How Can We Help the Poor and Economically Vulnerable?

-The Best Way to Help Others Is to Work on Your Own-

No one lives alone. We live by receiving help from others and by helping others in return. From birth, we are cared for by our families, and as we grow, we live while caring for our families in return. In social life as well, we help and are helped by those around us and even by strangers. Through this process of helping others and receiving help, people build better lives. In social life, most acts of helping others take place through exchange. Giving food to the hungry, healing the sick, building homes where people can sleep, and making clothes for people to wear are all ways of helping others. Those who want help choose what helps them most and offer payment as an expression of gratitude. In uncivilized societies, people lived by helping one another collectively within families or groups, but it was difficult to escape poverty.

However, as modern urban civilization took root, people discovered concrete and individualized ways of helping one another. Through the market, even people who do not know each other can help one another. For helping others in already familiar ways, an appropriate market price is formed. The price of a meal that relieves hunger, the price of medicine that eases pain, the price of a new house, or a taxi fare for about 2–3 km are examples. Because the value of gratitude is set to some extent, people who work can expect corresponding compensation and put in effort accordingly. At the same time, there are things people clearly need help with, but for which no one has yet found a method. A drug that cures cancer, a machine that converts thoughts into voice signals, or a device that instantly transports someone to another place—these are cases where something is truly needed, yet no solution has been found. Finding new methods in such fields is called venture business. People call those who discover new methods entrepreneurs or inventors and pay them accordingly. Because they have opened a path to solving someone’s problem by discovering a new method, the reward of gratitude can only be great; in the end, through innovation, people come to live better lives, and the world advances one step further.

Proper charity means providing opportunities for people to take responsibility for their own lives

In this way, the essence of business is helping others. Among the people alive today, Bill Gates is the richest person in the world because he has helped the greatest number of people through computers and Windows. He did not become the richest person by relying on political power. Those who do business thinking only about money and believing that earning money is all that matters can never become great businesspeople. People who chase only money inevitably fail to build good businesses in the long run and disappear. Great entrepreneurs are all people who thought deeply about what difficulties others face and what can enable people to live better lives, then found solutions and turned them into businesses. People who were once poor, who suffered from hunger and disease, are now living prosperous lives thanks to the efforts of entrepreneurs. The developed countries and our own country are nations made successful in exactly this way.

Yet helping others through business is inherently not easy. Building a venture business, especially in a new field, is even more difficult. People who put forward only their own excellence are not good at such work, because they do not understand the hardships of others. A mind that considers and respects others helps make the discoveries that overcome difficulties. That is why venture businesses are especially active in societies where many people practice helping others in daily life. Most of the world’s top venture businesses came from the United States. America is a society where a culture of thinking about how to help others in daily life—and putting that into practice—has taken root. New businesses were created not by brilliant scholars educated at universities, but by people with the right spirit. It was not top students, intellectuals, or civil servants who made new businesses flourish. Therefore, anyone who dreams of success must make helping others part of everyday life. The person who asks, “Why is that person struggling?” and “How can I relieve that person’s hardship?” is the one who can find the solution.

There are many ways to help others. Solving problems and providing help through business is the most desirable way, but that is not always possible. Some people do not yet live in civilized societies, or they face personal hardships. First, they must be taught how to catch fish so they can overcome poverty and move toward economic success. In other words, they must be given experiences and opportunities to choose for themselves so that they can take responsibility for their own lives.

The true value of charity fully blossoms when it is given to someone prepared to receive it

