{"items": [{"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1352388465932", "service": "gp", "text": "I agree with you in principle. However, taking the Medicaid example, there are very good practical reasons not to extend that program beyond the United States. US citizens pay taxes, have paperwork/IDs that allow the federal government to keep track of them, etc. As such, we can get certain guarantees about how Medicaid will work with US citizens that we couldn't get with non-citizens (and particularly, people not living in the US).\n
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\nThere's no moral reason why people living in Brazil shouldn't be eligible for Medicaid in the abstract, if you think Medicaid is a good thing to have exist. But arguably there's a moral reason, and certainly there's a bureaucratic/logistical one, for them not to be eligible for the US version. No one in Brazil pays taxes toward it. We would have no framework for tracking individuals and ensuring appropriate distribution of benefits. We would have no enforcement mechanisms if we discovered malicious behavior.\n
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\nIf you're talking about charitable giving, this may all be moot, but since you chose a government program as an example, I think it's worth pointing out that in that kind of case, there is justification for taking care of our own in the narrower sense. If and when we gain 'jurisdiction' over other places, we can broaden the scope of such programs.", "timestamp": 1352388465}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1352389103800", "service": "gp", "text": "I agree that all people should count equally in terms of \"taking care of our own,\" but I think there is something to be said for helping people in wealthy countries like the US. \u00a0If we're able to create strong, healthy communities, there's less of a day-to-day emotional burden on individuals, freeing them to be more productive and able to help others outside of their more immediate\u00a0community.\n
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\nIf I'm seeing homeless men and women every day, there's a nontrivial amount of emotional energy that goes into responding to that, even if I give them nothing. \u00a0There's guilt, shame, and reasoning about why my money is more effective elsewhere. \u00a0You can train yourself not to care or think about it, but that may not be the right thing to do. \u00a0\n
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\nFurther, taking care of your own establishes strong community morals that obviously extend to aid elsewhere; by not establishing that as a community, does other aid miss out in the long run?\n
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\nMy questions are: at what point does the mental and emotional baggage of witnessing failing individuals and doing nothing to help actually hurt giving more broadly? \u00a0Are we training the empathy out of our children? \u00a0Out of ourselves? \u00a0With\u00a0quieter\u00a0aid like giving, are we setting a bad example for our neighbors, essentially telling them that apathy is okay? \u00a0When does not \"taking care of our own,\" start hurting more impact per dollar giving?", "timestamp": 1352389103}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/361680440589382?comment_id=361721440585282", "anchor": "fb-361721440585282", "service": "fb", "text": "An Arab saying: \"Me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousin; me and my cousin against the world.\" It's unfortunate that this is put in negative terms, but clearly delineates the proclivity for putting clan ahead of larger social, cultural, genetic units. There are no moral \"bright lines\" for limiting sharing, with the possible exception of your own children. Preserving one's own children becomes almost motor reflex--as it should. As others have said there is worth in having robust social units that ultimately become sufficiently more wealthy that they may be more helpful of other less well off. Perhaps more useful than considering charity, consider how to maximize everyone's productivity, and not merely their material well being. Charity is privatized socialism. Socialism leaves almost everybody worse off. But socialism is the ultimate outcome of maximized charity. No bright lines telling you when to stop. (Please don't get me wrong. I'm a little left of center as I think most of my friends are. But this is perhaps similar to the useful but bald, unfeeling analytics that Levitt and Dubner posit in \"Freakonomics\".)", "timestamp": "1352393744"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1352399895545", "service": "gp", "text": "@Todd\n\u00a0You're right and I wasn't clear enough: I don't actually think worldwide medicaid would work well, at least not in a \"just expand it to everyone\" sense.\n
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\nI entended the medicaid example to illustrate the problems with drawing circles of \"our own\" that are too narrow. \u00a0There can also be problems with drawing them too large, but I think the problems are more practical issues of \"how do we coordinate this program over all these people all over\" than moral ones of \"who should be covered\".", "timestamp": 1352399895}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1352400352472", "service": "gp", "text": "@Allison\n\u00a0Another way to avoid the emotional energy that goes into \"witnessing failing individuals and doing nothing to help\" would be more gated communities or otherwise segregating people.\n
