Let’s talk reductio, then.
Answer my opera question: may a wealthy person buy tickets to the opera and still be considered frugal?
Possibly. What are we talking about here, specifically? A couple shows a year at a community production? Season tickets to box seating at the Met? The former, certainly. The latter, no. Something in between? Perhaps. If you want a hard line, you won’t get one. You’ll get a lecture about the Sorites Paradox, instead.
In any event, a wealthy person may not spend 8 million (or 1.5 million) on opera tickets over 10 years and still be considered frugal. Not even if all the tickets are for orphans. In that case our wealthy person is not frugal, but generous. Different virtues, assuming you believe that frugality is a virtue to begin with.
That’s fair. I agree it sounds like I’m treading close to Sorites ground here, asking for a cut-off on where you are frugal. But I’m not. If anything, the reverse is true: if I have 10,000 grains of wheat and I remove 5,000, I’ve clearly affected the heap. If I have 10 billions grains and I remove 5,000, the heap is unchanged.
When you have that much wheat, you can give up 5,000 grains and still be frugal with your wheat.
This is a misuse of the analogy, actually. I’d set up the Sorites problem like this:
Spending only one dollar on luxury is frugal.
For any n, if spending *n* on luxury is frugal, then spending n+1 on luxury is also frugal.
Therefore, spending $8 million on luxury is frugal.
This is the classic form. The usual response is to say that ‘frugal’ is semantically vague, and the fact that we can’t point to any hard line between frugal and non-frugal doesn’t mean that there aren’t levels of spending that are clearly frugal and other levels of spending that are clearly non-frugal. All it means is that there’s some band between the two where we aren’t sure whether to apply the word or not, and the reason that we’re not sure is that we’ve never bothered to define the word precisely, nor is there any point in doing so. (There are lots of other responses that involve things like introducing logics with more than two truth values, or dropping various of the standard axioms. Investigating these quickly leads to reading stuff with enough logical notation to make me go crosseyed, but oddly enough the practical import of those other responses is almost exactly the same. This is typical of philosophy when you push beyond the surface. 
)
This doesn’t mean that you can invert the problem in the way you have. What you’ve done is again essentially equate ‘frugal’ with ‘living within one’s means’. If we start with a heap of money and spend some of it, so long as what’s left over is still a heap, we’ve been frugal. As I’ve said, you’ve made it virtually impossible by definition for Bill Gates to be anything other than frugal. That doesn’t jive with ordinary usage of the word. You’ve made it possible to spend millions of dollars on luxury items. That doesn’t jive with ordinary usage of the word. The definition batted around earier (from Merriam Webster?) was ‘economy in use of resources’. That does jive with ordinary usage. But it doesn’t mean ‘don’t use so many resources that you don’t have some left over’. It means ‘careful, efficient, and sparing use of resources’. Its opposite is something like ‘lavish’ or ‘profligate’, which means ‘expending or bestowing profusely’ (again from our friends at m-w.com). Spending a lot on luxury items is lavish. Even if you can afford it. Spending millions on video poker is profligate. Even if you can afford it.
I will grant that ‘frugal’ seems to vary a bit in meaning with the level of wealth in society as a whole. What is considered frugal today would no doubt have failed to qualify as frugal in 1932. What is considered frugal in North America or Europe would no doubt fail to qualify as frugal in Bangladesh. I don’t believe, however, that one can say as you are that the meaning also varies with the level of wealth of an individual. What counts as luxury for me also counts as luxury for you and for Bill Gates, though what counts as luxury for someone from Bangladesh won’t likely count as luxury for us (though of course ‘luxury’, like ‘frugal’, is going to be vague around the edges). Spending significant sums of money on things that our society considers a luxury (like, say, gambling at a casino) is not frugal. Even if those significant sums are insignificant to your personal wealth.
Sadly, there is some competition for the last-mentioned honor.
Other than that, though, Bricker has made it clear that he’s proud of his Jesuit training, not realizing that the so-called Jesuitical style of “debate” he seems to have learned from them and habitually engages in here is *not * clever, simply transparently asswipish, and it is certainly not enlightening to anyone at all.
Note specifically that, despite repeated coaxing, he has not, and cannot, define any standard of morality that allows him to excuse himself while still condemning others. As always, whenever cornered, he tries to make the standard or the argument entirely the other person’s problem instead, despite it being obvious to all that once again he ain’t got no argument, just the simple gainsaying of anything the other person says. It’s sad, simply sad.
Here is where we simply part company, then. I do not agree with the definition you are proposing for “frugal”. I believe you are describing behavior better called parsimonious.
You are simply asserting that what counts as luxury for you also counts as luxury for me and for Bill Gates. I disagree sharply. What you can afford is what determines luxury and frugality.
Of course. That’s the usual difference rational people accord to an admission supporting one’s interest as contrasted with an admission contrary to one’s interest.
Yes – because the people he is trying to convince, using the commonly accepted definitions of words, found it to be hypocritical behavior.
Game, set, match.
