Explaining Charity’s Standing in the Objectivist Ethics

A For the New Intellectuals Facebook Post by Anoop Verma highlighted Yaron Brook’s talk Why Capitalism is the Only Moral System. The post triggered this question by a correspondent:

I'm having some trouble with this topic. If I enjoy serving others, sometimes even at my expense, am I not serving my self [sic]? It brings me joy...so I'm getting something out of it. Or maybe that's not the same thing. I'm still learning. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

It’s “serving myself”—self-interested—as long as the service does not come at the expense of something more important to your life and well-being. Otherwise, it’s altruistic—self-sacrificial (self-destructive)—and thus wrong according to the Objectivist Ethics.

“Service”, of course, is a broad term. For example, serving others is the act one performs in making money. Productive people serve their customers or their bosses or whomever is paying them for the service. That is called trade. Making money—earning a living—is vital to living. Money is not the only form of payment, though. Trade is broader that money. Joy is a form of payment. But if the service the questioner speaks of comes at the expense of money or time or effort needed for purposes more important to you, then the joy is not worth it and therefore not selfish, and therefore not moral. Personal well-being is a long-term process to the rationally selfish individual. With very rare exceptions involving emergencies, the long-term always trumps immediate gratification. Would you go out of your way to serve a stranger if the cost is standing up a friend who is counting on you? Risking a friendship, not to mention your reputation for trustworthiness, for the sake of momentary joy is neither selfish nor rational.

Let me step back a second. Ethics was one of the hardest aspects about Objectivism for me to grasp. It took me years to grasp that altruism is not about good will or serving others, and that selfishness, properly understood, is not about screwing others. Altruism is about making one’s own life worse; that is, giving up a greater value for a lessor value or a non-value; that is, self-sacrificially serving others. Objectivism holds that one’s actions should always be self-beneficial, not self-sacrificial. There is nothing about the Objectivist Ethics, called rational selfishness, that stands in the way of serving others, even if only as an act of goodwill and benevolence. Other people (or causes that benefit people you don’t even know) certainly can be a value to a rationally selfish person.

Which brings us to the starting point of the Objectivist ethics. The Objectivist ethics starts with the observable fact that human life, like all life, is about values—specifically, for humans, the need to pursue, achieve, and to protect the values that your life and flourishing depend on, from material values like food, shelter, phones, and cars, to the spiritual like human relationships or relaxation. Humans need a philosophic guide to figure out what is good or bad for them, which leads to the need for a moral code. This leads to the question above—when is it moral to serve others for the mere joy of it? The Objectivist ethics holds that one must perform the task of hierarchizing one’s values by importance to one’s life; a hierarchy of values geared not to the short term but to the long term context of one’s entire life. Once you have established a proper value hierarchy, you are in a better position to judge whether a given action or goal is rationally selfish or self-sacrificial.

Only when the service rendered advances one’s own values is truly “serving myself”. Let me give an example. My wife and I are both retired. My wife used to volunteer at a food pantry. She quit that to become a CASA volunteer. CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children. It’s strictly volunteer service that requires the juggling of her time. But none of the time spent working at the food pantry or the more demanding CASA interferes with her personal relationships or activities she loves or in any way undermines her enjoyment of her retirement. She is serving these children, but not in a sacrificial way. That is the Objectivist Ethics—rational selfishness.

On the other hand, volunteer service is not for me. My main retirement interest is writing as a political activist—activism not in regard to the usual Republican vs. Democrat, or conservative vs. liberal, or “Right” vs. “Left”, but in the more fundamental sense of individualism vs. collectivism. I have other activities, as well. But my interests do not involve volunteer service. That, too, is the Objectivist ethics. The Objectivist ethics does not hold service to others as a moral commandment.

My wife and I are both pursuing our interests and values non-sacrificially—that is, not at the expense of our commitment to each other, our children, our friends, our interests, or any other important values. We never deliberately ignore our hierarchy of values.