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\n(While I have negative reactions to that idea, I think they're basically all cached thoughts, my upbringing speaking.)\n
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\nIn a purely consequentialist sense, there's probably an amount of seeing poor people that maximizes the tradeoff between promoting charitable acts and draining emotional energy.\n
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\n\"taking care of your own establishes strong community morals that obviously extend to aid elsewhere\"\n
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\nDoes it, though? \u00a0It seems that you could have a system with relatively generous support for people in the community or within some political entity but little support for people outside that. (In that, that's more or less what we have now.)\n
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\n\"With quieter aid like giving, are we setting a bad example for our neighbors, essentially telling them that apathy is okay?\"\n
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\nSome amount of changing the cultural norm that giving should be quiet might help here.\n
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\n\"When does not 'taking care of our own,' start hurting more impact per dollar giving?\"\n
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\nThis is a question I would also care about.", "timestamp": 1352400352}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/361680440589382?comment_id=361752957248797", "anchor": "fb-361752957248797", "service": "fb", "text": "@Walker: \"Charity is privatized socialism. Socialism leaves almost everybody worse off. But socialism is the ultimate outcome of maximized charity.\"
I'm not advocating \"maximized charity\". Right now there is little enough well-evaluated well-targeted charity that there are excellent giving opportunities that let us help people dramatically. As more money goes to charity, targeted at the best opportunities, the best remaining options become less excellent, less good, and then merely ok. I suspect at some point we get to where there is no known available charitable intervention that does better than you simply spending the money however you would otherwise, at which point you don't continue \"maximizing charity\" for it's own sake. But that is extremely far from where we are now.", "timestamp": "1352400743"}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1352406223616", "service": "gp", "text": "@Jeff Kaufman\n\u00a0I agree there's an optimal point of tradeoff: if we see too much need, we're drained or become null to it, but if we don't see enough, we forget it exists.\n
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\nFor my statement on establishing community 'caretaking' moral obviously extending elsewhere, perhaps it isn't so obvious. \u00a0What I was getting at is that it's easier to teach people that they need to take care of each other at a local level than it is at a global level. \u00a0So then, the question is: Is it easier to teach people to care for each other locally and then extend that to global, or is it easier to go straight for the global? \u00a0My hunch is that starting at local is still easier because we're naturally social creatures--moving straight to global takes it away the easy-to-understand and self-enforcing social elements and puts it directly in the sphere of logic.\n
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\nI'm not saying our current model is ideal. \u00a0What I'm saying is that it's easier to start from our current model (taking care of our own) and build outward from there than it would be if we had no caretaking model at all. \u00a0Because of this, I think it's more productive to take the standpoint of \"we take care of our own pretty well, but not perfectly. \u00a0How can we most effectively grow to help more people?\" instead of \"it would be more effective to take away aid locally in favor of aid elsewhere.\" \u00a0The first one maintains the social/emotional elements people like and so would be more likely to gain traction; the second one doesn't really have those elements. \u00a0But\u00a0unfortunately,\u00a0even if you're proposing the first stance, it's easy for people to frame it as the second and respond negatively.", "timestamp": 1352406223}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/361680440589382?comment_id=361793563911403", "anchor": "fb-361793563911403", "service": "fb", "text": "Bright lines--how do you make a bright line out of that progression?", "timestamp": "1352409123"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/361680440589382?comment_id=361814153909344", "anchor": "fb-361814153909344", "service": "fb", "text": "@Walker: morally I don't think there's a progression.", "timestamp": "1352411848"}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/361680440589382?comment_id=361919270565499", "anchor": "fb-361919270565499", "service": "fb", "text": "I honor your perception of a flat earth of morality. But then are you doomed to never succeeding -- through charity -- at being completely moral? Where is that point of \"no known available charitable intervention\"? What are -- what _could_ be the metrics you apply? BTW, when you have kids, they rapidly become your primary charity. This strikes me as a\"gnaw at your conscience\" kind of problem.", "timestamp": "1352437157"}]}