Open question: What do you think a normal person’s moral responsibilities are and why?

Some angles you can (but don’t have to) consider:

To themselves, family, friends and strangers?

Do you have thoughts about what it takes to make a good person or at what point someone is a bad person? (Is there a category of people who are neither?)

What do you think the default state of people is? (Generally good, evil or neutral by nature?)

Conversely do you believe morality is a construction and reject it entirely? (Even practically speaking when something bad happens to you?)

  • … we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good …

    This is a very heavily qualified “yes” for me.

    It depends on how they’re giving it away and to whom. If they’re doing the usual billionaire “charity”, no, they’re not doing anything good and indeed it may be worse than them just hoarding their cash. Because the norm for billionaire “charity” is to support political parties that aid them in their hoarding of riches and to “charities” of their own founding which are generally used to force their viewpoint on the world, effectively being just another source of power for them.¹ They tend to displace actual expert charities in favour of their own PR branding, their foundations tend to work on projects that mysteriously aid their for-profit enterprises and personal wealth, and tend to fund lobbyists in government (not to mention the occasional hate group or ten).

    That kind of “giving away” we can do without. Just eat that kind of billionaire.

    If, however, you’ve got a billionaire donating to established, experienced charities with no strings attached, that’s doing something very good. Wake me up when that actually happens.


    ¹ https://newrepublic.com/post/177019/billionaire-philanthropy-scam-bill-gates