The idea of giving of oneself, charity, is a powerful thing. We know it can be valuable. Like anything known to be of value, it is something susceptible to appropriation and control. It is no accident that government centralization tends to involve the replacement of the traditional roles of private charities, attempting to achieve a monopoly on charity. In Maoist China, the official communist rhetoric went so far as to say that private charity was a trick used to justify class inequality. It is often said that the other side of a free economy besides profit (given that the common understanding of a free economy is not free at all) is a need to balance fluctuations and 'fix' inherent problems with voluntary trade and employment, using governmental charity. (Never mind that these problems, instability, lack of prosperity, etc., are caused and perpetuated by the inefficiency of centralized interference in the first place.) We are constantly told that it is for the sake of people on hard times that power must be yielded to the government, so that they can be helped. But is that necessary?

It is true that bankruptcy and the failure of business enterprises is perfectly normal in any market, just as anything which is tried can fail. Also, in transition to free markets, it is inevitable for some people to be out of work temporarily as a readjustment. Where people have been employed by the government, and where the government has interfered through redistribution to support some businesses over others, such a change requires transitions to other work as government agencies are dismantled or replaced, and inefficient businesses are reorganized or dissolved. The end of an enterprise or agency, however, does not mean the end for its workers, as long as we remember that individual people, and not imagined units of people, matter. In the greater prosperity of a free market, there are more jobs and more opportunities available than if prosperity is restricted, as is the case in markets which are not free.

Even in the free market of Promethean capitalism, however, there will always be some hard times for some people. These are likely to be temporary rather than chronic, since almost everyone is quite capable of earning their own living and more, when left alone. But natural disasters alone can cause substantial economic problems in the short term, even without the inevitable mistakes and accidents which cause enterprises to fail, and jobs to be lost. And there are always a few people who are not physically or mentally capable of supporting themselves.

It is often suggested that private and personal self-interests are incompatible with generosity and giving. It is said that our interests must be subordinated to those of others in order to be generous, that only through owing something to others will we as human beings ever show enough concern for one another. Thus, a free market of individual people pursuing their own advantages would produce cruel and uncaring people, myopically and selfishly focused on themselves. Nothing could be further from the case.

That is only one understanding of charity, the kind that uses feelings of guilt and obligation, and asks us to sacrifice rather than profit — altruism as morality. Within the structure of the state, this kind of charity finds its worst expression as unwilling charity, which takes a step beyond guilt, to compulsion. Under the implicit assumption that help for the unfortunate could never be organized any other way, it is rounded up from taxation and compulsive community service.

There is another kind of charity that can profit both the giver and the receiver. It asks for no sacrifices, and it must be willing. There is a sense of value for very many people in knowing that what they do can help other people. In that spirit, even these very words are given. This charity is the giving of gifts not only because of others' need, not because of guilt, but because it is decidedly in the interest of the one who gives, and it is hoped to be in the interest of the one who receives it as well. The really noble giver wishes to see his charity become unnecessary, as the one who receives it uses the gift to help themselves. This charity despises dependence and is sickened by weakness, and thus is disposed to help end it. Such a charitable gift is a voluntary exchange like any other, capable of rewarding the giver and the receiver in different ways, and like other exchanges, possessing some element of risk that this will not happen — dependency, for example. This willing charity is part of a free society, just as much as business deals over large amounts of goods or currency. It is the kind of charity most likely to really help, and least likely to create more dependency.

Forcible governmental 'charity' is not voluntary, however, and the source is not this kind of charitable disposition. Charity as a moral imperative breeds dependence of the charitable and the objects of charity alike, a habit of moral superiority feeding the self-justification of supplication and need. Genuine generosity and cooperation and consideration cannot be forced. It is through individual independence, in mastery of the self and material things as well, that the sort of person is likely to arise who is considerate and cooperative and disposed to be generous. Redistributing wealth as largesse is no substitute for generous natures; it cannot produce people who want to give and are likely to act in the best interests of other people out of genuine concern, and sensible consideration for what is actually helpful. It can only imitate this by giving away money which has been taken, something which provides little help for a problem which requires something else.

What is of some benefit that is accomplished by those employed within governments today, does not require a framework of compulsion in order to happen. These beneficial services can be replaced by private charities and non-governmental organizations. Once people find their own capital is within their own hands and own decisions, charity will not die. It will increase, in fact — at least, the sort of charity which is voluntary and comes from genuine interest and concern, if not the guilty, sacrificial kind. Promethean capitalism is actually the economy which is most conducive to the care and advantage of the truly unfortunate.

Whatever is done that really helps another person could be accomplished, physically and mentally, outside of the administration of a state — and free from the symptoms of bureaucracy and enforced rule that government entails.

We are to believe that large disasters and problems can never be met with sufficient resources, unless government power is brought to bear. After all, in these situations government does not have to persuade very far; officials take money and resources and apply them. This is often quite inefficient, but certainly looks impressive, and impossible for private organizations to approach in scale. That is true — now. Today, government takes so much capital out of economies, that there is less that can be contributed to private organizations. And today, "helping others" is largely systematized through belief to be a province of government. The apparent inability of private charities to deal with a big crisis, like the Great Depression, is due in large part to government taking over their roles. From the other side these are often also failures of the leadership of private organizations, trusting government to accomplish what they should, and failing to organize on a capable scale.

We need that kind of leadership for a really free society with a really free market. In a Promethean society, replacement services for what are today services of the state can be seen as charities — organizations of voluntary contribution. The Promethean movement itself is to be a charity in these terms, which must grow to become a voluntary organization of unprecedented scope and ability in order to achieve goals such as the foundation of a Promethean society. Even the very basic functions of a state — arbitration of disputes, and protection of person and property — can be provided using the model of a voluntary charitable organization if a business model does not work, or using a combination of these models.

Actually, both a non-profit organization and an organization that directly seeks monetary profit are voluntary organizations which satisfy mutual benefit. That is, both can really be based on mutual profit in the larger sense, and are likely to be. The only major model of social organization which is inherently unlikely in practice to satisfy mutual advantage, is the fundamentally involuntary model of government: conceptual political power backed by force. Government is the notable exception to mutual benefit. Yet government has grown to become the tyrannical and centralized system of control that it is today, largely because of the appropriation of that very powerful cause, charity. The survival of government as an idea which is valued and considered necessary, and at the same time as a very real oppressor in practice, depends on the abandonment of the idea of charity to official responsibility in the form of largesse. Thus, it is only through the reassertion of private charity on an appreciable scale (like the Promethean movement) that government will ever be overcome.

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