In my former life as a high school teacher, I one day came across an item in my school’s morning bulletin allowing students to donate blood in lieu of serving detention hours. Whatever might be said for such a policy, there’s simply no getting around the following fact: it makes the violent depletion of a child’s bodily fluids into a state-sanctioned method of discipline. It lets students atone for their misbehavior — for, say, throwing a paper airplane across the classroom — through a procedure in which a needle punctures their skin, penetrates their vein, and forcibly pumps out blood by the pint.
In my view, campaign contributions are rarely corrupting in the sense that they improperly influence a legislator’s political position. There can be no doubt, however, that they greatly influence how he spends his political capital.
While a given congressman may support an endless number of groups and causes, there are only so many in whose service he can …
The analysis above falls prey to the moral illusion of immediacy. While it may be absurd to say that the existence of “better” (more utility optimizing) alternatives negates the moral worth of a given act, it is at least equally absurd to suggest that any unreciprocated conferral of value, qua charity, is automatically deserving of …