I don’t think humans are inherently greedy. In fact, people are naturally generous, and that’s one of the really great things about the human race.
But I do think humans are very needy. We need so much just to survive, and some of us have real trouble getting by. All of that generosity is not quite enough to meet the enormous need.
When someone says that charity is an obligation, I ask two questions: (1) How much do I owe? and (2) To whom to I owe it?
Do I owe a percentage of my income? What percentage? Why not a little more, or a little less than that? How about poor people in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, or Honduras? Are American poor people more important, or higher priority than them?
I have found that there are no answers to those two questions that can be taken literally, and make any sense at all. My conclusion is that charity is a very strong natural desire, but not an obligation. There is a full spectrum of choices regarding how much to give. At the one extreme, I can be a complete Scrooge and give nothing. At the other extreme, I can take a vow of poverty and donate all of my discretionary income. Most of us are somewhere between these two extremes. But where you’re going to be on that spectrum is entirely up to your discretion. Where I’m going to be on that spectrum is up to my discretion, and where Bill Gates is going to be is up to his discretion.
Whether voluntary charity would be enough to meet legitimate need is a fascinating question. It has nothing to do with morality. It’s a practical question. I have come up with a metric for thinking about the issue: the charity demand rate. Suppose everyone donates x% of their discretionary income toward helping the needy. What does x need to be, in order to take care of all legitimately needy people? That number x is what I call the charity demand rate. So the question comes down to whether the charity demand rate is less than or equal to the generosity rate (percentage of discretionary income people are willing to give).
My gut tells me that in a sustainable society, the charity demand rate is not only greater than the generosity rate, but greater than 100%. In other words, even if everyone donated their entire discretionary income, it still wouldn’t be enough.
A more detailed presentation of this thesis may be found here:
