This is something that genuinely troubles me.
I remember when I was a teenager, I was involved one evening in a conversation with someone who had some wealth, but was also talking about helping other people. But also living very high off the hog.
So I said, you know, ( and this was the 70s) , for $10 /month you can save someone's life in Africa. So doesn't that mean that since you spend more than $10 a month on so many things - gas for a motorboat, etc etc. that you value buzzing around the lake in your boat more than saving someone's life in Africa?
He said no, but I pressed him, saying it is only logic, you can clearly save a life by giving $10 a month , but you don't , therefore you value your own enjoyment over saving a life.
I didn't get a satisfactory answer.
But it wasn't a fair question, because almost all of us could be asked the same thing.
Why not stop spending on X - Tim hortons, Starbucks, massages, trips , you name it - and save lives?
Now, I wasn't trying to condemn him, but it was a sort of puzzle to me.
So here I am, drinking a $19 bottle of wine. I spend all sorts of money on all sorts of things. Most people do. I don't fly economy class. The difference could keep maybe 5 people alive for a year. Does that make me a murderer?
I know there are people in absolute misery in the world. Terrible, terrible lives. There are still slaves in this world. Trafficked people. People unjustly imprisoned, displaced, diseased, the list goes on forever.
I am NOT comfortable with the idea that I owe other people my life, and yet I sometimes feel terribly guilty at my relative luxury.
I have people from time to time ask me to borrow money, and I always turn them down , figuring that their situation in spite of everything is so much better then many others in the world.
I do give quite a bit to charity, but its hard to be sure it is efficiently spent.
I remember Warren Buffett was In China, and he saw men on the sides of a canal or river or whatever he was travelling on, pulling his boat forward by ropes, and he wondered, how wany of those men, pulling on ropes like oxen, could have achieved so much more given opportunity.
I am troubled by all of this.
I remember when I was a teenager, I was involved one evening in a conversation with someone who had some wealth, but was also talking about helping other people. But also living very high off the hog.
So I said, you know, ( and this was the 70s) , for $10 /month you can save someone's life in Africa. So doesn't that mean that since you spend more than $10 a month on so many things - gas for a motorboat, etc etc. that you value buzzing around the lake in your boat more than saving someone's life in Africa?
He said no, but I pressed him, saying it is only logic, you can clearly save a life by giving $10 a month , but you don't , therefore you value your own enjoyment over saving a life.
I didn't get a satisfactory answer.
But it wasn't a fair question, because almost all of us could be asked the same thing.
Why not stop spending on X - Tim hortons, Starbucks, massages, trips , you name it - and save lives?
Now, I wasn't trying to condemn him, but it was a sort of puzzle to me.
So here I am, drinking a $19 bottle of wine. I spend all sorts of money on all sorts of things. Most people do. I don't fly economy class. The difference could keep maybe 5 people alive for a year. Does that make me a murderer?
I know there are people in absolute misery in the world. Terrible, terrible lives. There are still slaves in this world. Trafficked people. People unjustly imprisoned, displaced, diseased, the list goes on forever.
I am NOT comfortable with the idea that I owe other people my life, and yet I sometimes feel terribly guilty at my relative luxury.
I have people from time to time ask me to borrow money, and I always turn them down , figuring that their situation in spite of everything is so much better then many others in the world.
I do give quite a bit to charity, but its hard to be sure it is efficiently spent.
I remember Warren Buffett was In China, and he saw men on the sides of a canal or river or whatever he was travelling on, pulling his boat forward by ropes, and he wondered, how wany of those men, pulling on ropes like oxen, could have achieved so much more given opportunity.
I am troubled by all of this.
