1 Corinthians 13:3
Apr. 19th, 2011 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
A few days ago, Bill Gates—who is big on international philanthropy these days—tweeted about a ONE Campaign notice that the U.S. fiscal year 2011 budget that had just passed "preserves nearly all key funding for programs fighting poverty in the developing world," to the tune of over $10 billion.
Now, saving lives is good, right? It seems like it should be a good sort of thing in general. So why do I get the heebie-jeebies reading the comments to that article? Is it all the "praise God"s and the conspicuous smugness that their personal interpretation of their religion trumps the laws of the very country aiding them most? Is it the lingering notion that these people feel lives are so much more important than money that it doesn't matter whose money it is or how much is involved?
I see nothing wrong with charity—at least, nothing beyond the general caveat of avoiding getting the recipient dependent on it—but I don't think charity describes what happened here. The ONE Campaign's stated goal is saving lives in extremely poor developing countries, primarily by fighting disease and hunger. Its own website expressly states it is not a charity organization that accepts voluntary donations from private invidivuals and uses them to send goods, services, and wealth where needed. According to the campaign's own words, it works by pressuring the leaders of powerful countries into increasing the generosity of their foreign aid programs. That's the opposite of charity, because now we're talking tax money, which citizens in the powerful countries cannot legally refuse to pay.
But it's all for The Greater Good, right? That $300 I just worked all week to earn can buy me an X-box, but think how many lives it could save! Trust us. We're religious, and not from your greedy country. We know what's best for Humanity, and we're going to do it whether you like it or not. And what's best is that not a single one of these fifty people in Village X starves to death this year, even if it means no Call of Duty 4 for you.
The sticking point is that I have no idea if they're right on a species scale. This all gets way the hell over my head into the realms of philosophy and game theory. I'm led to believe altruism and reciprocity benefit society as a whole, and may even be the reason we survived the infant years of our species. Forced wealth redistribution may very well be better for everyone, in general, even though it means breaking laws (or at least going directly against their intent, like taking money from a New York City auto mechanic to buy anti-AIDS drugs for Rwanda instead of clean up pollution from the Hudson River). On the other hand, generous welfare policies might overstimulate the altruism centers of our primitive brains in exactly the same way as modern salty-fatty processed foods wreck our eating habits.
Or maybe I'm making too big a deal over something reportedly "0.73% of our budget".