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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:37
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I guess if your life's ambitions are to live in a dirt pit and never interact with anyone else, you wouldn't need money. If you derived some sort of satisfaction in being able to start your own business without much worry of failure, or donate to charity, or go to Africa and build a school, or AIDS centre, or buy some vaccinations for children, or help build a homeless shelter in your own town, or contribute to a local school or community project, or help your family and friends out, or be able to not worry about helping your kids now or in the future (should you decide to have any), or just be financially independent enough that you could travel and see the world, or take a "spiritual trek" through Nepal or somewhere, or just read, or work on your garden, or take your time learning new skills without ever worrying about making ends meet, then having a pile of money might not be so bad.
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by General Ludd
And I think that with my wish of experience, I could help people better than I ever could by simply throwing money around, anyways. |
What better way to gain experience than to be able to devote extra time to gaining it because you never have to worry about paying bills? Or gain it from travel, or education, or just reading, again having the time away from work to do this, and the means with which to pay for it if necessary?
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General Ludd
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Minion of the Dominion
Aug 2001
time: 05:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Kontiki
If you derived some sort of satisfaction in being able to start your own business without much worry of failure |
... experience would be incredibly helpful. Trying to start a buisness with unlimited funds backing you would be incredibly unrewarding and ultimately self-deprecating.
quote:
or go to Africa and build a school, or AIDS centre, or buy some vaccinations for children, or help build a homeless shelter in your own town, or contribute to a local school or community project, or help your family and friends out, or be able to not worry about helping your kids now or in the future (should you decide to have any), or just be financially independent enough that you could travel and see the world, or take a "spiritual trek" through Nepal or somewhere, or just read, or work on your garden, or take your time learning new skills without ever worrying about making ends meet, then having a pile of money might not be so bad. |
This is all pretty much equivelant of buying golden lamborghinis and caviar. It's all self congradulatory back-patting, without you actually doing anything of substance. I'd rather have the experience needed to teach in africa than to just throw money around and never think about it again.
quote:
Really? What, pray tell, could you do that would match giving billions of dollars for cancer research, or to fight world hunger, or for third world debt relief, or any of the numerous other things that are in need of funding? |
Researching cancer? Teaching self-subsistence to those who are starving? Becoming a activist politician? Throwing money around doesn't do anything unless there's people there with experience to put it to good use. 
quote:
What better way to gain experience than to be able to devote extra time to gaining it because you never have to worry about paying bills? Or gain it from travel, or education, or just reading, again having the time away from work to do this, and the means with which to pay for it if necessary? |
There is only one way to gain experience - to live. How you live simply determines what experience you get. If you never have to work, you are missing out on the experience you would of gained through working. If you never have to worry about paying your bills, you are missing out on the related experiences of money-managment and being poor. ect...
Besides, using money to buy your way through everything is not likely to end up being a very valuable experience.
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:37
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I'd say you're being unbelievably narrow-minded. If you can't use your imagination to figure how a pile of money would be helpful even in your oh-so-noble pursuits, I feel sorry for you.
Here's another couple of things that popped quickly into my mind, but I certainly wouldn't limit the range of options to this:
You say you'd rather teach in Africa. Great. How about gaining the experience necessary by volunteering your time to help teach locally or with recent immigrants from the area. And how would you get to Africa - swim? Being able to buy that plane ticket whenever you want to go wherever you want comes in handy for selfless pursuits. Or how about the double wammy - go to Africa, be able to buy the materials to build a school and buy all the textbooks and then teach yourself. Hell, you can even help put the school together brick by brick. I'd wager that's even better than merely showing up to teach.
Or how about the great experience of travelling to remote corners of the world and seeing how various cultures live? It's not like you have to fly first class, arrive by Range Rover and stay in five star hotels, unless you want to. It could just mean that you have the freedom to do this and not have to worry about how to afford it.
True, you might sacrifice the experience of struggling to make ends meet, but I don't think it would be hard to compensate for that and then some in other ways.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:37
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Hmm-- I agree with others in that its an unrealistic question in that in the normal course, money brings both women and power and having power can bring money and women. But in the spirit of the question, my assessment.
Women -- purely selfish but very enticing to have that kind of draw-- If the power was broader and was essentially an incredible charisma such that everyone like you, you were incredibly popular and articulate . . . But again that would be useful in gaining power and money as well.
Power-- I've never craved power for its own sake but the entisement here is the things you could do with power,. Depending on the level of power you could implement social solutions that you have only dreamed about.
Money-- almost always brings power and most of the reasons I would like money have to do with the power I can exert .
In the end I can't choose. To be altrusitic you would need to pick money or power and i don't see how you legitimately separate them
On a purely sappy note, I would ignore all 3 if I could just provide for and have the love of my family for a very long lifetime.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Boris Godunov
And those people are already there, doing a lot of hard work. But they need a lot more funding. The amount of good you could do as an individual in one of those fields is minimal compared to the amount of good you could do by dishing out loads of cash to all of them for charity, research and development. No one's saying it will cure all ills, but it will be an enormous help.
You're being incredibly narrow-minded about just how much of an impact big philanthropy can have. You could do everything from funding homeless shelters and community centers to setting up trusts for college scholarships for the disadvantaged to all sorts of things.
Passing that up when given the opportunity would simply be completely selfish. |
Agreed. True altruism is giving what is needed rather than what makes you feel best to give
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General Ludd
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Minion of the Dominion
Aug 2001
time: 05:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Kontiki
I'd say you're being unbelievably narrow-minded. If you can't use your imagination to figure how a pile of money would be helpful even in your oh-so-noble pursuits, I feel sorry for you. |
"oh-so-noble pursuits"? I'm not the one talking about saving the world here, that's you and Boris.
Money can always be helpful, but a "pile of money" is more likely to be harmful, because it only encourages indulgement. I don't want any more than I need.
quote:
Here's another couple of things that popped quickly into my mind, but I certainly wouldn't limit the range of options to this:
You say you'd rather teach in Africa. Great. How about gaining the experience necessary by volunteering your time to help teach locally or with recent immigrants from the area. And how would you get to Africa - swim? Being able to buy that plane ticket whenever you want to go wherever you want comes in handy for selfless pursuits. Or how about the double wammy - go to Africa, be able to buy the materials to build a school and buy all the textbooks and then teach yourself. Hell, you can even help put the school together brick by brick. I'd wager that's even better than merely showing up to teach. |
You don't need alot of money to do any of this. It can more realisticly be achieved through grants, fundraisers, and/or working as a member of a humanitarian organization. If you have the experience needed to do things like this, people will support you - they'll even seek you out alot of the time.
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21-06-2005 22:56
I disagree with your basic assumption. These three things are highly interchangeable.
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