There's No Accounting For Generosity

A few months ago I read an article on Sapiens.org that got me thinking about volunteering, sharing, and mutualism. Leah Shaffer's Is a More Generous Society Possible? discusses the implementation of risk and disaster management in three kinds of communities:

one using need-based transfer, another in which sharing resources occurs with the expectation of repayment (a practice called account keeping), and a third in which there is no sharing at all.

The article makes it clear that when disaster strikes, any type of sharing significantly improves the community's chances of survival and rebound. It also points out that communities employing need-based transfers (ex: the "Cajun Navy" that helped rescue people during Hurricane Harvey) benefit from both greater pooling of resources and survival outcomes than ones employing account keeping (insurance companies are the usual market-based response to risk and disasters in account keeping societies). One of the things I concluded from reading the article is that there is literally no accounting for generosity. Essentially, accounting arises when people want to be compensated for their "generosity", while the truly generous are such solely because they don't seek compensation. So, to reiterate the central question posed by the article, is a more generous society possible?

In a way, politicians, economists, historians, and even occasionally philosophers have been debating this for decades at least, if not longer. Typically, this occurs in the form of the classic capitalism vs socialism debate. Obviously, each system has its pros and cons, but the central conflict between the two revolves around the question of whether one's labor should primarily benefit either oneself or the community. While communities employing need-based transfers may have the benefit of greater resource pools, those employing account keeping typically have the benefit of the greater organizational efficiencies of free markets. So how can we build a more generous society in the face of these conflicting systems?

The solution ultimately lies in resolving the conflict between the individual interest, and the interests of the community. As far as I can tell, the only way to do this is to merge the two so that helping others in the community is in the individuals interest. This can be accomplished by applying the practice of account keeping to need-based transfers in such a way that rather than utilizing account keeping to track what is owed to the individual, it is used to track what is given by the individual to others. By utilizing account keeping, we can ensure that individuals are rewarded for their contributions to others in their community, regardless of their motivation. Similarly, by tying transfers to the needs of others, we can benefit from both greater pooling of resources and survival outcomes. Perhaps most importantly, this system also enables us to benefit from the organizational efficiencies of free markets. This system can be effectively described as transfer-based account keeping.

So yes, a more generous society is possible, if we implement transfer-based account keeping.