Why praise sacrifice at all? Personal suffering/sacrifice adds no value to the community, and in fact reduces it.

Maximizing positive impact should be the goal.

Perhaps someone with 25 to their name better serves the community by keeping it?

> Perhaps someone with 25 to their name better serves the community by keeping it?

We have to assume that in the given scenario the other person needed it more and nobody else was stepping up.

> Why praise sacrifice at all?

You don't even have to praise the concept of sacrificing in general to praise caring enough to help those less fortunate even when helping has a cost. The alternative is for nobody to help except those for whom money no longer has any meaning, ie billionaires, and I don't see Jeff Bezos building homes for the homeless.

> Personal suffering/sacrifice adds no value to the community, and in fact reduces it. Maximizing positive impact should be the goal.

The first sentence is false. Donation is zero-sum in absolute dollar terms, no money is gained or lost, but money _does_ have diminishing utility to the individual, so the raised person can gain more than the lowered person loses. So a person can sacrifice AND maximize positive impact.

For what it's worth, I think the right approach is to eat the billionaires instead of waiting for the person with $25 to sacrifice even further for the person with $5. Clearly eating all of the billionaires would maximize positive impact.

This is a very utilitarian view, and it’s only considering the economic aspect at that. I’m not trying to argue that you’re wrong—I just want to suggest that there are other ways of looking at sacrifice that lead to the opposite conclusion.

Giving to help someone worse-off than you—ideally—engenders a feeling of gratitude and humility that makes our society a better place. Experiencing a greater sense of gratitude can help more than just money: gratitude helps one keep a positive mental outlook and can carry one through difficult times.

As a man of faith myself, I believe in divine blessings—both during and after this life—for sacrifice and generosity. That’s not my motivation for doing good, but I do believe that sacrifice does make a better community and a happier individual.

Now, as for the limit case of being utterly destitute (e.g. $25 to their name), a wise man once said “it is not requisite that you run faster than you have strength”—looking after yourself is noble, provided you continue to do what you can.

I don’t see how sacrifice and suffering is necessary tied to charity, gratitude, humility and brotherhood.

Sacrifice can be a demonstration of love and caring, but is the latter that is important. Sacrifice is just evidence. Would you agree?

Some people see risk and sacrifice of the self as the foundation of heroism.

A fire code inspector might save more lives than a fire fighter, but nobody sells calendars of sexy fire code inspectors, or hands out medals for bravely insisting that tower block's staircase have a sprinkler system fitted.

Of course, an Effective Altruist / utilitarian would say who cares about feelings and medals? After all, altruism by definition isn't seeking medals.

I agree that sacrifice can be evidence of love and compassion. I would go a step further and argue that sacrifice is requisite for these things, especially in their highest forms.

Sacrifice exposes what is important to a person—both to external observers as well as the individual in question. A marital relationship—for example—requires immense sacrifice on both spouses’ sides for it to work out. Without sacrifice, affection wanes.

I don’t think sacrifice necessarily equals suffering. Sometimes it can. But based on my experience, when the sacrifice is made willingly and for a good cause, it serves more as a source of joy that I can get outside myself and aid someone in need.

Now, waisted or senseless sacrifice—yes, that doesn’t make much sense. I see a distinction between the two, but that could just be me. Does that make sense?

> Personal suffering/sacrifice adds no value to the community, and in fact reduces it.

What? How? If you see this extremely locally, like the community being, your country, sure, but I don't think that's apply when you consider the community has being the whole world.

> Perhaps someone with 25 to their name better serves the community by keeping it?

Does it though? We see this as a first world country, where even for the one starving a bit, still get a life much better than a good proportion of the world. That means that keeping that 25$ will help you surely, but would serve much better a few others, if given correctly.

I guess HN is probably a place where disproportionate ego exist in a higher percentage than anywhere else, that many believe that they are the 10x programmer which is worth more than everyone else, but I'm a firm believer that given the same opportunity as me, anyone else could have done the same as me, thus helping many reach the same opportunities as me, will help more than helping myself.

Sadly I'm still a bit selfish and still want a better life for myself. I still do self sacrifice, but it's extremely local.

As we are trying to judge someone's character or morality I would consider it along the lines of - if that poor person were in Feeney's shoes would they have done the same? If Feeney were in that poor persons shoes would he have done the same?

The forces on a wealthy person giving up almost all of his wealth are also pretty great, but in a different way, when compared to a poor person doing the same.

As #1 in the original list implies, it may be most important to be lifted out of poverty as this is what creates fulfilling civilisation. So one might argue that the poor person should invest what little money they have into their own future first, in a way which will improve their lot, as this will give them the opportunity to help many others (like Feeney did).

Bill Gates' sacrifice includes the years of hard work, perseverance and self realization which produced the money.

Also stealing CP/M.

Time whitewashes everything. Bill Gates has spent many years doing good work as a philanthropist. I'm not sure this undoes the fact that much of his gain was from blatant cloning, ruthless abuse of monopoly, and substandard products.