For the nobles the ratio is only 1000 (= the total number of nobles). In e.g. the modern US the multiples are much higher since the tax base is much larger. That is, there is a gap of > a million between the levels of altruism at which you would prefer higher taxes vs. actually give away some money.
only 1000 (= the total number of nobles). In e.g. the modern US the multiples are much higher since the tax base is much larger.
Oh, I see; in situations where your altruism is scope-invariant (i.e. you care half about yourself and half about others, regardless of the size of the others), then as you vary the population size centralized coercive redistribution remains basically equally desirable (since it’s just a question of wealth gaps and percents) whereas diffusion of responsibility eats consequentialist private charity (since there’s nothing singling out the people you decide to help).
There’s still some ways to voluntarily maintain concentration, like picking increasingly narrow public goods to wholly own. (Carnegie’s “I funded public libraries across America” compared to something like “I funded open access to transcribed ship logs of ocean weather measurements from 1500 to 1800.”) But this is a prestige market instead of an effectiveness market (“I funded a bunch of toilets”), and the more public goods look like wealth redistribution instead of entrepreneurship / project completion the less attractive this variant becomes. [And even in worlds where it looks more like entrepreneurship / project completion, decentralized funding causes unilateralist / vetting problems.]
For the nobles the ratio is only 1000 (= the total number of nobles). In e.g. the modern US the multiples are much higher since the tax base is much larger. That is, there is a gap of > a million between the levels of altruism at which you would prefer higher taxes vs. actually give away some money.
Oh, I see; in situations where your altruism is scope-invariant (i.e. you care half about yourself and half about others, regardless of the size of the others), then as you vary the population size centralized coercive redistribution remains basically equally desirable (since it’s just a question of wealth gaps and percents) whereas diffusion of responsibility eats consequentialist private charity (since there’s nothing singling out the people you decide to help).
There’s still some ways to voluntarily maintain concentration, like picking increasingly narrow public goods to wholly own. (Carnegie’s “I funded public libraries across America” compared to something like “I funded open access to transcribed ship logs of ocean weather measurements from 1500 to 1800.”) But this is a prestige market instead of an effectiveness market (“I funded a bunch of toilets”), and the more public goods look like wealth redistribution instead of entrepreneurship / project completion the less attractive this variant becomes. [And even in worlds where it looks more like entrepreneurship / project completion, decentralized funding causes unilateralist / vetting problems.]