Mr. Scobey,

Thank you for your comment. You provide excellent illustrations regarding what happens when rewards are severed from the effort undertaken to earn them.

Even private donors have to be wary of this tendency and try to only contribute money to those people and organizations who have already shown themselves to have the character necessary to build themselves back up using such contributions.

Conditional charity would be an excellent way of resolving possible problems of private donation. A private donor could approach a person on an individual basis and agree to give him some kind of material support in exchange for specific promises to seek work, develop skills, live in certain responsible ways, etc. All of this could be incorporated into a “charity contract” of sorts.

Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II

Editor-in-Chief, The Rational Argumentator: http://rationalargumentator.com

Writer, Associated Content: http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/46796/g_stolyarov_ii.html

Author, Implied Consent, A Play on the Sanctity of Human Life: http://rationalargumentator.com/impliedconsent.html

Author, A Rational Cosmology: http://rationalargumentator.com/rc.html

Author, The Best Self-Help is Free: http://rationalargumentator.com/selfhelpfree.html                           
Author, The Progress of Liberty Blog: http://progressofliberty.today.com/   

Greetings.

I have now updated my profile with links to many of my newest online endeavors. http://rebirthofreason.com/Users/46.shtml

I thank Mr. Dawe for his post. I, too, am of the opinion that there is nothing wrong in displaying pride in one’s accomplishments.

I do, however, seek to promote my work effectively. So I am going to try a slightly different approach and see what happens.

From now on, I will include one link per signature – but I will put the links in a rotation so that a different link shows up each time. If Mr. Gores’s concern is simply an esthetic one (namely, a perceived clutter of links in my signature), then this should resolve the issue by making each signature fairly concise. Perhaps it will also focus the readers’ attention on the link that happens to be present.

Sincerely,

Gennady Stolyarov II
(No link this time; see profile above. J)