Your objection to Kinsley’s argument is found several pages back. Your rebuttal to it is found only in your dreams.
Let’s see if I have this straight. The guy who reads off a few words of introduction on the rubber-chicken circuit is so closely associated with you that if he gives the wrong impression about your beliefs, you are obliged to correct the impression. The organization you co-found for the purpose of advancing your beliefs is so tenuously associated with you that you are under no such obligation. Gotcha.
Yes, because no one expects a “co-founder” to share each and every tenet of an organization’s platform, especially as time passes and the organization grows and changes. When you are specifically introduced as having certain beliefs, and you appear seconds later, and say nothing, you endorse the misinformation.
Then what definition do you accept Bricker? You’re the one saying that words have meaning, well frugal has a meaning; the first, not to waste. There’s no caveat that says, you can waste if you can afford it. If you can point me to link that directly equates or bases means with frugal, I’ll yield.
Your means is a non-issue, waste is, waste is waste. Period. If there’s two cans of beans on sale one is $1.00 and the other is 0.50 the only difference is one is a red can, the other blue; you can’t purchase the red can for a $1.00, solely because it’s red and claim you’re being frugal; even if you can afford it. Even if you prefer the color red, because the beans that they contain are the same. You are wasting money. That doesn’t make you a bad person, but you can’t claim to be frugal.
If I am a millionaire and buy season tickets for the Opera and never go, have I wasted those seats?
And this is what I just find bizarre. You are in effect denying that Bill Gates lives in luxury. I simply can’t fathom this view. Sure he spends a tiny proportion of his income on himself, unlike myself who spend virtually all my income on myself. By your standards, somehow, I’m living in luxury and Bill Gates isn’t?
I agree with you.
But how are we talking about waste here?
This is why I keep bringing up the opera. Opera tickets confer nothing but the opportunity to see the opera. You can’t eat, wear, or smoke the opera. It’s entertainment.
So is gambling.
No, no, no.
I have no idea how you live, of course. But I think Gates does live in luxury. If he lived like I do, he wouldn’t be.
I spend a far, far higher portion of my income on entertainment than Bill does. I spend a far, far higher portion of my income on housing than Bill does. I spend a far, far higher portion of my income on any fricking category you can name than Bill does (outside of investment and charity). Therefore, according to your proportional theory of frugality, Bill is far more frugal than I am. If he’s being frugal, how can he be living in luxury? People living in luxury by definition are not being frugal. They’re being lavish.
Thanks–I had a blast! Many geekerific moments.
And now I’m back, and Bricker, if you don’t mind, I’ll repost my last post in the vein of showing that Bennett himself seems to acknowledge that his gambling was a “poor example” and so forth.
That’s not so either.
If I win a game show, where the prize is a year’s residence in the fanciest, most lavishly appointed palace in the world, then I am living in luxury. That has absolutely no bearing on whether or not I am frugal. I could live there for a year, pinching pennies, saving food coupons, and reusing leftover slivers of soap – being parsimonious, in fact, while living in luxury. “Living in luxury,” while also proportional, has far sharper limits of definition… simply because how you live is limited by available technology and the scale from zero to hero may be easily described with an upper limit. Personal wealth has no such clear upper limit.
I think the problem is that in your mind, all these concepts: luxury, wealth, lack of frugality, are all sort of spun together and mean much the same thing. I’m contending that each word has a separate and clear meaning.
Here’s why I don’t buy this: there’s nothing in Bennett’s statement that suggests to me he now believes gambling itself was wrong, or even that his level of gambling was wrong. His statement focuses specifically on the example he sets to others.
As is abundantly clear from other posters in this thread, the man can act without violating any of the prinicples he espoused, and yet still many observers will believe he was flagrantly violating them. The prudent thing to do there is, if his actions are not mandated by ethical concerns, is simply stop.
For example, let’s say that I am elected Governor of Virginia, on a platform of, among other things, integrity in government. I wish to continue my current practice of playing golf with friends of mine. These friends are executives in companies that do business with the state of Virginia. Complying with all ethical rules, I pay my own greens fees every time, and we even institute a rule, strictly followed by all, that we will not discuss business of any kind during these outings.
There is absolutely nothing unethical about those golf outings.
Yet one day, the Washington Post publishes a story about my golf practices, emphasizing the fact that my golf partners are businessmen doing business with the state of Virginia. My political opponents immediately take up a hue and cry, asking how I could od this, especially since I was supposedly elected to bring integrity to government.
The prudent course would be to stop the golf outings, even though there are completely legal, completely ethical, and without reproach - because they set a bad example. Others, not invested with integrity, could use my example to shield their own, not so lily-white conduct.
I believe that’s an analogous example to the one under discussion here. Bennett’s decision to stop reflected an understanding that his gambling was being viewed by others in a detrimental way… NOT an admission that his gambling was, in fact, detrimental.
Er, you’ve just conceded Kinsley’s argument, which notes that Bennett is hypocritical precisely because he considers it an obligation to set a good example.