Seems like a bad incentive if we harshly criticise people for stopping giving, at least if we didn’t praise them way more for the donation in the first place. Warren has been one of the most generous men in history, but this historical generosity shouldn’t be held as evidence against him.
I agree he shouldn’t have his past donations held against him, and that his past generosity should be praised.
At the same time, he’s not simply “stopping giving.” His prior plan was that his estate would go to BMGF. Let’s assume that that was reflected in his estate planning documents. He would have had to make an affirmative change to effect this new plan. So with this specific action he is not “stopping giving,” he is actively altering his plan to be much worse.
I don’t buy this is a morally or socially significant distinction. Do we really believe that a parallel world Warren, who made a public pledge to give his money away, and fully intended to, but never got around to actually writing a will before he changed his mind, would be significantly less blameworthy, or would escape opprobrium?
Part of my intuition is that the temporal ordering doesn’t matter—if anything it’s better to give sooner—so we should not treat more harshly someone who donated and then stopped than someone who consumed frivolously and then saw the light later in life.
Seems like a bad incentive if we harshly criticise people for stopping giving, at least if we didn’t praise them way more for the donation in the first place. Warren has been one of the most generous men in history, but this historical generosity shouldn’t be held as evidence against him.
I agree he shouldn’t have his past donations held against him, and that his past generosity should be praised.
At the same time, he’s not simply “stopping giving.” His prior plan was that his estate would go to BMGF. Let’s assume that that was reflected in his estate planning documents. He would have had to make an affirmative change to effect this new plan. So with this specific action he is not “stopping giving,” he is actively altering his plan to be much worse.
I don’t buy this is a morally or socially significant distinction. Do we really believe that a parallel world Warren, who made a public pledge to give his money away, and fully intended to, but never got around to actually writing a will before he changed his mind, would be significantly less blameworthy, or would escape opprobrium?
Part of my intuition is that the temporal ordering doesn’t matter—if anything it’s better to give sooner—so we should not treat more harshly someone who donated and then stopped than someone who consumed frivolously and then saw the light later in life.