The Necessity for Information Asymmetries in Charitable Giving

In economics, information asymmetries are a type of market distortion where the buyer or the seller has more information about a product than the other. This leads to transactions that are not adequately priced. In some cases where this information asymmetry actually is or is perceived to be too strong, say for example in a shady used car business, it can destroy the market - goods with real value can't be sold at the appropriate price because of the fear of getting a lemon and goods with no value are sold for more than they are worth. Because of this economists have been trying to breakdown information asymmetries to restore value in certain markets.

As I was thinking of charitable giving I thought of Christ's words, "Go and tell no man." I used to think that these were simple words of humility. As I thought about it today however, I realized there is a real value to Christ's command to tell no man.

Today I made food to give away to homeless people in the neighborhood. I was reluctant to give the food away for fear that someone might take advantage of me. I believe people would give more - especially spontaneously - if they could be assured that they would not be pressured into giving even more.

No single act of charity is big enough to satisfy the worlds needs. At the root of charitable giving is an individuals personal decision to give some resource to another who does not have the ability to get it himself. This presents a dilemma to the charitable giver, who of all those in need, should receive help? One approach would be to develop a grand calculation that assesses all possible human needs. A charity calculation that spits out a ticket with person, cause and amount for anyone who has a desire to give. However, besides the impossibility of such a calculation - it just might show human needs exceed means. This is another deterrent to charitable giving, why give if you can't satisfy all needs - people will suffer regardless of your contribution. Even beyond this there is something anti-charitable about identifying the greatest need and requiring that need to be satisfied before all others. I believe charity is a willful decision between two bodies, not to be ruled by laws of supply and demand - it is akin to grace. It is charity when the recipient has no claim upon the gift bestowed. When it is publicized that gifts are given however, crowds soon form and because charity is given to those with no claim on the gift, all those who did not receive the gift cry foul and challenge the decision of the giver. I believe charitable giving requires the givers decisions to be autonomous. The two moral dilemma's that result from this - the giver realizing the arbitrary nature of his gift and the recipient recognizing his lack of merit, creates fertile ground for the expansion of charitable giving.

If crowds form however, and beg, or even demand help, charity can retract. Need can overwhelm the supply and those that give can feel embattled, creating fertile ground for class schisms and conflict. Go and tell no man that charity may abound and the giver will be encouraged to give evermore and the recipients will learn to give as they receive.

Poems from the Past

I want to post a couple of poems that I had written shortly after I had begun serving as an LDS missionary. They still resonate with me so I thought I would share them here.

"Untitled"
To choose to serve my Father above
To find the man I want to be
A man who needs only God
A man who loves only truth
Who thinks not of the power of others
But only fears the power of God
A man who flies true to his promise
No deflected by selfish thoughts
To strengthen myself in the love of my Father
To think as He would have my think
And be as He would have be be
Because I am weak I lean not to myself
Because I long for a comforting hand
I do not look unto my own
Because within I'm incomplete
I look beyond
Find faith in God
I get strength from giving
Comfort from prayer
And love from living
My foundation must be within
And then not hide
But grow from standing
With a face to the future
Eyes to my God
Bound in love
In the hand of my faith
I am yet a child
Wanting to be a man

"Why I Think"
I think in pictures in my mind
I think to be where I am not
I think to better where I am
And see myself as I was
I see my friends as they used to be
I see their faces in my mind
I see their eyes look into mine
And hear their voices when I'm alone
I hear the friends that I once knew
I hear those people I long to see
I hear the songs that make me feel
Of love for times gone by
I feel the friendships carrying on
I feel my aching deep inside
I feel peace when I close my eyes
I think, I see, I hear, I feel
All to know better who am I
My life is like a clouded marble
I look in from different sides
To try and find where my center lies

Communion in Christ

The solidarity and communion in Christ is his suffering for all people, all sins. There is no loneliness, heartache, failure, anger or temptation that he does not know. It is the acknowledgment of the suffering shared in Christ that binds sinners to Christ. It is easy for sinners of a similar type to come together under Christ but it becomes difficult for people who struggle with sins foreign and disgusting to another, who never the less, find relief in Christ Jesus, to share communion under a single savior. The most glorious principle of the atonement of Christ is it's breadth, saving all who will. And yet, the universal nature of the atonement, is precisely what serves to divide the saved. Possibly, it is the hardest tenet of the gospel to actually believe that God loves all sinners. We insist that there is a gradation of sin. That sinners who don't sin as badly are better than those who sin more. However, in this insistence we only highlight our misunderstanding of the atonement, and quite likely, make the atonement ineffectual in our own lives.
The one person who actually could separate himself from the rest of mankind by virtue of his righteousness, chose to throw himself into the center of humanity by suffering for all sin.

