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Charity is, of course, one of the greatest evils in the world today---Oh I don't really mean the sort of generous impulse ("Here let me help you push your car to the side of the road and look under the hood for you." or "No! No! Let me get you all a round of drinks!"), freeform, spontaneous, from-the-heart sort of charity. No, I mean the organized, collection-plate sort, the sort exemplified by the United Way, that Mafia of the giving industry, or even by the Red Cross, its Swiss Army Knife!
Actually, on second thoughts, maybe it turns out that, after all, I'm not really particularly happy with the moral underpinnings of any sort of charity because ...because it seems so bad that, in essence, all charity is random. You know the sort of thing, someone gets their problem on the evening news, and promptly gets inundated with donations to the point of embarrassment whereas all those who manage to avoid getting their problem on the evening news don't get a penny.
Worse still, I suspect that charity is surreptitiously dedicated to that principal that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights reserved only to certain white men (with, of course, a certain level of income and education) and they suppose, reluctantly they'll admit, to certain other folk too, but only if those other folk really hammer at it for a few generations, and then only if they shape up and apply themselves and act like certain rich white men, and then, then they (noble creatures that they are) will give but (and I'm not really certain about this) then only to the deserving poor or more probably the even more deserving arts organizations.
Worst even stiller, the giver is, if not actually being selfish in the act of giving, certainly being self-centered. One only has to look at what happened to whatshername ...you know that Dr. Bernadine Healy, the Red Cross president and CEO, who was abruptly, and of course one must assume voluntarily, resigned when it was noticed for the first time that her organization had what seems to me a quite necessary and level-headed habit of using the excess from those appeals that were popular to subsidize the ones that people could (and did) care less about. Now in a way I can understand this attitude of "It's my money I'll do what I like with it and if that doesn't suit you: then tough", but don't you see how downright wicked it is to put the mere likes of the donor over the needs of the potential recipient?
Anyway and when you finally come down to it it, perhaps, on third and subsequent thoughts, it's not charity quae caritas that I object to, so much as the need for there to be charity at all. Its need implies our need for the needy. And that implies vile and untoward inequalities in our society and if this seems to be getting rather close to Marxism, it is (I suspect) getting just as close to many other of the more popular religions too. And basically it all boils down to the fact that it is time for you all to finally grow up and get over that damn Revolution thingy and start paying a decent level of taxes like civilized people, preferably asymptotic taxes1 at that: and forget about charity and donations and even about things like health insurance (which of course over here has to have its charitable bits). And for goodness sake let's make bloody Bill Gates pay his fair share!
To finish let's take a non-controversial though real-world example of how it could be:
Look at Public Radio over here and compare it with the Beeb in the UK:
over here you rely on the charity of strangers (I mean members), and you must demean yourselves at frequent intervals with beg-a-thons and the like, and... and many's the time I've seen an NPR station manager sitting bedraggled and beragged and beweeping by the side of the road with his little cup and his sign "Will broadcast for food", but over there the Lordly BBC get theirs as a form of taxation (a licence fee) which everyone (with a few mere-hearted concessions) has to pay, and while it is a bit steep---Bloody whatsit! I just checked on line and it's about 208 bucks a year---but it does, however, provide them with four major channels of telly and at least seven national radio channels, and that's not to even mention all the local ones and the weird ones for kids, and the ones that do it in Welsh and Irish and God-knows-what-ish and the World Service and you get what you pay for.
Of course, over here about ten buck a year for a licence fee should do nicely.
Cheerio for now
from Richard Howland-Bolton.
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Notes:
1 Asymptotic
"... preferably asymptotic taxes" Real progressive taxes: taxes that stop those bastards at the top getting to have that third yacht while there are people around having to get that third minimum wage job.
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