My point was that since our cultural instinct is to give, but in practice this is done inefficiently, [charities are wasteful, people don’t give to charities to optimize utility but rather to charities that they think they like, and a flat percentage is probably worse than a progressive tax], and therefore it would probably be better for society if we didn’t expect charity from people—this seemingly beneficial cultural obligation can be argued to be harmful.
Yes, that is true as well.
My point was that since our cultural instinct is to give, but in practice this is done inefficiently, [charities are wasteful, people don’t give to charities to optimize utility but rather to charities that they think they like, and a flat percentage is probably worse than a progressive tax], and therefore it would probably be better for society if we didn’t expect charity from people—this seemingly beneficial cultural obligation can be argued to be harmful.