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Entropy comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong
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Charity is the process of taking purchasing power away from functional, creative individuals and communities, and giving it to dysfunctional, destructive individuals and communities.
Charity doesn't change the nature of the dysfunctional and destructive. It only restructures the reward system so that the dysfunctional and the destructive is rewarded, and the functional and constructive is penalized.
A person who does this willingly is, I am sad to say, stupid. You are only supposed to do this if people force you at gunpoint (taxes), and even then it's more patriotic to flee.
You should reward people for doing the right thing - providing a quality product or service - not for when they fail miserably.
If I derive joy from helping people in need then you could view that process as part of a very specialised industry. In this view I am not really paying to alleviate suffering, I am paying to make myself feel better but may in fact help others as a by-product. This suggests that a large proportion of efforts devoted to charity would be fairly inefficient as "makes me feel better" doesn't necessarily equate with "helps people", nevertheless it is still "productive" as it is producing a sense of well being among the givers.
Yes, but charity is not without external consequence.
The continuous rewarding of the dysfunctional does have long term effects, which I believe are negative on balance.
The reason we evolved empathy is for cohesion with our immediate social group, where our empathy is balanced with everyone keeping track of everyone else, and an effective sense of group fairness.
But this only works within our immediate social group. Charity towards complete strangers is harmful because it is not balanced with fairness.
To balance our economic interactions outside the immediate social group that we can monitor, we already have a functioning system that's fair and encourages constructive behavior.
That system is money. Use it for what it's for.