Moving to: m/AskMbin!

I suppose it depends. There are plenty of rich people who do actively seem to care and go out of their way to not only donate to charity, but actively get involved in communities and try to improve things. Very clearly putting themselves out there and not for personal fame and prestige.

The big part you have to focus on is whether the charity is being done for tax write-offs or other personal benefits, such as what you see with most conservative rich people like the Kochs.

Of course, no matter how a rich person uses their money, even if they very clearly are spending massive amounts of it on helping others and improving the lives of those around them, they'll still be considered evil just because they are rich.

It's an interesting paradox. For some people who have a very narrow view on the subject, they will only consider a rich person "good" if they make themselves not rich. Entirely so. Of course, such a no longer rich person wouldn't be able to help others at that point.

There's a lot of arguments here based on emotions and assumptions rather than logic.

I don't think any person is simply "good" or "bad". A person can perform a "good" deed one moment, and a "bad" deed the next. When people look at someone and judge if they are a "good" or "bad" person, they are usually either: 1) judging that person by the overall sum of their publicly known deeds, or 2) judging that person by deeds they have performed for (or against) the judger.

Being in possession of great wealth is not a deed. A person can come in possession of great wealth relative to other people in a society without taking any action (e.g. inheritance, etc) or without taking any evil action (e.g. winning the lottery, taking profit from a sufficiently large business that doesn't perform any ethical violations, etc).

My $10 goes a lot further than their millions of dollars. I spent $10 on a donation, who will then spend it on an uber. The uber driver will then spend it on something else. Their millions of dollars will just sit in a bank account not adding value to anything but their net worth. Fuck rich people.

To a certain degree they can but there has been a fair number of times they have not been.

TL;DR: I think it is basically impossible to have that much money and claim it was earned ethically. Therefore it is basically impossible to be "good" without giving it away.

I think that it is borderline impossible to ethically accrue that much wealth. Is it possible? Maybe? I'd love to hear more examples of where a company owner made sure all their employees shared in the success when the company is large enough that the owner is that rich. I remember hearing that Google did right by their early employees, but it's been the exception that makes the rule and was also a long time ago in a different world where their ethics were different anyway.

And if you inherit that much wealth, what are the odds that it came to you free and clear of having been generated from exploiting others? Colonizing/"settling" and redlining making property values super high? Using eminent domain to tear down minority major communities for the sake of putting an interstate down the middle instead of risking devaluing the richest people's property more? Because odds are that even if they didn't cause the system they certainly benefited from it.

And unfortunately, "charity" is a horror in the USA because it's used as a very bad and very biased by rich people version of an actual welfare system that worked. The idea that there are food banks operating off donations while billionaires exist is horrific. If billionaires did not exist I frankly think that a lot more things like food banks (and public transit maybe?) would find themselves with funding.

One thing to realize - it is paper money, stocks, obligation, not actual resources that rich people own. If you actually spend billions on yourself, like building multiple palaces, huge and multiple yachts, then yes, you are consuming resources egoistically for yourself. If the money are "working", producing something that not for you to consume (also known as "invested"), and especially if you donate a lot for charities, then sure, you can be a good person.

yes, they can be - but why do they need to spend their money to benefit the public to be proven as "good"? are you yourself bad because you're unwilling to spend your money to benefit the public?

I dont see myself as greedy, but I am unwilling to spend my own money to help humanity. not even one iota