3 ms·

My point in this line of questioning is purely dialectic; in essense, I am indirectly targeting the question, “Why is something undesirable, if it is not bad?”

by dsacco 9y ago

My point in this line of questioning is purely dialectic; in essense, I am indirectly targeting the question, “Why is something undesirable, if it is not bad?” So we have a few possibilities: - Is demanding attribution in philanthropy bad? If it’s bad, how does it decrease the concrete “goodness” of the philanthropy? - Is it not bad? Then why is it undesirable? - Is it neither bad nor undesirable? Then why is it relevant? People have (normative) reasons for personal admiration, and they can’t really be right or wrong. I’m interested in digging at the normatives. Generalizing this further, we can say that people are easily offended by grandiosity and vanity, or at the very least find it distasteful. As a philosophical question I consider it interesting to wonder why that is the case, in a scenario where that person is not doing anything “bad” from a consequentialist perspective. As it turns out, anonymity and attribution in philanthopy seem to be a good real-world setting for this question, because narcissism appears to become invalid as a signalling heuristic.

csaOY2dRRuysksq 9y ago
Charitable gift exchange is a zero-sum game between giver and recipient. On the table is the money in question, attribution, tax relief, future control of the money, and the conditions for future gifts. Attribution is essentially a public statement on behalf of the recipient that the giver is a good person. These statements have a value. You could not pay me $10 to say that Bill Gates is a good person, but you could probably pay me $100,000. However if Bill Gates wanted to give me $100,000 without attribution, I would be spared the cost of saying I thought he was a good person in public.
didibus 9y ago
I think the answer to your question relates to the ability of the billionaire to do what he wants on his terms. You have to ask yourself what are the implicating consequences of this kind of concentrated influence? So I think in terms of consequentialism, you need to look bigger. Should the billionaire be further rewarded for philanthropic actions? What else would he have done with the money without those rewards? How do the rewards to big donors affect the donations and volunteering of smaller participators? What was the long lasting consequence of the big donation which awarded rewards to a big donor? The answer to that is complicated, but could change the consequence of the system, so are relevent to a consequentialist perspective. Of most noteworthy to me, I think is the idea that a single entity can have so much concentrated wealth in the first place, where we now need to put motivations in place for them to give it away. Why award so much wealth to that entity to begin with? What consequences does this has on the moral objective you're looking to get as a consequence of our system? And so, if you believe having billionaires generates overall bad consequences, then you'll want to demotivate people to become one, thus you might start by shaming them for their wealth, by conveying to their ego that they are not special, loved or admired for those traits, and that their big donations is frowned upon, that we'd rather they just volunteered their time, because no one cares to know how much they were able to donate. But, if you frame the problem in the small, and don't explore alternatives, or quesrion the consequences of the given frame, ya, a billionaire which gives hundreds of million to charity in exchange for a thousand of dollar statue is an all around good deal for the charity in terms of consequentialism.
rhizome 9y ago
In the context of Hegel's dialectic, my understanding is that "undesirable" would be the synthesis of "bad" and "something that tempers the badness," which could simply be "low intensity." Said another way, I don't think your question is all that valid, it's like asking "Why is something pink, if it is not red?" Which if you ask me sounds like a pondering from a pre-Socratic also-ran, and at any rate the question can be dispensed by saying that pink is a less intense red. All in all, they're all value judgments, so the good-faith answer is: like all value-judgements, it's because the perceiver says so. I’m interested in digging at the normatives. Assuming this isn't to indicate a search for consensus where there isn't any, the "normative" is that someone donating $1 can't make these demands, so maybe a better question would be why do rich people demand namings, and could it be merely a personality flaw to force people to use their name to refer to something oriented around their donation (building, fund, etc.)? That is, rather than right or wrong, can we ask whether it's selfish? Immature? Something else? Fire up your dialectic if you like. How ridiculous would it be to create "The Barney Google Fund for Helping People Reach a State of Getting Things Named After Themselves?" I'd say if you think, "say, that's not a bad idea!" then you probably don't see a problem with donations purchasing naming rights. Plain and simple, no dialectic necessary. But we can come up with reasons not to do something all day. So, assuming for simplicity that naming is optional and the money would be given regardless, in what ways are named donations a good thing? I find this approach more readily exposes the details.

by dsacco 9y ago

csaOY2dRRuysksq 9y ago

Charitable gift exchange is a zero-sum game between giver and recipient. On the table is the money in question, attribution, tax relief, future control of the money, and the conditions for future gifts. Attribution is essentially a public statement on behalf of the recipient that the giver is a good person. These statements have a value. You could not pay me $10 to say that Bill Gates is a good person, but you could probably pay me $100,000. However if Bill Gates wanted to give me $100,000 without attribution, I would be spared the cost of saying I thought he was a good person in public.

didibus 9y ago

I think the answer to your question relates to the ability of the billionaire to do what he wants on his terms. You have to ask yourself what are the implicating consequences of this kind of concentrated influence? So I think in terms of consequentialism, you need to look bigger. Should the billionaire be further rewarded for philanthropic actions? What else would he have done with the money without those rewards? How do the rewards to big donors affect the donations and volunteering of smaller participators? What was the long lasting consequence of the big donation which awarded rewards to a big donor? The answer to that is complicated, but could change the consequence of the system, so are relevent to a consequentialist perspective. Of most noteworthy to me, I think is the idea that a single entity can have so much concentrated wealth in the first place, where we now need to put motivations in place for them to give it away. Why award so much wealth to that entity to begin with? What consequences does this has on the moral objective you're looking to get as a consequence of our system? And so, if you believe having billionaires generates overall bad consequences, then you'll want to demotivate people to become one, thus you might start by shaming them for their wealth, by conveying to their ego that they are not special, loved or admired for those traits, and that their big donations is frowned upon, that we'd rather they just volunteered their time, because no one cares to know how much they were able to donate. But, if you frame the problem in the small, and don't explore alternatives, or quesrion the consequences of the given frame, ya, a billionaire which gives hundreds of million to charity in exchange for a thousand of dollar statue is an all around good deal for the charity in terms of consequentialism.

rhizome 9y ago

In the context of Hegel's dialectic, my understanding is that "undesirable" would be the synthesis of "bad" and "something that tempers the badness," which could simply be "low intensity." Said another way, I don't think your question is all that valid, it's like asking "Why is something pink, if it is not red?" Which if you ask me sounds like a pondering from a pre-Socratic also-ran, and at any rate the question can be dispensed by saying that pink is a less intense red. All in all, they're all value judgments, so the good-faith answer is: like all value-judgements, it's because the perceiver says so. I’m interested in digging at the normatives. Assuming this isn't to indicate a search for consensus where there isn't any, the "normative" is that someone donating $1 can't make these demands, so maybe a better question would be why do rich people demand namings, and could it be merely a personality flaw to force people to use their name to refer to something oriented around their donation (building, fund, etc.)? That is, rather than right or wrong, can we ask whether it's selfish? Immature? Something else? Fire up your dialectic if you like. How ridiculous would it be to create "The Barney Google Fund for Helping People Reach a State of Getting Things Named After Themselves?" I'd say if you think, "say, that's not a bad idea!" then you probably don't see a problem with donations purchasing naming rights. Plain and simple, no dialectic necessary. But we can come up with reasons not to do something all day. So, assuming for simplicity that naming is optional and the money would be given regardless, in what ways are named donations a good thing? I find this approach more readily exposes the details.