Quote Originally Posted by LDAHL View Post
If we have a moral obligation to "live simply that others may simply live", do we also have an obligation to work as long and as hard as we can at whatever pays the most to earn as much wealth as possible for distribution to the less fortunate? If every dollar of "excess consumption" can be thought of as coming at someone else's expense, doesn't every hour of "excess leisure" also come at someone else's expense if the goal is a sort of utilitarian greatest good for the greatest number?

Would it be wrong, for instance, for an investment banker to spend two years in the Peace Corps digging wells in Malawi if his earnings could easily be used to employ several dozen local well-diggers? Should we recognize a sort of ethical opportunity cost for our free time?
Here is my illustration.

Suppose your investment banker does a lot of investment "work" in bottled water. And the source of this bottled water is Lake Malawi. So he empties the lake to fill bottles of water to sell to people in the first world (expensive exotic water for Whole Foods customers). Then he uses a portion of his earnings to dig wells in Malawi (Got to! The lake was drained!).

This was not helpful.

Now obviously I don't want you to take this illustration literally, but rather to help you imagine how extracting and exploiting certain resources on the front end to make a profit is not made right by "charity" on the tail end.

I think it is best to refrain from extracting resources whenever possible.