From 53048ca5dfe9bcd19c43f076340c09e233a052aa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Holden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 21:25:03 -0500
Subject: terribly disorganized commit of things from the past couple months

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+\input mla8.tex
+%\emergencystretch=1in
+%\parskip=4pt plus 2pt minus 2pt
+
+\numberfirstpage
+\clas{AP Lang}
+\name{Holden} \last{Rohrer}
+\prof{Jones}
+\header
+\title{Quick Write 1: Charity as Transaction}
+
+The transaction is the simplest economic unit: some persons want what the other has in exchange for what they currently have, and the exchange occurs.
+In the barest sense, charity is also a transaction.
+One exchanges money or food or clothing for a sense of philanthropy and the knowledge that some good has occurred on one's behalf.
+Economies introduce a flaw into standard transactions which isn't an issue in this sort of transaction, wealth inequality.
+
+In most cases, this flaw is reasonable.
+Someone with more wealth can righteously buy more things than someone with less.
+But in the case of charity, every participant, regardless their wealth, can participate.
+This is because a philanthropic exchange does not require a specific amount of giving or good to be done.
+An ordinary person giving \$100 is far more charitable than Jeff Bezos' million because charity is scalable and personal.
+
+But the instant that a ``real'' incentive is created, like bonus points on a test or a final, it stops being charity in two ways.
+The first is the most direct---charity requires philanthropy, which is contradicted by a transaction.
+Buying, whether with canned goods or US dollars, a grade or a prize which could not be otherwise (fungibly) obtained is ruinous.
+It is, firstly, not scalable (meaning it is not charity) because some metric must be used to measure how much a person ``should'' give, which is easily corrupted by wealth inequality.
+Second, the transaction itself is intrinsically unfair.
+Certain incentives, like tax breaks, provide something fungible like money which merely offsets the cost of charitability (in effect, the donation is ``matched'' by whomever gives the incentive)
+Others, which are not fungible, like grades are necessarily highly transactional and improper incentives.
+
+\bye
-- 
cgit 

