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\clas{AP Lang}
\name{Holden} \last{Rohrer}
\prof{Jones}
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\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.

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