There is nothing about the Objectivist ethics that doesn’t leave room in one’s hierarchy of values for serving others or giving a helping hand, even to strangers. In the example above, there’s nothing wrong with short-term joy if it doesn’t harm you longer term. The trader principle, exchanging value for value that results in win-win, comes into play whether the payment for service is material or spiritual (no one should ever demand service from you unconditionally, nor should you give it, nor should you ever expect unrewarding service to you from others.) If your payment is spiritual—that is, the mere joy of it—it’s fine as long as it is genuine joy (not a quest for others’ praise or approval) and it doesn’t conflict with what in your own judgement are values more personally important. Self-sacrificial service is never good. It is dishonest, because it ignores one’s own needs. And research is increasing showing that self-sacrificial service—putting others above self—can be psychologically, emotionally, and even physically damaging (See Being empathetic is good, but it can hurt your health, Jennifer Breheny Wallace).

The most fundamental question is not, does this action give me joy or satisfaction, important as those emotions are. Emotions are a reflection of your convictions (right or wrong). They are not a guide to action. Only reason should be your guide. The question is, where does this action fit into my rational hierarchy of values? Am I giving up another value in my service in pursuit of joy? If so, is it a greater or lesser value? If a lesser value, or if the action doesn’t entail giving up another value, and if the service is consistent with your own convictions, the service can be considered self-interested. However, if the action requires the giving up a value that, by one’s own rational judgement, is greater than the value derived from the act of service one is considering, it is a sacrifice and is thus immoral.

Other people can be and often are of great value to us. As long as person(s) are deemed to be worthy according to our own judgement, we should approach them as selfish values, and act accordingly toward them—that is, in accordance to our own value hierarchy—and expect no less in return from them.

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Normally, I’d have posted this answer as a reply to the questioner. But Eric MacIntosh replied at length and did a good job, as well as posting a link to his article Other People as Egoistic Values Versus Other People as Objects of Self-Sacrifice in Ayn Rand’s Philosophy. So I didn’t think my explanation, being largely redundant, would add substantially to the conversation (though MacIntosh doesn’t mention Rand’s value hierarchy tool).

Related Reading:

The Objectivist Ethics by Ayn Rand

Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness

• The Virtue of Selfishness
• Loving Life, the morality of self-interest and the facts that support it
• Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, the virtuous egoist
• In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice is Unjust and Destructive

Bezos Should Focus On Running His Company

A recent article in Bloomberg Technology reports that Jeff Bezos, the brilliant founder and builder of retailing revolutionary Amazon.com, is under pressure from altruists to give away his fortune. The article, For Bezos, Now World’s Richest, Philanthropy Is 'Saved for Later' is accompanied by the subtitle, “Amazon’s founder wants to change the world, but he’s still deciding on his approach to giving.”

Bezos wants to “change the world?” What the hell is Amazon, a company that radically changed the world for the better? Like Wal-Mart two generations ago, Amazon harnessed emerging cutting-edge technology to create a retailing value that hundreds of millions of consumers have enthusiastically embraced. Amazon has lowered the general cost of goods by bypassing the traditional “brick-and-mortar” strategy, thus raising the standard of living of average people while making the shopping experience more convenient. And don’t forget that Amazon is a jobs machine. Which is why politicians across America have been scrambling in a bidding war to get Amazon to locate its planned Second Headquarters in their states and communities, which will bring an estimated 50,000 good-paying jobs with it. The secondary benefits of Amazon’s success are undoubtedly almost incalculable. All this thanks to the vision, drive, and ability of one man!

Yet, altruists focus only on how Bezos can give his fortune away. According to Karen Weise and Dina Bass:

Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos may have surpassed Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates to be the richest person in the world, but there's one title he isn't likely to claim: world's most generous.

Even with more than $90 billion to his name, Bezos has yet to make a major philanthropic mark, but with the new mantle of the world’s richest, the pressure on Bezos to give will only grow. Nonprofits and other foundations are desperate to see what he’ll do, says giving consultant and researcher Amy Schiller. “Bezos has probably had philanthropy in his mental cart for a while,” she says, “and kept clicking `save for later.'”

