wealth was acquired by ripping people off or stealing it, like the government, that wealth will be best utilized, invested, gifted, spent, or otherwise used in the hands of those who acquired it. It is the practical application. If you think a wealthy person is missing an opportunity to provide massive value to others, rather than getting the IRS to steal their money and funnel it through the greedy and inefficient hands of government, you should find a way to make the appeal directly to that wealthy individual. They will probably see an opportunity to invest that you were ignorant to, that will help address the problem at a massive scale.
There is a reason the homeless in America are able to eat better than royalty in some countries. Our past of free markets has led to so much value and accumulation of capital goods that we throw away more food and resources than many other nations can even produce.
So caring about people doesn’t logically produce the political solutions that people offer to us. In fact, it undermines the very existence of politics.
An interesting read is “What Would The Rockefellers Do?” I’m not saying it is a map of the only moral solution for people to practice with their money, but it is certainly a different perspective on how to view money and the way to build a legacy for your family or your community.
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