A few ultra rich families are donating over a billion dollars to restore it. Many are asking why, if they have that money to give, they hadn't already given it to starving Africans, or the homeless, or something similar. The two main counter arguments are that some things are so iconic that they take precedence over helping individual human beings for the greater good of humanity in general, and/or that people have the right to decide what to do with their honestly earned money.

Do those second two arguments overcome the first one?

It is obscene. All excessive wealth/luxury is obscene when people are dying or living in wretched conditions for want of a tiny slice of that wealth. Even if it for the greater good then no-one is doing it for that greater good. And if it's bad enough then it shouldn't be a right so that cuts no ice.

But is it the right question? Clearly we all choose that obscenity even if for most of us it's more mundane. We watch the suffering on our big TVs. At least with projects like notre-dame something worthwhile comes out of it.

When you give it to neither the suffering nor notre dame you still have it to give later.

They are just trying to buy a bigger needle.

Not sure what point you're making there.

Read a book.

Which one?

Pick a good one.

I would guess these donations are mostly about buying status. Which isn't to say that the people involved don't value Notre Dame as a cultural symbol, or aesthetically, but I'd guess that they would be unlikely to donate so much without the expectation that it would boost their status. Maybe they get a plaque on the inside of the cathedral. It's hard to accomplish that aim via giving to the poor.

I feel like we're asking the wrong question though. It doesn't really make sense to me to have some strong social norm about what the ultra-rich may legitimately spend money on, where some charities are OK and others aren't. And we wouldn't even be talking about it if they just invested the same amount of money in some business. If there's a moral problem it's just with the accumulation of so much wealth, regardless of how it's spent. And if there are good counter-arguments against enacting policies to prevent people from accumulating that much wealth, I'd expect that those arguments are more practical than moral, i.e. maybe the unintended consequences of those policies are worse than the problem they're trying to solve? Either way I think those are the right questions.

For those making fun of the OP's question, it's worth noting that the notre dame fund has provoked indignation throughout rural France among people whose local churches are falling down and have been doing so for a long time.

Good investments add more than they cost.

This argument comes up every time people donate any amount to anything. I volunteer for an animal rescue and we were collecting donations once, and a woman got in my face and told me I should be ashamed of myself for asking for money for homeless animals, when there are so many homeless veterans.

I told her that there are several charities set up to help homeless vets and she was welcome to donate to them instead if she preferred.

Bottom line is no matter what the cause, people will think there is a more worthy one.

So in summary I agree with OP's counterargument #2.

Sure, but are bad investments obscene?

When you say that good investments add more than they cost, i'm not sure whether you mean only that good investments are profitable, or you mean they add more social value (more for "the general good of humanity"). Usually people mean the former, and that's the observation I was making. We tend to evaluate charitable giving by its social value, but investment by profitability. Now, I'm not saying that profitability has no social value, but it's not the same thing, and the most profitable investment is not necessarily the one that produces the most good.

Basically I was suggesting there are two aspects to how people react to scenarios like giving large sums to rebuild Notre Dame: there's that aspect where we expect charitable giving to be altruistic, and the aspect where it seems immoral ("obscene") for individuals to control large sums of money.

On the first, I think it's worth pointing out that most charitable giving by the very wealthy is not driven exclusively by altruistic motives. Like an investment, the people giving may feel that they receive a status dividend worth more than the cost. And of course there are other ways people get returns on their charitable giving, e.g. by giving to universities expecting their children to be prioritized for admission, or to gain preferable tax treatment, or whatever.

So my point was that we probably shouldn't evaluate charity by an entirely different set of criteria than investment, or expect entirely different motivations, and the real moral crux of the situation is the second factor: how mind-boggling it seems to 99.9% of the population for individuals to have so much money -- regardless of how they use it.

A chest pumping exercise to show case how good they are in times of public distress.

I'm guessing restoring Notre Dame is a good investment for the French economy given the amount of tourism it brings in.

You think Paris will get significantly less tourists because one attraction is closed?

Over decades and at the margins, yes.

sidenote: it as been a seriously long time since the Catholic church was top in the news cycle and it wasn't regarding abuse or corruption. it only took the destruction of one of the most notable and major church properties to make it happen.

this just reiterates that the conservative/republican viewpoint that private charity can help the world rather than higher taxes and social protections is unsurprisingly completely ****ing wrong.

these people could donate this money at any time to any number of causes and legitimately have a shot at fixing MAJOR problems, but they wouldnt.

they are only donating now to get their names an a historical site..

ah got you now. Donate to notre dame > invest in business to donate to starving later > donate to starving now.

It's possible. May even be true for some (doubt it but might be). It's still obscene.

I believe that investment in science/tech does more good for the most poor than anything else we can ever do. Even if i'm right it would still be obscene to ignore very poor people to better invest in sci/tech. Even more obscene would be to create more extreme poverty to invest in sci/tech even if that did more good overall. We have find a balance. One of the things about letting people make their own choice is that it does create a balance - in the same sort of way that capitalism creates a price (modifying that balance is the stuff of politics)

it's not being nitty on the meaning of 'obscene' The greatest good overall is problematic when it's in part helping with future suffering at the expense of those suffering right now.

This must be rhetorical if you asking why there's hypocrisy in re-building something that's supposed to represent the message of Christ, whom dedicated his life to lifting up the disadvantaged, instead of actually doing what the building is supposed to represent.

I have a question for you though. I know you haven't been really involved on here anymore like you used to be. But why are you signing off on allowing your conservative partner to exile politics on 2+2? I'm hoping it's not because when it began libertarianism over ran these forums, but eventually got enough push back on the empty arguments that other ideas are now taking over.

What's the actual reason why it's being exiled?

That was about 10 years ago wasn't it?

Not that DS is remotely libertarian as you should know.

Yes, 10+ years ago... and yes, I know DS's politics. I'm talking about other people in his inner circle that run 2+2.

Nm... confirmed as I suspected. I clicked on the new politics forum and read a bit. What a shame that we don't want a free flow of reasoned ideas on a forum that our fellow poker players frequent. I'm not the least bit surprised this is happening though.

lol @ honestly earned

And yes they may be able to "give it later" but let's be real these people only have empathy for their children and inner circle of friends. Everyone else can go pound sand, even if these ultra wealthy people are a direct contributor to the environments which create a cycle of people living in abject poverty and/or conditions that ultimately are a lifetime of misery with no end in sight

I can understand refusing to give a dime to individuals or groups that you know damn well are black holes for money economically, financially illiterate, mentally unstable, addictions of any sort, actual lazy people, etc, but the real grotesque reality going on here is that these masters of the universe wield enormous power, and they choose to rebuild a ****ing church. Yes, I understand the significance of Notre Dame, and respect that when it's your money, you get to do what you want with it as that is the way of the world, but god damn, if they can conjure up A BILLION DOLLARS almost at the snap of a finger, it speaks volumes about the lot of them that they scoff at the notion of investing even a penny in individuals or groups that can actually provide a massive ROI, where plenty of evidence suggests stereotypes and cognitive dissonance and bias drive that sentiment. The power is there. The will is not. That is obscene and no scoreboard is necessary to justify that.

what did you suspect?