Why are they so desperate? If the welfare of others is their goal, they should want Bezos to “save philanthropy for later”; building a business does far more good that giving away. Now I realize that philanthropic foundations have their own interests in mind. After all, their job is to give away other people’s money, not earn it. But even by that standard, can’t they see that production, not handouts, is the most humanitarian of pursuits? Give the guy a break.  

Now, there’s nothing wrong with philanthropy (the voluntary kind). It definitely has its place in a progressive society. But it’s instructive that Bill Gates is held up in comparison. The next paragraph indicates a dark side of the “giving” crusaders:

As Gates built Microsoft, he also faced increasing pressure from the public -- and even his own parents -- to give more. When his mother prodded him one night, Gates snapped back, "I'm just trying to run my company!" the Wall Street Journal reported in 2009. Gates didn't fully throw himself into philanthropy until he stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in 2000, but since then he's helped build the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation into the largest foundation in the country. A representative said Gates was unavailable to comment.

Was Gates pressured into abandoning his dream to focus on philanthropy? Now, I don’t claim to know whether Gates succumbed to the pressure and stepped down from running his company before he was ready. I remember reading or hearing that Gates left Microsoft in the aftermath of the US government’s vicious antitrust assault on the company, saying that the assault made his job “not fun anymore.” But it’s rotten for people to have pressured Gates into quitting what he wanted to do—run his business—for the sake of giving away his fortune to people who didn’t earn it. And by his own mother, no less! But this is altruism. In the name of “helping the less fortunate,” they callously disregard the desires of those who actually make the money that the “less fortunate”—which includes not only people down on their luck through no fault of their own, but also the lazy, the incompetent, the moocher, and, worst of all, the envious haters of success and achievement—supposedly need.

The irony is that Bezos already donates substantial amounts of money, and some of the donations are listed in the article. So, what are the altruists after? Here’s a hint: ““His giving so far is not meaningful in terms of a direction,” said one CEO of an organization that tracks Tech giving. What will be “meaningful?” Giving up his passion?

As I write this, Bezos is closing in on becoming America’s first $100 billion man, thanks to the continuing growth of Amazon—which thanks to Bezos’s continuing genius and tolerance for calculated risk that is inherent in entrepreneurialism is finding new avenues of growth (Amazon recently bought Whole Foods). Good for him! Capitalist fortune builders are by far mankind’s greatest-ever humanitarians, before or regardless of whether they give away their first dime.

To his credit, Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, who himself has solicited donations from Bezos, said, “Jeff is probably not quite ready to step down yet, but this is a guy who, like Bill, is fixated on changing the world in really important ways. It’s a full-time job. You have to imagine he will be every bit as philanthropic as Gates. Nobody has any right to make demands, and they have to give the guy time.”  

Exactly right. No one has any moral right. As someone who uses Amazon, let me extend a hearty thank you to Jeff Bezos. May he resist the heartless attempts to pressure and guilt him into philanthropy. Here’s to encouraging Bezos to continue to run and grow his business, if that is what he wants to do.

Related Reading:

Suggested Philanthropic Goal for Mark Zuckerberg: First, Promote Individual Liberty

THE GUILT PLEDGE—Don Watkins and Yaron Brook

The Peace Corps is Not Voluntarism Because Taxation is Not Voluntary

President Donald Trump’s budget calls for cuts in the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the agency that administers the Peace Corps  and other “voluntary” national service schemes. Leftists who worship at the altar of government force are apoplectic over these cuts. To Leftists like New Jersey Star-Ledger guest columnist Linda Stamato, a Rutgers University Faculty Fellow and frequent Star-Ledger contributor, an America without “a critical role for government” in philanthropic service equates to “a dystopian view of an America that does not care about people, and should not.”  

