“That said, it's one thing to bristle at big-bucks art auctions and another altogether to go along with Bill Gates, who said in a recent interview with the Financial Times that … well, I'll cite the story verbatim, since his remarks won't win any prizes for clarity: "Quoting from an argument advanced by moral philosopher Peter Singer, for instance, [Gates] questions why anyone would donate money to build a new wing for a museum rather than spend it on preventing illnesses that can lead to blindness. 'The moral equivalent is, we're going to take 1 per cent of the people who visit this [museum] and blind them,' he says. 'Are they willing, because it has the new wing, to take that risk? Hmm, maybe this blinding thing is slightly barbaric.'" Enlarge Image cat Francis Bacon's 'Three Studies of Lucian Freud,' sold for a record $142.4 million at a Christie's auction. Associated Press Where to start sifting through the nonsense? For openers, Mr. Gates would do well to find a better guru than Mr. Singer, whose greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number approach to moral philosophy (if you want to call it that) has led him to advocate, among other horrific things, what he politely calls "permissible infanticide." It strikes me that Mr. Gates might possibly want to be a bit more careful about the intellectual company that he keeps. More to the point, though, it seems clear to me that Mr. Gates thinks it immoral for rich people to give money to museums instead of medical projects, presumably those that have received the official Bill Gates Seal of Moral Approval. ”
