Where is the Balance?

Life is fundamentally unfair, but it's not naturally so. We make it that way. There's at the very least a willingness to allow it to be that way; at worst, we build it into the fabric of capitalism.

People with little means rarely have the opportunity to change the world, at least in positive way. But people who have lots of money can, after socking away enormous amounts of it, decide to "do good" with their wealth and thus feed their need for making a difference in the world. The ability to redirect their enormous wealth toward doing good things is their atonement for their gluttony. But can gluttony be atoned?

Fortunately, the things the wealthy sometimes do can be extraordinarily positive, but I think it makes sense always to look beneath and behind the benefactors. Is it enough to quit your millionare-maker job in your thirties to then move on to your next role as the eliminator of literacy in developing countries? Should there be any assessment of the pre-conversion behavior? How many people could have been helped before the rich man "saw his vision" as a deliverer of salvation, but who, instead, were discarded and lost like a pair of shredded socks?

Let's look at Bill Gates. I don't think anyone would argue that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not a powerful organization dedicated to doing good. But how much MORE good could have been done along the way if the billions and billions of dollars that fund that organization had not been squirreld away and, instead, had been used as it had been needed? Is it better for someone to amass enormous wealth through any means possible, at untold human cost and with unimaginable destruction to smaller businesses, innovators, and idea-generators...and THEN start a foundation? Or would it be better not to amass such enormous wealth at all...and, instead, use wealth as it is earned to do good things?

Bring it a step closer to home. Wouldn't the world be a better, more comfortable place for many millions more people if we of the "middle class" would be willing to live much simpler and less video-intensive lives, opting to divert much of our wealth to providing fundamental shelter for people in need? How badly do we need that 46 inch television? How big a difference would the money we spent on it have made to the family living in dirt-floored shack on the edge of a river in Asia?

What makes me angry, and makes me personally ashamed, is the outpouring of liberal bullshit from people who talk a big game about doing something about conditions throughout the world but who, when it comes to brass tacks, won't give up their embarrasing riches, not even a little, to share with others. I don't recall where I first read the term, "am embarrassment of riches," but ever since I've felt that embarrassment whenever I compare my life with people on the verge of oblivion. My extra televisions, my 2-car family, my choices to go out to dinner, etc., are deliberate choices I have made at the expense of people who are desperate for ANYTHING to make their lives better. Where is the "correct" balance between having too little and having too much?