{"items": [{"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326608834017988", "anchor": "fb-326608834017988", "service": "fb", "text": "Money is a slippery concept. 9K a year will get you a whole lot more in Ghana or Indonesia or even Arkansas than it will in Boston.", "timestamp": "1323616634"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326610754017796", "anchor": "fb-326610754017796", "service": "fb", "text": "@Paul: true, but if you're trying to \"live on no more than your share\" you could move to where equivalent consumption is cheaper.", "timestamp": "1323616878"}, {"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326611184017753", "anchor": "fb-326611184017753", "service": "fb", "text": "\"...he could have done so much more good, helped so many more people, if he had taken an 'earn more, give more' approach. His story reminds me that it's neither the effort nor the thought that counts, and that it's not what you sacrifice that determines your effect on the world.\"
I'm curious how your determination of measuring effect in the world would quantify the impact of Mother Theresa, Gandhi, or Siddhartha (now most well known as the Buddha), three examples of people whom I imagine in their personal lives strove to live well below per capita GDP, though I admit I have no documentation for that.", "timestamp": "1323616922"}, {"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326613954017476", "anchor": "fb-326613954017476", "service": "fb", "text": "@other Paul: It does make more sense to be as productive as is ethically possible and then give the surplus away. The impact of the Gandhis and St. Francises of the world is largely dependent on people being aware of how they are living, which ironically requires an extensive communications infrastructure.", "timestamp": "1323617243"}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326718427340362", "anchor": "fb-326718427340362", "service": "fb", "text": "@Paul: Not to totally mess with perspective, but Mother Theresa has some objectors, saying that while she showed compassion for the poor, she could have done so much more, so much easier, by helping the poor out of poverty, rather than just care for their direct pain.", "timestamp": "1323626546"}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326854270660111", "anchor": "fb-326854270660111", "service": "fb", "text": "Money is power. Power is neither good nor evil. If you perform a service for society, such that society gives you lots of power, you can use that power (money) to do good things. One should NOT limit one's productivity in the mistaken belief that the world will be a better place for that.", "timestamp": "1323640268"}, {"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326968877315317", "anchor": "fb-326968877315317", "service": "fb", "text": "I think Danner's idea brings out an important point: it's extremely difficult to quantify impact. How is one to measure whether more good has been done by Mother Theresa's example, which has inspired who knows how many others to both be more compassionate and work towards ending poverty, or whether she could have done more good by spending more of her time raising money and giving it to the poor?
It seems to me Jeff is searching for a rational, empirical way to determine how to do the most good, which seems to me a very worthy issue to struggle with. His evaluation of Charles Gray's efforts to do good seems to rest solely on the metric of accumulated wealth. His formulation leaves out other factors that I think are worth considering, but are perhaps unquantifiable, unpredictable, and even irrational.
Paul B. seems to agree with Jeff when he says it makes more sense \"to be as productive as is ethically possible and then give the surplus away.\" If one can imagine a friend of Gandhi's who agreed with Jeff and Paul B., this friend would have presumably told Gandhi that a rational, sensible course of behavior would have been for him to continue his law practice, earn as much as possible, and to do the most good he could using purely material means. My own feeling is Gandhi would not have maximized the good he did in the world following that strategy, but I have no way to quantify or prove that.
Time scale is also another elusive dimension. Paul B. brings up another example, St. Francis, and says that an extensive communications infrastructure is necessary. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but if he meant that 12th C. Europe had an extensive communications infrastructure, I could see that (roads, a system of writing, animals), though it was of course much slower than present day. The point is that neither Francis nor his contemporaries could have possibly known what kind of impact his life would have on future generations. Only over the course of centuries has his example proven meaningful to generations of people. We can perhaps imagine how futile and ineffective a monastic life might have seemed to some of the rational, sensible people of St. Francis's day by seeing how Jeff measures the good that Charles Gray is able to do. Maybe it is probable that Mr. Gray will be at best a footnote to history and largely forgotten soon after he dies. But it's also possible, however unlikely, that he and those who act as he does may inspire others, or even inspire a future movement that will seek to create a world where poverty will be much less present than it is today. The point is we can't know.