Stamato opens with President John Kennedy’s famous—or, more precisely, infamous—admonition to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” She then quotes Robert Kennedy, “who said that ‘the purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.’" What follows is a litany of work done by “citizen volunteers,” both in America under VISTA, and abroad under the Peace Corps. Stamato writes

Trump's budget is anything but a "New Foundation for Greatness" as it is dubbed. Its recipe turns us away from common purpose, promotes self-regard, and, indeed, cruelly disregards the needs of those who are not the privileged wealthy. Trump poisons the nation against its own and tries to turn us inward. His government slashes, dismantles and diminishes its role, seeking to erase its presence on the civic landscape.

I left these comments, expanded and edited for clarity:

The Peace Corps and its ilk are not about volunteering, because they are not voluntary. No government program is. They are tax-funded monuments to politicians’ vanity and craving for unearned credit. That is the opposite of volunteerism. It is coercion. And it is the worst kind of coercion; not the coercion of a street robber, which the law protects you from, but legalized coercion, which leaves you defenseless. Add to this injustice the increasingly common practices like high schools including “community service” requirements attached to graduation, and you have to wonder how much of the participatory voluntarism really exists in these programs, and how much is just backdoor coercion.

If you want to follow RFK’s admonition to make the world a better place, then start by ending government funding of the Peace Corps et al, completely privatize them, and leave people free to decide for themselves whether they want to voluntarily pay for or join them. That’s true Americanism—voluntary for the person joining the program, and voluntary for the people paying for it.

Government is by its very nature an instrument of force. Any program in which government is involved is not truly voluntary and thus not moral. Anyone who advocates denying Americans the voluntary choice of whether or not to support these vanity monuments has no moral standing to champion good will volunteering.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a matter of “should or should not someone help another.” That is strictly an individual choice, and no one has ever proposed to outlaw charity or philanthropic service, whether carried out individually or in voluntary association among a number of individuals.

But neither should it be coerced.

And don’t be suckered by Stamato’s argument that these programs are about people acting for “common purpose.” Stamato observes:

Trump's budget is anything but a "New Foundation for Greatness" as it is dubbed. Its recipe turns us away from common purpose, promotes self-regard, and, indeed, cruelly disregards the needs of those who are not the privileged wealthy.

The only kind of purpose that is truly held in common are those that are private, voluntary associations among people who willingly join and who likewise leave those who don’t agree with the purpose or who would rather put their efforts toward what they personally regard as more important concerns free to pursue their own lives. There is nothing “common” about a purpose imposed by government force, since those who disagree are forced into it. It is, in fact, a chain gang, the chain being the only common link holding everyone together in the government program.

Trump proposes to cut, but not eliminate the funding Stamato whines about, as he should. Stamato clearly sees the vast majority—“those who are not the privileged wealthy”—as incompetent, helpless bums. This brazen lie is vital to the socialist agenda. The opposite, capitalism, does indeed “promote self-regard,” which is precisely what makes capitalism moral, and is precisely what must be exterminated to pave the way to a socialist utopia. Stamato would probably object that she doesn’t want complete socialism, just enough to satisfy what she regards as worthy enough proposes to impose on America. But once you accept the principle that a government-imposed “common purpose” is the ideal, and self-regard must be subordinated to that purpose, you’ve accepted totalitarian socialism as the ideal, and that’s the only end that can logically be expected, sooner or later.

There is no “proper role for government to support and sustain” charity. It’s not what your country—i.e., your government—can do for you. Nor is it what you can do for your government. It’s whether you as an individual, possessing as you do your own mind, are free to act upon your own judgement based on your own personal values, goals, and aspirations, and whether your government protects or violates that sacred sovereignty.

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Never mind that Trump’s cuts will “not . . . save a whole lot of money.” Citing the Detroit Free Press, Stamato claims the whole program only costs “just .000275% of the entire federal budget”; “only” $1.1 billion. Ant it’s true: even getting rid of CNCS won’t make a practical dent in the government’s claim on our wallets.

