A certain Talmudical philosopher once offered us this apothegm: “The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting charity, and the best alms are to show and enable a man to dispense with alms.” FULL ARTICLE by F.A. Harper
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/11237/the-greatest-economic-charity/
The Greatest Economic Charity
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“Charity requires the transfer of ownership from one person to another of something having economic worth.”
False, a teacher sharing knowledge (a tool) does not necessarily transfer ownership, because ownership of knowledge is not possible.
Some very well taken points! The goal of charity should always be toward the future well-being and independence, if possible, of the receiver.
I suppose this could be summed up in the saying “give a man a fish,he will eat for a day, TEACH him how to fish, he will eat for the rest of his life”.
One may add, that if he is taught the craft and profession of the fisherman well, he will not only feed himself, but a good many others as well.
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
David K. Meller,
I’m sorry but as far as I am concerned, I need more than fish to live, I need hope. It doesn’t matter if I am the best fisherman in the world, if I cannot hope of being rich and powerful one day then I have no use for living another day. Credible hope is more important than food.
Not to disparage the Talmudical philosopher in question (or the article, which is okay, despite being long-winded), but the quote “The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting charity, and the best alms are to show and enable a man to dispense with alms.” can be interpreted in a weird way: The message might be (but isn’t, obviously): give freely, but advise others not to accept gifts.
It’s cliché, but “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for the rest of his life” is, I think, still an excellent way of expressing the Talmudic philosopher’s intended meaning.
Ruddy, the teacher is transfering his property, his time, his body. He is ‘leasing’ for free his body to them in the conditions it will be used in a particular way, the act of being there, in a class, using his mouth to teach, he is relinquising his right of ownership over his own body and giving it to the students who will use him and ask his body-property to be used in the particular way of using his vocal cords to teach for them.
So, knowledge is not what is shared, it’s the body of the teacher what is given away, his rigt to do other things, exactly as if you give away some phisical amount of coins for a short time, not being able to use thme as you with and stoping being the ownership of it for the duration of the charitable act.
“The greatest charity of all, in the light of this apothegm, would be to assist a person toward becoming wholly self-reliant within nature’s limitations, and therefore totally free.”
Amen
What happens if you extend out the logic of the fisherman apothegm?
Step 1: Give a man a fish–result, he is fed for a day.
Step 2: Teach the man how to fish–result, he is fed for life.
Step 3: Teach the man how to teach himself–result, he is fed, clothed, sheltered, etc., for life.
Do you see the pattern? What does it mean to teach someone to teach himself?
The greatest charity of all is–hold on, here it comes–no charity at all!?
T’is interesting when it comes to the question: “if welfare is so bad why is charity so good” that folks like F. A. Harper would answer “charity is not a good thing either”. This classicarticle is another reminder that charity can be and usually is as disastrous as welfare (especially as both are virtually the same from the viewpoint of the receiver).
Maybe the “leap of faith” is to abolish not only welfare but charity too. Many people have attributed their success to not having any “wimp-out clauses”. Or as one person said “if you have a ‘fall back plan’ you will fall back”. Likewise Julius Caesar would “burn his bridges”. Then there’s the joke of a bloke who loses $5 in a septic tank then pull out a $50 note and drops it in the same place as the $5 saying to a stumped observer “well you don’t except to get into there for the sake of a fiver”.
Forgice the tangential segue here, but with the Patron Saint of Retail’s season upon us, the question arises: How does one give a gift and still remain true to Austrian-school inspired thinking?
Clearly, the best thing to give as a gift is money – this leaves the maximum amount of choice in the hands of the recipient , and hence is more valuable to him than any possible item chosen by the giver.
It will not have escaped the reader that this option will not earn the giver much kudos – its regarded as somewhat tacky to simply give cash.
So people go to gift vouchers ( now in the form of plastic cards pre-loaded with cash). This is less unacceptable socially, b ut that still makes no sense. By restricting the gift from cash ( spendable anywhere) to a voucher/card (spendable at one particular outlet), ie by NARROWING the recipient’s choices, it makes it less infra dig.
And of course, a well-chosen gift that the recipient appreciates and (hopefully) treasures is still the outright winner. and with a specific item, as a gift, the element of choice is removed altogether.
therein lies a clue to the art of giving a gift: to be successful , the giver has to know therecipient sufficiently well to have insight into that person’s likes and dislikes. Then, the giver has to go to the effort of taking steps to shop for the gift – anyone can write out a cheque or bang off an online order after all.
The primary hallmark of a well-chosen gift is simply this: It has to be anice-to-have item that the recipient would like and has even considered buying himself, but which he has not bought to date for reasons of thrift. That makes the perfect gift. A hard thing to get right, to be sure, but there it is.
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