My own feeling is more in line with Howard Thurman: \"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.\"", "timestamp": "1323650368"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326982900647248", "anchor": "fb-326982900647248", "service": "fb", "text": "I don't think Jeff meant that money is the only way to have an impact. Obviously changing policy or curing a disease can be hugely helpful. The issue is more that Charles Grey had very little impact on anyone in any way. His poverty didn't help anyone. Living in solidarity with the poor doesn't do any good by itself.", "timestamp": "1323651957"}, {"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=326994017312803", "anchor": "fb-326994017312803", "service": "fb", "text": "My point about Gandhi & St. Francis was that there have most likely been equally admirable people who had little or no influence simply because no one ever heard of them.
I think there is an unfortunate tendency in our society to use money as the only measurement of value.", "timestamp": "1323653414"}, {"author": "Paul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=327010913977780", "anchor": "fb-327010913977780", "service": "fb", "text": "Thank you, Julia, for the clarification, and my apologies to Jeff if I misinterpreted his intent. What do you think of people like Jesus, Mother Theresa, the Buddha, who I think can be described as having lived in solidarity with the poor? Also I tried to suggest in what I said about St. Francis that it's difficult to determine what the impact of a person's life will have over time.
Paul B., thank you too for the elaborating on your point. I think you're right, there have been many good people we have not heard of, but I'm not sure fame is an adequate measure of how much influence a person's life has. I think George Eliot in Middlemarch said it most eloquently, about her heroine, Dorothea Brooke:
\"Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.\"", "timestamp": "1323655634"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103618186481362054522", "anchor": "gp-1323655778970", "service": "gp", "text": "What about adjusting for regional cost of living? In Boston, not only is rent probably about 10x world mean, but you're not permitted to raise chickens or do other subsistence sorts of activities which many poor people in the world do. Furthermore, you need to heat your home while many do not.", "timestamp": 1323655778}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=327113647300840", "anchor": "fb-327113647300840", "service": "fb", "text": "Money is one form of power. Gandhi and Christ had the power of credible virtue, which found sufficient numbers of souls in their lifetimes that their power multiplied after their deaths, propagated by those \"who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.\" Humans have amazing powers when they totally forget themselves and throw their lives at a goal. Christ and Gandhi inspired such. Limiting oneself to sitting amongst the poor -- which both Gandhi and Christ did -- does not in itself accrue to one the ability to inspire. Economic metrics are not a reliable measure of virtue or charisma.", "timestamp": "1323667243"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=327343703944501", "anchor": "fb-327343703944501", "service": "fb", "text": "@Paul: for the people you list, living in solidarity with the poor was one of many things they did, and it combined with the others, magnifying their effect. For Charles Gray, living in solidarity with the poor took up the largest share of his time and effort, and wasn't combined with charity. He did combine it with advocacy and activism, but there I think it may have hurt more then helped because people were more willing to write him off.", "timestamp": "1323703532"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1323707202625", "service": "gp", "text": "After a few years he started doing some sort of cost of living adjustment, but it's not one I'm familiar with and that I think he made up himself: \"We decided\t\t\tto ease the financial pressure by accepting the ECO dollar adjustment to the WEB\t\t\twhich meant a one-third increase in the budget\" [1]. This might be more similar to PPP [2] than cost of living.\n
\n
\nRent is higher in Boston, among other reasons, because there is limited housing and a lot of people would like to live here. A cost of living adjustment that took the full cost difference of housing into effect would be saying there should be no price premium for living somewhere popular, even though that displaces others who would like to live there.\n
\n
\n[1] \nhttp://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM17/Cliff.html\n
\n
\n[2] \nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity", "timestamp": 1323707202}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/326602224018649?comment_id=327604420585096", "anchor": "fb-327604420585096", "service": "fb", "text": "I'd like to point out that women who wrote about how quietly influencing those at home was better than being famous - Louisa May Alcott was another - lived in a time when actual influence was almost inaccessible to them. George Eliot couldn't get published under her own name. Yes, private and subtle influence is good. We can all think of people we love who have done that. But spreading it wider is better - as evidenced by people giving Gandhi and Jesus as examples, rather than my grandma, because you've never heard of her.", "timestamp": "1323726076"}]}