Please respond based on the article below or the book

Reich, Rob. (2018).

Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How it Can Do Better?

Princeton University Press: Princeton, Chapter 2

THE QUESTION IS

What norms should inform the institutional design of the laws and policies that shape philanthropy? Discuss the justification for your response.

It is true that I shifted my view, but I did not diminish my attachment to or understanding of equality. I changed my mind about where an egalitarian norm should have force. I changed my mind, that is, about how the norm should inform the institutional design of philanthropy and philanthropic policy.

When I first met Stan, I saw equality as most important when applied to the space ofdistributive justice. Valuing equality would imply that charity should result in assistance to the poor, alleviation of suffering, the lessening of disadvantage. A defense of equality would lead us to be concerned chiefly with thedistributionof charitable dollars.

Maribel Morey's review also discusses my analysis of the relationship between philanthropy and equality. When I demonstrate how infrequently American philanthropy is directed toward poverty alleviation, and how the policy mechanism of the tax deduction amplifies the voices of the wealthy, I conclude that equality has at best an uneasy relationship to philanthropy. With this in mind, Morey writes, "Reich abandons the equality rationale for philanthropy... "

But this is wrong. I did not reject equality; I came to understand its significance for institutional design in a different way. There are multiple dimensions in which to see the egalitarian norm at work. It can apply to the voice or input end of philanthropy rather than to the distributive or output end. I now understand equality to condemn the plutocratic biases that are baked into the current policy mechanisms, such as the charitable contributions deduction, that structure U.S. philanthropy. To support the equal voice of each citizen in contributing to a diverse and pluralistic civil society, I argue that the deduction should be replaced with a capped tax credit and that a democratic society might also support a civil society stakeholding grant for each citizen. From the standpoint of equality, the chief public policy mechanism in the United States to stimulate charitable giving - the tax deduction - is indefensible.

Katz goes on to explain that his disagreement with me about democracy and equality is much broader, in part because "equality is not a formal value in the constitutional structure of the United States." But as a philosopher, I am not trying to give the best interpretation of the U.S Constitution. I am concerned to give the best interpretation of equality and its relationship to philanthropy; this is the subject of the entire second chapter. The book aims for relevance far beyond the United States, after all. It is a book about philanthropy's role in democratic societies, not just in American democracy.

Katz notices, of course, that I aim to analyze the more general relationship between philanthropy and democracy. But he puzzlingly glosses my argument as merely empirical."In the end Rob thinks that philanthropy can serve the purposes of democracy. It does so, he argues, when it serves the goals of pluralism, innovation, the limitation of orthodoxy and the production of public goods. But these are largely empirical benefits, and it is hard to see that philanthropy is the best state mechanism for securing them in a democratic society."

I don't see these as "empirical benefits," and I'm not sure what Katz has in mind here in identifying "pluralism, innovation, the limitation of orthodoxy, and the production of public goods" as empirical. These are part of a more general argument about how to understand what the relationship between philanthropy and democracy should be.

The case is built not on an examination of the historical practice of philanthropy in the United States or elsewhere. It's a case built upon a particular understanding of democratic theory that has two components. The first component is familiar and, I hope, unobjectionable: the idea that a core ideal of democracy ispolitical equality, that all citizens have an equal opportunity to wield political influence, whether that happens at the ballot box (and where one person, one vote is a deeply seated norm) or in the informal public sphere of civil society. The second component is the idea that what recommends democracy over rival forms of political organization is democracy's capacity to confront and respond to social problems as they arise. In the book I call this "democratic experimentalism," drawing upon Deweyan pragmatism as the underlying framework for understanding how best to design democratic institutions. The combined features here yield an understanding of democracy that is not meant to be rooted in any particular democratic society, and certainly not a theory that is specific to the United States. And it is an understanding of democracy that delivers my conclusion, for example, that philanthropy can be a salutary extra-governmental mechanism of social innovation and problem-solving.

It's a failing of the book if, as Katz complains, the core of my critique is "opaque." If philosophers are to be counted on for anything, it is clarity even if they can't persuade. What, Katz asks, do I mean when I say that philanthropy is an artifact and not an invention of the state? I mean that though the philanthropic impulse to give is universal and time immemorial - hence not an invention - the form that philanthropy assumes in any given society depends on the social norms and policies that give shape and structure to the philanthropic impulse. Soskis understands me clearly when he writes that my brief historical overviews of the liturgical system in ancient Greece, thewaqfin Muslim societies, and the arguments of Turgot and Mill against perpetual foundations are meant to "denaturalize" philanthropy. They reveal the historical contingency of philanthropy and show, I agree, how historical analysis and abstract political philosophy can serve as allies.