The Wisdom of the Absurd

I would argue for a way to vaunt my own weakness
I can no longer decide what should be done
The pursuit of knowledge has left me rudderless
The more I know the less I can say
I call it honesty.
Trapped by my puritanical need for universal application
The need to be understood and not mistook
Leaves me speechless at the edge of decision
Unable to filter the wheat from the chaff
wanting all to see my perspective
my invitations go unwanted
The rocks are now my examples
Sharing the only truth they know how
And in the end, aren't they the better for it?

Overcoming Racism Through Conflict

I will begin my thoughts focusing on what I might call classical United States racism, or the tension between blacks and whites. My thoughts and studies on the problem of race have led me to believe that simply having good feelings toward someone of another race or even having an appreciation of another race is not the same thing as not being racist. The best way to describe my old views of racism is to say that I used to think of racist as a verb and non-racist as a noun. In other words, I always associated racists with acts of violence or hatred and non-racist by their lack of violent or hateful acts. This definition leads people to believe that so long as they don't lynch, burn crosses in people's yards, use the "N" or talk disparagingly of another race, they are not racist. The other implication of this line of thinking is that racism is the perversion or deviation from the natural state of equality. That is to say, we are naturally born non-racist and become racist only through learned behavior.

While the absence of violent and hateful acts is certainly preferable to their presence, their absence does not ensure the absence of racism. In today's racism, if it ever was any different, non-racism should be the verb as it is the "active" state and racism the default. This is because racism is not really about color - which can be overlooked - it really is about dealing with those who are different.

Those people who claim not to be racist because they love everything about another culture know very little about racism. It is not how you react to those you admire who are different than you but rather about how you react to those whose differences challenge you; your self image, your sense of order, justice or decency. Those who have learned how to live alongside people who are different, and different in challenging ways, while retaining their own cultures, have something to teach us about racism.

It is for this reason that I value the moments when we realize the differences that separate us. These moments of conflict create the opportunities necessary to overcome racism. Efforts to overcome racism should not seek to gloss over or eliminate these moments of conflict. If these moments cease to exist it means either we have become homogeneous or rudderless, without culture or norms. Neither of these results would be desirable, the first, possibly more dangerous than the second, results in a society devoid of variety and no closer to tolerance than when it began. The second state would be one that lacked any conviction or community.

Overcoming racism means looking squarely at the differences that challenge you, make you uncomfortable, offend your sense of justice, order or decency and learning to respect one another all the same.

Cumulative Decisions and the Problem of Agency

We often say that free agency is the freedom to make choices but not to choose the consequences of those choices. The problem with this concept of free agency is that there are really very few unique decisions. That is, there are few decisions that we make that are not, to a large extent, determined by previous decisions.

Life is a series of choices and our choice to follow after righteousness is a cumulative one. Consider the following, if sin does indeed make us dead to righteousness, or rather, if the consequences of one decision alters your nature such that all subsequent decisions are tainted by that experience (think of chemical dependence or decisions that jade or disillusion someone) then are we totally free only for as long as don't make any decisions? If free agency is only the ability to choose, but provides no protection from consequences then I would argue we are only really free once, on our first choice. Every choice thereafter is colored by the choices we made before so it would seem that the older we get, the more choices we make, the less freedom we actually have to choose.

Wordsworth wrote of this phenomenon when he wrote Ode to Intimations of Immortality, "There was a time...when every common sight to me did seem appareled in celestial light...It is not now as it has been of yore;...the things I which I have seen I now can see no more."

In religion we talk about it as the consequences of sin. Our sins make us dead to righteousness.

In every day talk, we call it jaded, cynical, discouragement, untrusting, a grudge, revenge, hate, misery, and the desire that all become as miserable as the you. All those feelings that separate you from feeling close to the divine.

It appears to me, the real gift of agency, comes not as a single premortal endowment or inherent gift to the individual but rather in its application to the day to day disillusionment that would otherwise sweep away any ability for us to choose righteousness.

In the secular world, I believe this is what is meant by living in the moment. The ability to act without the weight of past decisions depressing our spirits or clouding our future.

In the religious world we call this repentance and it is the great news of the gospel. We do not have to be captive to our past decisions. We can live above the reality we experience. And that truly is a gift.

Origami and Origins

Thoughts to revisit later;
Origami as a transformative art is a better model for understanding life and ecology. Origami destroys nothing, adds nothing but changes everything, even changes dimensions traveling between two dimensions and three. Is it silly to imagine the folding of carbon as the portal between the inanimate and dimension of life?

Urban issues are like traffic, the more you concentrate them the more elaborate and expensive the solutions are. New urbanism's fixation on density is ironically similar to highway engineers fixation on capacity. In both cases the most sensible solutions likely start a long way away from capacity or density. Urban problems would be well served by rural solutions. Observe China.

Research of the minds of adolescents suggest there is an actual physiological change that occurs as the mind ages and teenagers develop more complete reasoning capabilities. The fruit of the forbidden tree in the garden of Eden must have been full of this chemical. There is no sin that separates us from God, only the conscious decision to leave Him for another way.