But in terms of freedom, it will, if properly framed. The principle behind the CNCS infects most of the federal budget and claims $trillions in current tax dollars and tens of $trillions in future liabilities. The government chains spread far and wide, and continue to spread. Unfortunately, Trump won’t name the anti-liberty, anti-individual rights, anti-American principles of collectivism and statism to justify the Corporation for National and Community Service cuts, because the same argument would apply to all government chain-gang “common purpose” programs, including Social Security and Medicare, which Trump explicitly says he won’t touch.

Related Reading:

Altruism vs. America—TOS

Why Don’t Most Americans Get that Government Wealth Redistribution is Theft?

The Rise of Collectivism and the Fall of the Constitution

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Redefining Poverty to Reignite Big Government Expansion

“ALICE” is the new definition of poverty. So writes John Franklin, CEO of United Way of Northern New Jersey. ALICE stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed,” as United Way’s website defines it. Add ALICE to “those who meet the archaic definition of poverty,” and fully 40% of New Jersey residents live in poverty!

Well, Franklin defines ALICE as follows:

These folks are the backbone of our economy. People who are working every day, sometimes at more than one job, but still not making ends meet for basic necessities. It's our kid coming out of college, our parent living on social security, the person taking care of our parents in nursing homes, the one taking care of our toddlers.

"These folks," Franklin claims, deserve a claim on other people’s wealth. He lists 3 next steps to help combat poverty in N.J.:

The next steps are clear:

• Recognize the current definition and perceptions of poverty are woefully outdated.
• Help cut through red-tape and predatory practices denying ALICE access to existing supports like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the most effective pro-work, anti-poverty program.
• Expand access to quality child care. ALICE needs this in order to work. Plus, it reduces employer turnover costs and has a proven return on investment for our future workforce.

Redefining poverty has broad ramifications. Basically, it is an open-ended opportunity for statists to expand government and shrink freedom and self-reliance—and the wallets of productive citizens. After all, who but the very wealthy can not be said to be asset limited, income constrained, and employed? It sounds like life, to me. Hell, what it boils down to is that, at any given time and as suits anyone’s “anti-poverty” agenda, “basic necessities” can mean “anything one person lacks that other people have.” Short of a fully equal, universally poor, fully communist society, when is it ever not the case that some people have less than others? To the anti-poverty warriors, redefining poverty is about restructuring the Middle Class into a Welfare Class.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is basically a handout. I’ll acknowledge that, as a welfare program, it’s one of the least bad, since it at least requires a person to work to qualify. That said, “access” to the E.I.T.C. means access to wealth seized from other people against their will. The same goes for other “existing supports” Franklin mentions. The same goes for “quality child care.” When the statist talks of “access,” he doesn’t mean the wide array of goods and services available on the free market that people can access if they are willing and able to pay for them.

True, it can be a struggle to pay for all of the stuff we desire, to the point of having to forego some stuff in order to have other stuff we need more. It requires hard choices and prioritization of purchase desires—and sometimes charitable help from organizations like United Way. But when the statist talks of “access,” he talks of forcing others to pay, with government as the hired gun. But one person’s need or misfortune can not be considered an automatic claim on other’s lives and property. If it is, we’re no different from jungle animals. As civilized human beings, we must consider such a premise as thoroughly immoral.

Notice also what is ignored—policies that can actually aid economically struggling people in helping themselves. One big step that can actually help the poor “meet basic necessities” is a chance to opt out of the 15.3% FICA payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. That huge bite comes right off of the top of every earner's paycheck. While government is seizing the wealth of the 60% to give the redefined 40% poor “access” to stuff, that same government is seizing the very means the poor can use to take care of themselves! To the statist, “help” only means forcibly redistributing wealth, not giving people the opportunity (access) to more of their own earnings.

Franklin opens his article with this:

A democracy is at its best when its citizens and elected officials come together to listen and share some good ideas, to engage in a dialogue about making the world a better place for all residents.

I left these comments:

Very well. Let’s start with this: Instead of redefining poverty to fit a political agenda that glorifies “the poor” as “the backbone of the economy,” how about talking about prosperity and its causes?