Self-reliance should come before charity. First published in the United Kingdom in 1991, The Big Issue is a street magazine. Its founder, John Bird, was originally homeless himself. He criticized charity-centered homeless policies, saying that “the government and various organizations, by giving out a little food here and there, trap people forever in the snare of charity.” He established rules of conduct that homeless people had to follow to become vendors. The key points included abstaining from alcohol while selling and behaving confidently and kindly toward customers. He wanted homeless people to regain their dignity and self-respect on their own. The first 10 copies of the magazine were provided free of charge, and with the proceeds from selling them, vendors could buy another 10 copies at half the cover price. In other words, homeless vendors were allowed to keep half of the sales revenue. He emphasized the will to become self-reliant rather than dependence on charity. As a result, the satisfaction of homeless people who succeeded in becoming self-reliant by their own efforts was incomparably higher than when they had barely managed to survive on charity. For that to happen, they first needed to understand the meaning of receiving help and to adopt the right mindset for moving toward success. First and foremost, they needed to recognize that money is a good thing. People who fail usually do not look for the reason in themselves; they look for it in society or in others. Some even think that if they lack money, it is because others have too much money. If people remain trapped in such negative thinking and a sense of victimhood, they cannot truly succeed even when they receive help. People easily fall into the trap of overlooking their own pursuit of money while criticizing others under the assumption that they, too, care only about money. They also tend to say that money comes easily or by chance and dismiss the success of the wealthy as mere good luck. Only when the person receiving help is prepared can the value of that help truly blossom. Giving money to someone who is not prepared to receive it is highly likely to make that person even more destitute.

There was once a boy who worked in the garden of a wealthy household in medieval Europe. He had great artistic talent, but he was too poor to study art as he wished. He worked to make the rich man’s garden beautiful. The boy tended the garden with all his might, as if it were a work of art. One day, the owner asked him, “You will not be paid more just because you work harder in the garden, so why do you care for it so devotedly?” The boy replied, “How much I am paid does not matter to me at all. I truly love this garden. That is why caring for it beautifully is simply joyful and delightful to me.” The owner was deeply moved by the boy’s pure passion and quiet dedication. Thanks to the wealthy owner’s support, the boy was able to study art and let his talent blossom. That boy was none other than Michelangelo, one of the representative artists of the Renaissance. What would have happened if Michelangelo had become discouraged by his poverty and wasted his life carelessly? Even if he had worked as a gardener, what if he had done so indifferently and neglected the garden? In that case, the emotion of The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the Pietà would probably never have been passed down to future generations.

There is a saying that heaven helps those who help themselves. It means that heaven makes successful those who strive on their own. Nothing can be obtained for free without lifting a finger. Sometimes, even if you make an effort, you may not receive compensation or reward equal to that effort. But even so, if you simply let go and stand idly by doing nothing at all, no one will give you help or opportunity.

Blind and broad charity is of no help

The owner of one’s life is oneself. Naturally, each person must take responsibility for and protect his or her own life. No one in this world would want a life dependent on and parasitic upon the charity of others. If so, one should rightly live the life one wants in a self-directed way. Sadly, however, not everyone in the world can enjoy the quality of life they desire. There are also people for whom self-reliance is difficult. For them, voluntary help from neighbors, together with government welfare that supplements it, is necessary. This can be seen as care and respect that enable them to maintain a basic standard of living as members of society. Of course, voluntary help and donations should come before government welfare, which is coercively financed through taxes.

The person who made a major mark on the history of America’s culture of giving was Andrew Carnegie. He was extremely poor in his childhood, yet he amassed enormous wealth and earned social honor and respect through philanthropy. He also had his own firm philosophy about giving. He opposed simple charity that was dispensed blindly and broadly. The reason was that, through his own experience, he knew well that simple charity has no real effect. According to Carnegie, “Of every $1,000 spent in what is called charity today, about $950 is improperly spent. Such misguided charity may actually produce the very evils it seeks to remedy or alleviate.” Therefore, philanthropy, too, can succeed only when it is grounded in a philosophy of life. The key is to help the recipient live rightly, and charity can succeed only when it also helps change the recipient’s attitude toward life. A representative organization of this kind is Compassion, which began in 1952 to help Korea’s war orphans.

Those who help others and make donations should be able to fully enjoy the joy and happiness of giving, and the meaning of helping should be grounded in a proper set of values. Simply delivering money and offering aid does not mean the recipient will thrive. Help can succeed only when heart and philosophy accompany it. Helping others out of a sense of superiority is unfortunate for the giver and brings only pain to the receiver as well. Help gains value only when it is accompanied by care and respect for human beings suffering hardship and distress. Giving is not only a virtue that enriches everyone’s lives; it also plays an enormous economic role. This is the power of voluntary giving. In the United States, not only the rich but most people regard giving as an honorable and natural social activity. This culture of giving is what helps keep America a healthy society.

Sung-no Choi

President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: 가난한 자, 경제적 약자를 어떻게 도울 것인가?

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2018-10-29

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&pn=26&idx=11196