[I]n April 2010, Romney gave a speech at Claremont McKenna College, one of America’s great undergraduate institutions. [The speech was titled No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.] The only item of interest is that Romney accepted payment from them: an $11,475 honorarium. There’s nothing wrong with Romney accepting such payment from a non-profit institution, and it was clearly a bargain rate when compared with some of his other gigs. But it makes you wonder why he didn’t do it for free. He also accepted payment from the non-profit Quest Educational Foundation. Quest provides tutoring and mentoring to high-school students in Florida and Romney spoke at their annual fundraiser (Gingrich was a speaker at the 1999 event) for a $35,771 fee.
Romney, this Weekly Standard writer points out, is worth $250 million. The writer clearly has in mind the suggestion that extremely rich people might want to support worthy non-profit causes rather than drain them of scarce funds – might want to support them not merely by accepting invitations to give speeches, and by bringing star power to their fund raising events, but by waiving any fee.
Can we make the case for accepting a fee under these circumstances?
Well, plenty of people will make the none of your effing business argument. It’s a private transaction, our economic system is called capitalism, the guy’s free to accumulate capital. Blow it out your ass.
There’s also the nothing is valued unless it costs something argument. Placebos cost almost nothing to make and for millions of people probably relieve their depression as effectively as expensive anti-depressant pills. But if you knew you were taking a free pill for your depression, that would depress you more! Free means worthless! Or it means you’re not really clinically depressed, which is also depressing.
For many commodities, the magic seems to reside in their price.
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Or, you know, in their pain. Why would you want to join a university marching band if you weren’t first beaten almost to death before you were allowed to join? The pain of hazing confers value on the group. In a similar way, the problem with placebos is that they have no side effects. If weird unpleasant shit isn’t happening to you, you can’t be treating your depression.
January 24th, 2012 at 4:05PM
“For many commodities, the magic seems to reside in their price.”
Some might argue that example A for that statement is college tuition.