Paul Krugman Is Refusing To Help A Charity By Not Engaging In A Debate

reply to post by mnemeth1


The charity should get the money regardless of whether or not this Krugman guy shows up for a debate and if you can't see the problem with holding money just out of reach of a charity and saying "You can only have this if so and so shows up for a debate on something you (the charity) probably don't care about", then there's not much I can tell you.

Originally posted by Jenna
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

The charity should get the money regardless of whether or not this Krugman guy shows up for a debate and if you can't see the problem with holding money just out of reach of a charity and saying "You can only have this if so and so shows up for a debate on something you (the charity) probably don't care about", then there's not much I can tell you.

No, the charity wouldn't get the money period.

None of the people pledging to make donations to that charity would have done so if Murphy didn't put forth the offer for a debate.

If Murphy simply said "hey, here's a cool charity, I want you all to donate to it" - he'd be lucky if he got a few hundred dollars.

People are essentially paying to see this debate go live.

Bob Murphy warming up to take on Krugman

Originally posted by Jenna
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

The charity should get the money regardless of whether or not this Krugman guy shows up for a debate and if you can't see the problem with holding money just out of reach of a charity and saying "You can only have this if so and so shows up for a debate on something you (the charity) probably don't care about", then there's not much I can tell you.

Why SHOULD the charity get money regardless in this case? Libertarians are donating money to a charity, something against their nature, because they want to see this debate so badly. That would be like Christian conservatives being willing to give money to a mosque just so Pat Robertson could debate Osama Bin Laden (or a more updated version: Anwar Al Awlaki) To say the charity SHOULD get money is the same as saying the mosque SHOULD get charity from Christians, when that is against their nature to donate to a mosque. If the charity wanted the money, they would most likely send a letter asking Krugman to take part in the debate. It would surprise me if instead the charity turned their nose up at the whole thing, saying they didn't like the terms, and didn't want the money regardless because they thought it constituted blackmail, as you imply. The charity does have that option to turn the money down, but since the creator of this debate asked the soup kitchen in advance to make sure everything was alright, they already agreed with the terms.

reply to post by filosophia


I like your point but not your analogies.

Libertarians are heavily in favor of privately run charity.

In fact, they think all government run welfare should be abolished and we should move to a system of nothing but private charity.

Further, the Free State project, which is composed of nothing but libertarian activists, does so much charity work for their local community and members I couldn't possibly list all of their accomplishments.

The Mises Institute, which Bob works for, is funded largely by private charitable donations.

The same can be said for the CATO institute, which is 80% funded by charitable donations.

Libertarians are some of the most giving people on the planet.

Libertarians are against the use of violence to forcibly fund welfare at gun point, they are not against giving to the needy.

Originally posted by filosophia
Why SHOULD the charity get money regardless in this case?

If these people are willing to donate money to this charity, then they should just donate to it. Money for a charity shouldn't be held hostage until Krugman gives in to this guys demands. As I said, the way this is being done is no better than blackmail.

Originally posted by Jenna

Originally posted by filosophia
Why SHOULD the charity get money regardless in this case?

If these people are willing to donate money to this charity, then they should just donate to it. Money for a charity shouldn't be held hostage until Krugman gives in to this guys demands. As I said, the way this is being done is no better than blackmail.

That's not the way the world works.

The world works by people paying for services and goods they enjoy.

In this case, Murphy is volunteering his time to debate Krugman and people are "paying" Murphy for his time by donating to his cause rather than giving him money directly.

People are donating for the same reason people buy things. They value the end result of the purchase more than they value the money that represents the value of their labor.