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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm always suspicious of people proudly announcing that they're giving something to charity. We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of their money for the public good: taxes. As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good.

Why, then, is it laudable if an org decides to give to charity instead of paying taxes? This takes the decision of how to spend for the public good away from the public and instead the company decides. Is it because in practice we distrust the government and our decision-making procedures too much and we trust private companies more?

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> We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of their money for the public good: taxes.

Yes, but without any personal discretion or choice. For example, I personally think a woman's access to birth control and abortion is an essential right, but because this is by no means a popular viewpoint, I donate directly to charities that support my views.

Taxes aren't a way to support specific, desirable public goals, they only maintain the status quo. If your view had merit, Bill Gates would try to pay taxes to encourage redesign of condoms to improve Third World family planning outcomes (one of Gates' current projects). But Gates knows this won't work -- as far as a vocal minority of American are concerned, family planning is the work of the devil.

> As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good.

You have a distorted idea of democracy. Democracy is not a centralized decision-making process in which various views are amalgamated into a single choice of action for all. Not to oversimplify, but democracy respects the rights of individuals and diverse groups to act in a way that doesn't interfere with any other group's similar rights. On this basis, private charity accurately represents democracy much better than centralized taxation does.

Ironically, it would have been more on the nose for you to briefly empathize with a different position on birth control for the sake of this argument.

There is a very small minority (even among Catholics) that believe that birth control is immoral, let alone that government should impose that moral view. Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select states or counties, for banning birth control.

So what's the issue? One of them is that there are cases before the Supreme Court, including one involving Hobby Lobby, regarding whether private businesses should be forced to pay for birth control (by means of tax penalties) over moral objections. The "vocal minority" in question is struggling to maintain their freedom of personal discretion in this respect.

In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.

> Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select states or counties, for banning birth control.

If you live in the U.S., you're out of touch with popular opinion. The majority are in favor of birth control, but there is certainly popular opposition to birth control.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...

> In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.

That's absurd and a troll. Obviously anyone who speaks in favor of free speech would have to receive the same reply from you, on the ground that free speech is by definition a tolerance for unpopular views.

To be clear, according to Gallup [1], over 85% of American Catholics have no issue with birth control. Not that this is solely a Catholic thing, but it's an illustrative example.

Even in the link you provided, there is nobody protesting legal birth control. They are protesting being forced to pay for other peoples' birth control. If birth control was an out-of-pocket expense, there would be no issue here.

I was simply trying to point out that the government is willing to put people out of business and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate free birth control.

You seem concerned that the government could trample over your conscience as well, and we should all be concerned about that, but it's ironic that you chose this particular issue as an example, considering current events.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/154799/americans-including-cathol...

> Even in the link you provided, there is nobody protesting legal birth control.

Transparently false -- the people in the story are protesting legal birth control.

> They are protesting being forced to pay for other peoples' birth control.

That's this week's explanation. These people are against birth control, and they con't care what form it takes.

> I was simply trying to point out that the government is willing to put people out of business and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate free birth control.

Yes, just the same way the government put people out of business and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate an end to slavery. You very clearly have no idea what you sound like.

> Is it because in practice we distrust the government and our decision-making procedures too much and we trust private companies more?

It's because it's much easier to stop visiting reddit than to move to another country.

Failure to pay taxes is punishable by prison time. Failure to support the local arboretum probably shouldn't be. If you really have a problem with where taxes are going (either moral or practical), you can't opt out unless you move.

With private giving, you can keep your freedom of conscience and have a democratic say (by voting with your feet and dollar) that is more granular. On a ballot you vote for the democrat or the republican. With charitable giving, you can vote for AIDS prevention, AIDS treatment, or research for an AIDS cure. Or all three. Or you can decide heart disease is a bigger problem and put your resources there.

I have a serious problem with this form of philanthropy, and in its mroe extreme form this libertarian desire to replace tax with voluntary donations to 'charity', and it is quite simple.

It basically implements a system of 'one dollar, one vote'. This gives more power to those with money than those without and therefore creates the perfect framework for sort of positive feedback which allows the rich to kep getting richer and the poor poorer.

As long as private profit, or more specifically private ownership of the means of production (that which allows some to get rich from others labour) then I have more faith in the state than private interests to determine the allocation of resources. This doesn't preclude a critique of the form or functioning of democracy within state, which I think is crucial.

> It basically implements a system of 'one dollar, one vote'.

...except for the fact that many organizations need labor donations more than they need monetary ones.

And if donating to an organization literally makes the doner wealthier, it's not really a charity, no matter what its tax-exempt status is.

And besides, it's been getting much worse for the poor recently despite ever-growing government expenditures in social welfare programs, especially if you factor in well-meaning market distortions like the nationalization of the student loan industry.

Taxes mostly go towards the welfare state. This is only an effective use of your money if you believe imaginary lines on a map make some people's quality of life more important than others.

This is easily disprovable, via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg...

"Disprovable" in the sense that's how it looks on paper, but like you may know the USA "Department of Health and Human Services" is extremely corrupted and most of it is wasted thanks to an overpriced health system. Many European countries suffer as well from corruption in this area but USA levels of corruption are still unmatched (http://epianalysis.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/usversuseurope/)

> supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good

Even if they were working (which they're clearly not), just because 51% of people want to fund wars for egotainment, the kiddie-porn collecting NSA, and the rest of the American Empire outreach program does not mean that it is just to require everyone do so.

(also: alright Reddit Incorporated, put your money where your mouth is and let Wikileaks be an option to vote for)

Philosophically, I disagree: taxes are for the public necessity, not the public good. Roadways, fire/police, civil governance = necessity.

Granted, there is a lot of grey area. But the phrase "public good" means different things to different people. For those grey areas, private donations have been important. (see Planned Parenthood, the NRA, etc.)

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