http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1621845

rudiger · on June 4, 2012

Some businessmen feel obligated to "give back." Who says they've taken anything?

Paul Graham responds, "They've taken something from chance."

zobzu · on June 5, 2012

It should be obvious to anyone, that when you have more wealth than 99.5% of the world, you owe the rest of the world.

But not so many understand or realize that.

Next time, they shall be born alone, let's see how many hours they survive.

People feed you. Build stuff for you. Make your life better. And most of them, don't gain much from it. Usually, they just die younger.

kamaal · on June 5, 2012

>>It should be obvious to anyone, that when you have more wealth than 99.5% of the world, you owe the rest of the world.

Unless you are a king, dictator or some force of evil. Building 99.5% of the wealth in the world will mandate you to build empires of business, solve problems, provide employment to millions of people around the globe.

That much doesn't happen merely by chance.

egonschiele · on June 6, 2012

Agreed. But it doesn't happen merely by hard work either. If it did, my dad would be richer than Paris Hilton.

smsm42 · on June 5, 2012

So they should give back to chance? How does one do that? It may be a nice turn of phrase, but sound like completely meaningless if one takes a minute to think about it.

One should be charitable because it's human to be compassionate to your fellow human being, not because being successful automatically puts you in debt to the God of Chance, which debt should be repaid or else. And not because by being successful you stole your success from somebody else.