Huge numbers (billions) of people have enough money to make massive changes to the lives of those less fortunate than them, but don't, and prefer instead to make incremental upgrades to their own lives. New rugs, more savings, first-class airline tickets, eating out a few more times a month, etc.
This is just human nature.
People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.
I remember wrestling with this in my therapist's office when Aaron died. I had known him tangentially - we hung out in the same IRC channels, and had several mutual friends in the Cambridge/Somerville techie crowd that he would hang out in person with.
As a college student and young adult I had always envied his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google, when it was still a nice place to work doing things that I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to actually carry out.
I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their altruism. It is adaptive, in a survival sense, to think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too much about other people. Ironically, this is what my therapist was trying to get me to realize.
But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1 than x, after all; you could give everything you had away and mathematically, it would lower your net worth significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at x+1. Why can't they donate instead, where their wealth would do an order of magnitude more good?
There actually do exist people who are like that: they would rather spread their wealth around the people at wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are far more generous than rich people are. That is why they are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people at level x-1.
I'm not talking about people with x+1, where X is a standard US middle-class amount of money. In that case, $20k or $100k or some amount that would make a tiny difference in the world is a huge amount of money to a middle-class family.
No, I'm talking about wealth level X*100. For them, the difference between $100M and $1B is basically no difference in the quality of life to that family. They'd have 1 fewer megayachts. They could give away $900M, and eliminate hunger forever in a large city or a small state. $100B is 100x that again, they could give away $99.9B, still have $100M, and solve poverty in most _countries_.
Or, if they don't want to, we institute a 90% wealth tax on everything over $10M, and solve it ourselves.
What you forget is, none of the x+100 people you are talking about would have ever become a x+100 person if they thought like you suggest they should. In german, we have a proverb: "Von den Reichen lernt man das sparen." (The rich teach you how to save money) And giving away huge sums without personal gain, is the contrary of saving.
> For them, the difference between $100M and $1B is basically no difference in the quality of life to that family.
I think money at that level is not about family quality of life. It's usually about buying companies, launching product lines, etc.
> They could give away $900M, and eliminate hunger forever in a large city or a small state. $100B is 100x that again, they could give away $99.9B, still have $100M, and solve poverty in most _countries_.
Ehhh...
Most people who have $X billion don't really have that. They just have controlling shares in a company that's worth a lot, and media companies like Forbes enjoy making headlines by pretending that's cash. Actually turning that into cash would be impossible.
Of course, they can still turn meaningful percentages of it into cash and give it away, that's true. And I think more billionaires should.
But also, many problems aren't money problems. For example, simply flooding a state or a small city with money isn't going to "solve hunger forever." Hunger and poverty are more often an issue around distribution and logistics, infrastructure, politics, culture and conflict, and things like that. Huge cash giveaways famously tend to disappear and accomplish very little.
The single biggest force that reduces suffering and poverty in an enduring way, imo, is the creation and proliferation of technology. Vaccines that are cheaper to produce. Water filtration systems that are easier to maintain. Seeds and crops that are heartier and more durable. Healthcare that's more affordable and available. Etc. Advances like this have reduced more suffering and ended more poverty and counteracted more famine and saved more lives than any amount of charity ever has or could.
What I would like to see more of is billionaires and even super-talented non-billionaires starting more organizations that are a force for good. Or using money from profitable enterprises to fund unprofitable-yet-charitable enterprises.
We can also tell because anyone who can take the time to use a computer with internet to write a comment in well-formed English is already comparatively wealthy or connected enough to provide food and housing for dozens of people.
I also think this could be a symptom of an economically unequal society (which creates a higher range of x), and is a big reason why it's important to fix it, on top of the extra money to the state.
So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible with human nature?
Communism doesn't eliminate power relationships, it just papers them over with politics and bureaucracy instead of having them legible with prices and wages.
In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker, because the government would get it all. Instead, they got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual harassment of secretaries.
In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned by government bureau run by party members. It was not uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these shortages never seemed to really hit the party members responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks.
And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce economic inequality need to focus on power rather than money. There have been a number of policies that do meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor: they're things like the 13th amendment to the (US) Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system, free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own living against people who would seek to restrict that freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage.
This is just human nature.
People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.