“I was in pain to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my alms, giving him some relief, doth also ease me also” - Thomas Hobbes
IIt's Christmas, which means you can hardly leave your house without a smiling chugger shoving a collection box in your face; but the decision of whether to give and to whom has become a fraught one in the last couple of years. The combination of elite overproduction, the collapse of traditional religious institutions and the outsourcing of social and cultural policy-making to activists means that Charities have become partisan political actors in a way they weren’t in the past. If charity was ever as simple as giving money to an unfortunate person to make their lot better, it isn’t anymore. By popping a coin in the slot am I funding an organisation whose ultimate goal is to act against my political interests?
