Word to the wise, stop giving out personal information. At this point I am pretty sure you are not a partner so its probably moot.
Oh, ignore my previous post. a million in billables doesn’t anrrow anything down.
Don’t get me wrong, I have done some good as a tax lawyer. I’ve untangled complicated sitautions to help client’s determine what their tax liability was, I have helped come up with structures that made otherwise beneficial (at least economically) transactions possible but for the hairy tax issues involved but I have also advised clients on tax shelters, tax optimization and more tax shelters.
Its really very interesting work in the way that creating a more efficient armor piercing bullet might be interesting work but the ultimate effect on society is questionable.
Le sigh. I’m not making up definitions of words. I’m trying to get people to articulate what they feel the source of my “obligation” (your word) to do pro bono is. If that source is my promise or agreement to do pro bono, then I’m calling that an “actual obligation.” If that source is only some nebulous general notion of right and wrong (or the like–such a the concept of “professionalism”), then I’ve called that a “moral obligation.”
Throughout this thread you’ve flip-flopped between those two sources of my obligation to do pro bono. In some posts you’ve clearly stated that you believe I promised to do pro bono, then in other posts you’ve said it doesn’t matter whether I promised, I’m still obligated.
A relevant legal cncept is a “right without a remedy.” If a person has the ability to sue someone for something but the civil procedure rules provide that there’s no court in which that suit may be brought, then the person has a right without a remedy. They can stamp their feet and insist that they have a right, but that right is completely worthless because they can’t actually bring about any change in the real world based on them having that right.
Similarly, if I have an obligationto do pro bono but the source of that obligation is just general notions of right and wrong and not a promise I made or rules that apply to me, then someone can scream at me until they are blue in the face about me not fulfilling that obligation, but there’s nothing else they can do. My obligation is really no obligation at all.
So, to sum up, I’ve been using different words and using terms differently than others only in an effort to see what people are really seeing, not to play some shell game or to re-define something for my own benefit.
[quote=“LeeshaJoy, post:1180, topic:553132”]
Ah, but in the Objectiverse, they’re one and the same, don’t you see? :rolleyes:[/QUOTE
Let me ask you and Damuri this: say you pay $1000 for an X and $10 for a Y. What must be true about the relative value to you of X and Y? Do you normally pay $1000 for something you believe is only worth a couple hundred bucks?
Also, I think you think I’m saying something about “social value” or “moral value” or something, but I’m not. I’m just talking about the dollar value of the services I provide.
I could flip burgers and provide services worth $18,000 a year. Or I could be a tax lawyer and provide services worth $1,000,000 a year. You guys seem to think that I would be a better contributor to society if I flipped burgers and did pro bono work than I am as a tax lawyer that doesn’t do pro bono. But in the first case I would be depriving society of services worth well in excess of my burger flipping services.
I’m fairly sure our society is much more in need of good burger flippers. A few rich tax-evaders do not a society make, Bozo.
Lots of folks buy burgers. Almost none of them would dump $1,000,000 just to pay less tax on 'em.
My job really isn’t to lower people’s taxes. It’s to lower risk related to taxes.
Also, once again, you seem to be discussing a different concept of value than I am.
Probably. What with the +1100 posts in this thread, at some point one would suspect that your version of reality is somewhat different than, say, everyone else. This could possibly be why you have been so successful. “Try the guy in the last cubicle on the left, he has no soul”…
Who, in your life, besides your near family, do you really help?
He helps himself.
My clients. In turn, they are able to make investments or buy companies, which creates jobs and increases various tax bases.
I confess, I’m out of my league here. In my world, a company getting bought out ends up losing most of their employees, with the take-over douches getting tax breaks for taking the right folks out to lunch.
I apologize. I had no idea your clients were so altruistic. I thought you were getting paid to save them every singe screaming Lincoln head that got pinched.
Dude, let me help; I speak Jive and Rand-ese, both of which will be useful here as RR embarks on another chorus of “Words Mean What I Want Them To Mean.”
Although you and I both think that being paid to give an entity tax advice means finding ways to lower that entity’s tax bill, in Objectivatopia that same adviser’s function is to simply lower risk related to taxes, i.e., the risk of that entity winding up with less profit because they didn’t lower their tax bill.
Jive ass dude don thank we got no brains.
“golly”
Well, that much is true.
Jive ass dude has too much free time.
So… knock a self a pro, Slick!
You can’t reasonably compare the dollar value of your work product with that of a burger flipper’s because they are heterogenous goods: they are consumed in vastly different quantities. Imagine a world with only one tax attorney and one line cook. Who do you think would make more money?
The marginal value of your product is higher because the supply is lower and because most people just don’t need your services at all and never will. Your services are consumed in very, very low quantities by very few people. Marginal value drives the price, not total value. Are you familiar with the diamond-water paradox?
It’s obviously true that your services command more cash value than a line cook’s, but that doesn’t tell us very much.
Isn’t a right without a remedy still a right?
Suppose a $50 falls out of someone’s pocket in the street and you are the only one who sees it. You pick it up. You can keep the $50 without fear of being caught or other penalty or you can return the money. Suppose even that the person wouldn’t miss the $50 at all if you kept it. Would you mind telling me what you choose and on what basis?
This is intentionally not analogous to doing pro bono work and I don’t mean it to be.
That’s been my understanding too- Company A buys Company B, promptly fires most of Company B’s staff (since they no longer need two Head Of Widget Accounts people, for example), and then the shareholders and executives do a little happy dance as share prices go up and morale plummets, and the people that didn’t get laid off start updating their CVs and planning to leave anyway.
Yeah, but see, it’s their fault for working for *that *company, instead of the theoretical one that the happy-dancing executives will subsequently invest their dividends in.
You gotta be standing in the right place at the right time to be trickled down on.
It all depends on what sort of substance it is that’s trickling down whether it’s the “right place”.
Maeglin, glad you’re here (wish Bricker would re-join the discussion as well).
I think I screwed up when I originally raised this by comparing the value of my services to the the value of a line cook’s. But I think I got it right the second time when I compared the value of the services I perform as a tax lawyer with the value of the services I would provide as a line cook.
If Bob pays 20 bucks for X, then that means Bob thinks X is worth at least 20 bucks. The reasons for that don’t matter. Imagining Bob and Jane on an island where Jane makes X and Bob makes Y doesn’t add anything to the discussion. All we know is Bob thinks X is worth 20 bucks.
Similarly, lots of people in the aggregate value my services at over $1 million per year, and they would value my services as a line cook at $18,000 per year (or thereabouts). So, by being a tax lawyer I’m providing more valuable services than I would be providing if I were a line cook.
The whole point is that many people discount that and look only at charity work or charitable donations to determine the value of what a person provides to society. I think it’s ridiculous to ignore the value of the services I provide and focus on the charitable work I would do if I were a line cook.
This gets at an issue raised by the discussion above about whether I have internalized my society’s general concepts of right and wrong.
I think that the concept of a moral obligation is completely meaningless. That is, if you tell me I have a moral obligation to do something, that has zero impact on whether I’m going to do it or not or on anything else in the real world. Absolutely nothing changes because you’ve made that statement.
But that doesn’t mean that I won’t do that anyway because I think it’s the right thing to do. In the scenario you outline, I would give the money back to the person who dropped it because I think it’s the right thing for me to do. But I would never tell you that you have a moral obligation to do so, and I think it’s meaningless if you tell me I have a moral obligation to do so.