The case against charity

Most people unthinkingly associate the word charity with good; indeed, charity has become a synonym for the word good. I disagree with this association. I will list the causes of this association between charity and good and will attempt to show that it is unfounded.

All people are equal

As much as we would like to believe that all people are somehow equal, the notion of equality is quite groundless. Plainly, everyone is different. Some people have white skin; others have black, brown, and yellow skin. Some people have amazing capacities of rumination; others are quite bovine. Since every human being is unique in body and mind, one wonders whence this tendency to impose an arbitrary, transcendental, metaphysical equality comes from. Applying Occam’s razor (that we must not make more assumptions than necessary to explain something) to this question shows that any notion of arbitrary equality is unsubstantiated. Since there is no scientific or philosophical evidence to prove that one human being is somehow worth the same as another, we must conclude that equality is a spurious and illegitimate claim.

All people deserve equal opportunities

Social mobility is not as high as we would like it to be; even in the United States, the land of the American dream, most of the wealth of the rich can be attributed to social factors that are outside the control of the wealthy. For example, the argument goes, Bill Gates would not be so wealthy if it were not for America’s relatively stable economy, its public schooling, and its universities. Proponents of charity argue that we thus have a debt to pay back to society, which must be done through voluntary donations to charitable organisations. But this argument is clearly a logical fallacy. The statement ‘social and economic factors beyond our control indirectly are the cause of much of rich people’s wealth’ is a descriptive one. To change it into a normative statement, that ‘we are in debt to society and must pay it back’, is groundless. There is no reason to suppose that just because we profit from society we must pay it back. To invent the notion of the inherent fairness of the universe is ruled out by, again, Occam’s razor.

Charity genuinely improves people’s lives

Many charities proclaim that we can save a starving child’s life in Africa if we donate but HKD 50. We must ask ourselves, to what extent is this true? The answer is: not at all. To dream, nay, fantasise that your pitiful and pathetic contribution can do anything to improve the world is stupidity to the point of lunacy. Tim Harford in Slate Magazine writes that most charity work is about feeling good about ourselves and not about solving the world’s problems. For example, if we have HKD 10,000, most people would give a little proportion of that money to several different charities. HKD 2000 for curing AIDS, HKD 2000 for Darfur, and so on. But surely HKD 2000 isn’t going to cure AIDS, and neither is it going to stop genocide. Another example: between working overtime (earning more money) and volunteer work, most people choose the latter. Why? – because volunteer work makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Actually going to Africa to shove food inside the mouths of thin African kids makes you feel good. Of course, the alternative (earning much more money and using this to combat poverty) is more effective, but far less ‘hand-on’.

So should we abandon charity?

The sooner that you get it into your head that you are worthless and must stop trying to be a hero the better. Instead of wasting your time volunteering or wasting your money donating, try the following: when you have HKD 10,000, for example, at the end of the year that you intended to give to charity, invest it to make more money. You will amass much more wealth in this way.

At the end of your life, when you actually have a sizable and not insignificant amount of money to give, then, and only then, perhaps contemplate donating it to charity.

Until then, charity cannot be associated with good; it can only be associated with stupidity.