> blaming Slack and co. is silly. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be: you don’t want the institutions with profit motive to be the ones handling charitable works.
I’d agree with what you said because the reason you gave seems strong & compelling to me; the idea that profit motive might corrupt charity if in charge.
On the other hand, I dislike the idea that only government should “handle” social responsibility. (I think what we’re talking about is responsibility, not charity.) And in fact, today there are laws requiring social responsibility of the private sector, so in a very real sense it actually is their job.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibil...
The kind of thinking that separates the people & companies making money from helping our social outcasts, or just giving back to society in general, is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to having more social outcasts and growing income inequality. When rich people argue they should have no responsibility to pay taxes into social programs, what we end up with is more people who need social programs. Why shouldn’t it be everyone’s job to handle social improvement, including all the companies profiting from the environment that makes their profits possible?
> it’s the government that sets the tax rate and decides where revenue goes, not the private sector.
While that might be technically accurate, it seems misleading to frame it this way. The private sector has such massive influence on tax policy, it doesn’t even make sense to suggest the government does it and the private sector doesn’t. Lots of laws are effectively written by and for private companies, enough so that we have a serious problem with it and a name for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture