Charity

Voluntary charitable donations of time/goods or money don't make any sense. Our current economic system upholds work for income - for survival, yet people voluntaily give their time/money to those who need it more than they do.

Is there any reason why the money, or preferably the actual resources, should not go direct to those who need it, rather than via a donor, or do we like the feeling of control we get from choosing how much to give, and what causes are deserving?

Sponsored events oddly require someone to endure some ordeal or undertake some in itself pointless venture in order that others may give to charity. Perhaps this is the work ethic intruding again. I will save the life of a straving child in the third world if you wear a plastic red nose for the day.

Those who give to charity realise that the work for income system fails most markedly at the extreme poor end of society, where people have no real possibility of work, but where is the line to be drawn between those who for one reason or another really cannot work, and those who can (though of course the distinction is not so sharp as there are people who do lots of work and people who do little, and every shade between)?

Yet charitable donors are prepared to give something for no direct return, which demonstrates that they are not motivated by money, as our current economic system holds that they should be.

The logic of an RBE seems inevitable. Let everyone have what they need (or a fair share of what's available), and share out the work that needs doing amongst those that can and will do it.