Moral obligation to give?

In his recent weekly columns Peter King, a Sports Illustrated senior writer focused on NFL, mentioned philanthropy acts of NFL players and owners. First, Dan Snyder (Redskins owner) and Marc Bulger (Rams quarterback) will host certain soldier who is coming back home for a leave during his second tour in Iraq and whose correspondence with Mr. King is regularly mentioned in the columns (for more please see MMQB 9/21/08 - please scroll to the Good Guy of the Week section).

In the latest column (MMQB 9/29/08) he mentions Kurt Warner (Cardinals quarterback) and his family who pick up tabs for anonymous families dinning in the same restaurant. According to the column this is to learn his children joys of giving.

Are these acts selfless acts of goodwill or are they clever publicity stunts to gain some good points and increase your popularity and jersey sales? In Mr. Warner case, picking up tabs was something going on for past several years (according to the story), making it hard to argue that this is pure publicity stunt. In case of Mr. Snyder and Mr. Bulger it is a bit harder nut to crack. At the begining of this season Mr. King announced that his column will include new features (also the Good Guy of the Week section) and as he was regularly writing about the adventures of the above mentioned soldier, one should expect that anything interesting happening to him will be published on the website (consider that Mr. King is nationally recognized and well established sports writer). Anyway, let us assume that no publicity gain was initially aimed for.

Is it a duty of the rich to share their wealth with those less lucky after they provide for themselves and for their dearest? Is the philantrophy something that we should feel obliged to do? Even in today's strictly money focused economy philanthropy thrives as those who earned their share are trying to leave some imprint not only in the material world (see Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffet's donations to charities and medical research organisations). This tendency can be seen in the past two or three hundred years as the society got richer and gap between poor and rich grew wider. During this time society come to expect from those on the top to give something to those on the bottom and something like "moral obligation" was introduced. Those who do not give are considered greedy and plain stupid (see Paris Hilton :) ).

But what is the level of "richness" when you should start giving back? Nobody can answer this question as there is no level or standard. There cannot be a simple answer as all of us have different needs to be satisfied and thus different amount of money we need. Mr. Warner tries to give back even though income of his family per capita is much lower than the income of Mr. Gates (Mr. Warner has allegedly 5 children with his wife). And even though it is not much, it still makes some other family happy. On the other hand other philanthropists attempt to find cure for cancer and/or other diseases which will make eventually whole lot of people happy. What is more?

But not only rich people are doing moral amends. Those who do not have enough money and still feel need to give something back are doing it via service to society. Through providing services which they posses (e.g. coaching little league teams as Mr. King does, trying to improve the neighbourhood by cleaning up the streets and taking care of gardens etc.) for no compensation. Do yu know somebody like this?

Next blog will be published on Sunday as I am going for a 5 day hike to Wugong shan. Enjoy!