The everyday worker has always been around, and through most of human history lived in grinding poverty. Then, in the past two hundred years, something changed dramatically—poverty was ended.

Yes, we have relative poverty. But, there is no real poverty in America today. Real poverty is life without running clean water and indoor plumbing, electricity, automobiles, cheap plentiful clothing and food, and all of the luxuries like telephones, stoves, refrigeration, and washing machines that today’s poor have. And this is to say nothing of the smart phones, cable television, internet, personal computers, and other wonders of the modern information age that most people have.

What hasn’t been around until very recently are the extraordinary individuals who brought all of these and much more within affordable reach of the general consumers—not to mention the jobs they create and the tools of the jobs that make higher pay possible. And from all of this productiveness come the tax revenues the government needs to fund all of the re-distributionist, allegedly anti-poverty programs the politicians like to vote for. Governments, too, have always been around. If governments could truly “fight” poverty, human history up until recent history wouldn’t have been marked with grinding mass poverty.

I spent most of my plumbing career working for a business I didn’t create, in a job I didn’t create, working with tools I didn’t create, installing products I didn’t invent, with learned knowledge I didn’t discover, spending the money I earn in a marketplace flooded with products that I couldn’t conceive of, let alone create. Where did all of that come from?

General prosperity is so new in human history that most still don’t understand what caused it. The real backbone of the modern industrial economy are the inventors/businessmen/entrepreneurs, who arose with the advent of individual liberty and free markets to transform the knowledge of the scientist into the life-enhancing mass-market products and services that ended real poverty.

Anyone who does an honest days work in support of his own live and goals contributes to this abstraction we call “the economy.” In his own way, every honest worker is a hero for the effort to support himself. But there is a hierarchy involved in economic progress. Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s simply wrong to call the so-called ALICE group “the backbone of our economy.” It’s ridiculous to think that the wonderful standard of living we enjoy came from toilers, who today work a lot less hard than pre-capitalist toilers, and for a lot better living standard than those past toilers.

It’s not degrading to acknowledge that the real backbone of the economy is the extraordinary visionary minority that steps out from the crowd of toilers to bring us progress. It’s only fair. Once we understand that, maybe then we’ll get a real anti-poverty program going, which means not another government program but reducing the taxes, regulations, and demonization that holds the real economic progressives—the inventors/businessmen/entrepreneurs—back.

After 50 years and untold $trillions of welfare state dollars later, poverty is a bigger problem than ever before, if you listen to those with a vested interest in poverty. Yet “the poor” today have luxuries that the middle class didn’t have in the middle of the 20th century. Redefining poverty looks to me like another gimmick to keep the anti-poverty political agenda going with yet more handouts, like “free” child care.

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The United Way is a wonderful organization, when and as it relies on voluntary contributions of time and money. But when it turns to government’s guns to advance its anti-poverty crusade, it becomes a moral blight on a free and moral society.

Related Reading:

The "Relative" Poverty Gimmick

The "Relative Poverty Gimmick" Revisited

From Middle Class to Welfare Class

"Shared Prosperity" Another Name for Failed Policies

Suggested Philanthropic Goal for Mark Zuckerberg: First, Promote Individual Liberty

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they will dedicate 99% of their roughly $45 billion fortune toward philanthropy during their lifetimes. Interestingly, their philanthropic fund, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), will not be your typical charitable foundation. CZI will be organized as a for-profit LLC (limited liability corporation). While this structure will cost the Zuckerbergs some tax advantages, it will free them from a labyrinth of government regulations that come with tax-free status, allowing for many more options for CZI’s philanthropy. For example, besides turning a profit, the Zuckerbergs will be freer to pursue political activism on behalf of their values. As Suzanne Woolley observes for BloombergBusiness:

It seems clear the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will put money to work in politics. Facebook, in its official description of its founder's new LLC, noted that "making private investments and participating in policy debates" will be part of the mission. In a public letter Zuckerberg wrote to his newborn daughter, Max, he likewise emphasized an appetite for pushing a policy agenda: "We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates." If the charitable venture had been set up as a traditional tax-exempt foundation—what is called a 501(c)(3)— it wouldn't have freedom to lobby lawmakers or engage in other political activities. The Internal Revenue Service prohibits tax-exempt groups from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg’s list of the values his initiative will seek to advance apparently doesn’t include man’s most important value, a value without which he’d have nothing to give away. As Alex Epstein observes at Forbes, “Mark Zuckerberg used 2,234 words to describe the things he values most in the world. None of those words was ‘freedom.’”

