> Most people don't

This is the crux of the issue. If you have $100 million and you can't think of a single worthwhile use for any of it besides making more money, that's either a literally unbelievable lack of imagination, or incredibly cruel. It is so, so easy to do a huge amount of good with that much money. It's not easy to figure out how to do the most amount of good possible, that's probably an unsolvable problem, but it's not necessary.

I understand that investing in the stock market is supporting the economy and increasing liquidity and potentially helping a company and that's all good, but it is laughably easy to think of something better, if you don't need to worry about a financial return.

I'm all for people donating money, but they don't have to. It's theirs and they get to do what they want with it, without the burkamans of the world guilt tripping them. If they want to invest their savings until such a time as they have something better to do with it, more power to them.

After all, you wouldn't want me telling you how to spend your money.

I think a reasonable amount of guilt tripping is healthy for a society. Obviously hoarding money shouldn't be illegal, but it should feel like anti-social behavior that most people disapprove of. It's like signing up to be an organ donor, or getting vaccinated, or being friendly to your neighbors. You shouldn't be forced into anything, but you should be socially pressured to make the choice that benefits your community.

I agree with you, but I don't like the argument.

Something of it smacks of hypocrisy. I think you should be guilted into donating 5% of your wealth by that reasoning. Yeah you don't have 100M, but just like them a 5% donation won't materially affect your quality of life. How do you feel about that? Do you still feel it's anti social behavior not to do that?

Because I call hypocrisy otherwise.

Yes, I'm doing pretty well as an American software engineer, I should be pressured to donate some of my wealth (and I do). It's not a flat rate for everyone though, it's like tax brackets - as your wealth increases, you're expected to contribute a higher percentage back to the community. In a perfect world, taxes would be enough, and charity would be unnecessary because we'd all agree about how to fix all the problems in the world and just set tax rates accordingly. Obviously this is impossible, but in a slightly less perfect but maybe achievable world, we'd use taxes to cover issues with really broad agreement, and more fluid social norms to encourage charitable giving to cover the rest. In my view, there's not much moral difference between technically legal tax avoidance (like offshore accounts or tax inversion) and hoarding excessive wealth while people in your community are dying because of poverty.