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It is an obsession. My claim is that you cannot compute a priori whether it is fair or not because it's not possible to consider both the present reality and t

It is an obsession. My claim is that you cannot compute a priori whether it is fair or not because it's not possible to consider both the present reality and the alternatives and fast-forward time in your mind and know exactly how all the possible worlds play out. You can't actually even get close. Humanity runs on one algorithm and that's guess and check. For stuff this complicated as to which way of organizing things actually results in less death and suffering this is necessarily so. Else we would just have sat down, worked it out and followed that course of action. The river of history runs the experiment for us and it's the only way to honestly compute results.

vidarh 8y ago
We're all part of influencing that algorithm, so this is a ridiculous argument. We can choose to do nothing, or we can choose to try. Yes, we won't know if the results are good or not, but that is a shitty reason for doing nothing. As for this argument being an obsession, I think you miss the point: It's a PR campaign. They've used it year after year, because it works. It gives them press attention. It results in increases in donations. It helps them achieve their goals. If it's their goals you find "obsessive", then so be it. But this focus on the richest is pragmatic: It's something cheap they know they can milk year after year. I doubt most people at Oxfam goes around thinking all that much about the 26 richest people in the world - more likely they're busy actually trying to run their programs and keep them funded.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  What's ridiculous is to conclude from what I wrote that my position is to "do nothing". I'll let you work that one out for yourself. I don't care about the charity itself and I see your point about it's effectiveness as a PR campaign, sure, and I'm not anti-people donating to charity. This is a wider narrative that is very prevalent in the West and it's independent of a single PR campaign, and I'm sure even you will acknowledge that. My claim is that the relentless focus on relative wealth is completely upside down. And I think that's unhealthy. "Look at how much you personally don't have" doesn't serve you emotionally as well as "look at how far we have all come and the trajectory we are all on" does. It's a matter of personal pragmatism for me. Why should the focus be on the gap? I know, I know it's just a PR campaign and my yapping about larger narratives in the media won't have any effect on decisions made at Oxfam, yes, yes of course I'm not so deluded into thinking that they will. But people will read our lovely discussion and some will side with me, some will side with you and it's via this process we tussle for which experiment the river of history should carry out in order to compute the result.

vidarh 8y ago

We're all part of influencing that algorithm, so this is a ridiculous argument. We can choose to do nothing, or we can choose to try. Yes, we won't know if the results are good or not, but that is a shitty reason for doing nothing. As for this argument being an obsession, I think you miss the point: It's a PR campaign. They've used it year after year, because it works. It gives them press attention. It results in increases in donations. It helps them achieve their goals. If it's their goals you find "obsessive", then so be it. But this focus on the richest is pragmatic: It's something cheap they know they can milk year after year. I doubt most people at Oxfam goes around thinking all that much about the 26 richest people in the world - more likely they're busy actually trying to run their programs and keep them funded.

james_s_tayler 8y ago
What's ridiculous is to conclude from what I wrote that my position is to "do nothing". I'll let you work that one out for yourself. I don't care about the charity itself and I see your point about it's effectiveness as a PR campaign, sure, and I'm not anti-people donating to charity. This is a wider narrative that is very prevalent in the West and it's independent of a single PR campaign, and I'm sure even you will acknowledge that. My claim is that the relentless focus on relative wealth is completely upside down. And I think that's unhealthy. "Look at how much you personally don't have" doesn't serve you emotionally as well as "look at how far we have all come and the trajectory we are all on" does. It's a matter of personal pragmatism for me. Why should the focus be on the gap? I know, I know it's just a PR campaign and my yapping about larger narratives in the media won't have any effect on decisions made at Oxfam, yes, yes of course I'm not so deluded into thinking that they will. But people will read our lovely discussion and some will side with me, some will side with you and it's via this process we tussle for which experiment the river of history should carry out in order to compute the result.