This is very disturbing, coming from one of the greatest capitalist champions of all time. In his letter to his daughter, Zuckerberg lays out his philosophy. But it’s hard to make heads or tails out of it. On the one hand, Zuckerberg tends toward collectivism at times. For example, he says “The only way to achieve our full potential is to channel the talents, ideas and contributions of every person in the world”. Sounds like central planning. Could Zuckerberg have built Facebook if his talents and ideas were “channeled” by some outside authority, rather than the free choices of himself and his customers? On the other hand, Zuckerberg advocates “personalized learning,” observing negatively that “Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.” Sounds individualistic.

But collectivism and individualism are polar opposites, and so are the political ramifications of each. Collectivism leads to enslavement. Individualism leads to freedom and individual rights. So, which is it, Zuckerberg?

Zuckerberg speaks optimistically about opportunity for all, while failing to credit the only social condition that can truly provide it; freedom; that is, the individual rights to the freedom to act on one’s reasoning judgement; to work, trade with others, take risks, innovate, and keep what you have earned, without forcible, aggressive interference by others people, including people in their capacity as government officials. Freedom means no double standard regarding private citizens vs. government officials.

The biggest threat to freedom—the only threat, really—is a government that not only fails to protect rights but actively violates rights. So I offer—without meaning to disparage Zuckerberg’s stated values—this hope: that the Zuckerbergs, despite failing to acknowledging freedom, will elevate the promotion of freedom and properly limited government to the top of their hierarchy of values. The best thing Zuckerberg can do to genuinely make the world a better place is to use his CZI lobbying dollars to advocate for free market reforms—individual rights, the rule of objective law, freedom of expression, association, and conscience, property rights, lower taxes, less economic regulations, free trade within and between all people of all countries, an end to cronyism, and a government that protects rights equally and at all times. These are the basic social conditions required for individual flourishing. These are the basic social conditions—even though not fully implemented—that allowed Zuckerberg to build his fortune; a fortune earned by creating immense value for hundreds of millions of willing consumers—myself, my wife, family and friends included. Without real liberty—individual liberty—none of the Zuckerberg’s values are attainable. Neither is human progress and flourishing of any kind.

One of the saddest and most distressing hallmarks of our age is how few capitalist billionaires, having built their fortunes on a foundation of freedom, actively promote freedom. It’s distressing to hear billionaires justify committing their fortunes to philanthropy on the grounds of “improving this world” while ignoring freedom, when no amount of giving can equal the improvements to people’s lives that the freedom to create the fortunes accomplished. These billionaires’ grovelling is not doing any favors for those billions of us whose lives are immensely better because of the selfish motivations that led to the profit-seeking companies these leading entrepreneurs built—especially if their giving promotes more political control of our lives (as is the goal of the U.N. 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris). (I could think of only two prominent billionaires explicitly committed to promoting more freedom, Charles and David Koch, through their Freedom Partners Foundation and other activities. Thank you, Koch Brothers.)

If the Zuckerbergs really do want a better world, they should set a new standard for mega-fortune generosity: promote freedom ahead of giving so that more people can produce their way to prosperity and self-reliance—and pave the way for more Zuckerbergs—thus rendering billionaire philanthropy progressively less necessary. To do any less will be a sell-out that no amount of philanthropy and no “giving pledge” could ever atone for.

Related Reading:

The Guilt Pledge—Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Capitalism and the Moral High Ground—Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard

The Link Between "Control, Power, or Socialism" and "What's Morally Right"