> 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.
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.