> Your highest obligations of charity are to yourself, your spouse, and your children.
That’s not charity. That’s self interest, specially if I can save on taxes while I increase the value of my property.
> It's observably true that poor school quality in the USA isn't due to a lack of funding. California's school system is proof.
There’s a multitude of reasons for school failure that are unrelated to funding - violence, poverty, discrimination, etc. Supporting those in need is always more important than supporting those who don’t need support.
> Equality of opportunity is impossible because in large part one's opportunities are the result of the decisions one's parents made,
And we should work towards not allowing that to reduce the opportunities for those who lack that privilege.
> beginning with choosing to procreate together.
I don’t see how genetics are involved here. It’s been proven many times it has little relation with academic success. Growing up in a favourable environment to learning is a much more powerful predictor.
> As for a society being more or less democratic, that's a grave oversimplification.
When you have people who can fund successful electoral campaigns you get people who effectively can vote multiple times, by convincing more people to vote for their candidates. You also get people who can influence the elected officials because they know that, if they don’t favour the people who got them elected, they’ll make someone else be elected.
One important role of public universal schooling is to form an informed electorate that can operate a democracy. If the last few years didn’t teach us we have been failing at that, I can’t imagine what will.
> Second, the extent to which democratic decision making is beneficial is very much a consequence of scale and locality.
I’m not sure why you brought this up. There are local authorities at various levels, but that has no impact on the argument I was making. All levels can be influenced with the right amount of money.