The problem is the definition of "first," and keeping it from becoming "only." Phrasing it at an either/or (as often happens even inadvertently) is the problem.
You need to achieve a certain level of self-stability/health before you're even useful to others, and before doing for others wouldn't end up causing harm to you. That's a "first."
Once you pass that threshold, it becomes a yes-and. You have enough time/money/resources/whatever to further invest in yourself, and invest in someone else. Yes, that means you're investing less in yourself by doing so, but you're still investing "enough" in yourself that you can spare the resources to help someone else out.
The tricky part is the definition of "enough" and where that threshold is, and what a "good" dividing line between self-investment and community-investment is.
The extremes are obvious and easy to answer. The inflection point is really hard and subjective. But people use the difficulty of the inflection point to avoid dealing with anything but the extremes, or else to argue that even at the extremes it's too hard.
Extremes: Below $10,000 a year income, you really, really should not be donating to charity. You should be on the receiving end. Asking those people to pay higher taxes is ridiculous. Above $10,000,000 a year income, if you're not giving a substantial chunk of money back to your society you're a selfish asswipe. (Whether that's ad hoc charity or properly managed taxes is irrelevant for the moment, and Luke don't you dare get side tracked by "taxation is theft" and that nonsense, that's off topic. :-P )
So, where between $10k and $10 million is the inflection point where you should start paying taxes/giving to charity/helping others? What qualifies as "substantial?" Those are the tricky questions, but the existence of those tricky questions makes it really easy for people to either avoid, or abuse, the extremes.
If you don't like that it's monetary, swap in any other less quantifiable metric and the same basic problem exists. Eg, time helping yourself and your mental health vs spending time helping a neighbor. The same rough outline of the problem exists, and the heuristics are no easier.
Theft is always on topic when discussing morality. :)
Ayn Rand had some ideas you'd probably hate which essentially (from a certain perspective) argued that charity is always harmful in the long run and the virtue objectivism strives for takes a different approach of becoming the best version of yourself which means you'll be able to create so much more value for everyone around you (even if through market-driven means).
As someone who has both received and given, I think they are both needed, but I understand how staying in the receiving side isn't long-term beneficial. Someone making only $10k is not only poor, but most likely their sense of purpose, meaning, healthy pride, belonging, and usefulness to society has diminished and would be in a better place if they added more value that others wanted to pay for with "certificates of appreciation" as Rabbi Lapin calls a dollar bill.
I don't fault anyone for being poor! But I think it's pretty simple to say that's not an ideal state to be in and, if possible, it would be better to be in a different state. The only path I see to getting there involves tending to yourself.
I'm not sure I share your perspective that if a person makes $1 selling something valuable to 1 person, they are moral but if they make $1 selling to 10m people they are now immoral unless they give that money to someone else without an exchange of value (charity). Doesn't make sense to me. Do rich people have a greater responsibility to fund things to improve the world? Why or why not? I think the answer relates more to our feelings and sense of "fairness" and less so with just math. At some, as you said, it becomes subjectively uncomfortable for a small number of people to control a large amount of wealth.
Good, because that's not what I said at all. :-) I was using the example of someone at one extreme who has no bandwidth for "helping others" (financially or otherwise), and someone at the other extreme who has a huge amount of bandwidth for "helping others." That "helping others" isn't "by selling them stuff." Point being, both extremes do exist, but the inflection point in the middle is fuzzy and squishy and hard to pin down even if you are being genuine about it.
Yes.
Be careful there; you're drifting into an extremely Amero-centric "Protestant Work Ethic" territory there, which is both myopic and harmful. :-)
If you work 60 hours a week to make ends meet, you get the "pride of doing work" but... have no capacity left for "tending to yourself." If someone in that situation isn't tending to themselves, it's frequently because they can't, because of systemic blockers in place that don't allow them that opportunity. For those who do have sufficient capacity to help others, addressing those systemic blockers so that others have the opportunity to do whatever self-work you're talking about is highly valuable. Not in a point-counting capitalist understanding of "value" but in a social-emotional sense of creating net-positive goodwill in the world. Which may indirectly have a 2nd or 3rd order effect of more capitalist-value down the line, but that is not the point or goal of it.
To turn to someone spending 60 hours a week barely making ends meet and say "you need to tend to yourself" is straight up victim blaming.
Also, Ayn Rand can bite me. :-P
But that's how the argument you're making can be interpreted. One activity done at scale changes the responsibilities to society by the nature of the scale? I'm not convinced. If a service is valuable and people wish to pay for it, why does it matter if they pay 1 time, 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times, etc...?
I'll flip this on its head and say to not help and encourage that person to obtain new skills (focus on themselves) so they can eventually work fewer hours and add more value to their community (i.e. get paid more) is worse. I think they would stay perpetually in a state of victimhood if they don't recognize the value of improving themselves and investing in themselves first instead of working like crazy for everyone else.
You can call that victim blaming if you want, but that mindset is what has broken every first generation rich person out of a state of having nothing to having much.