You're conflating two different ideas which are two different things. If the state is the best way to allocate resources - it should follow that you're sending

You're conflating two different ideas which are two different things. If the state is the best way to allocate resources - it should follow that you're sending all your resources to the state (so it's best allocated). You'd do this through taxation - not donation. If you're giving money through private charity - then you obviously have SOME resources that you haven't given over to the state - which means that you're spending them (according to your own definition) less than optimally. Unfortunately (for you), paying less taxes does not actually preclude you from giving more to charitable causes to help some of these moral outrages you suggest. By some studies, the U.S. is the most charitable country in the world [1] - which seems to be the opposite of your previous assertion that people aren't paying taxes because of "greed" (if that were the case, we certainly wouldn't be giving it away to charity either. You're also not taking into account the parties to whom that money is donated (giving away money for the sake of giving it away isn't necessarily moral - what if you gave it to a terrorism org, etc) OR how those parties use said donation - which all would affect the "morality" of your action. However, given your discussion throughout this thread, I doubt you actually desire to have a serious discussion and are content to incite reactions from people by painting these issues in broad & overly-generalized strokes. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/world-giving-index-us-ran_n_1159562.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/world-giving-index-...