By that logic, Jeff Bezos would be an amazing human being. I believe we can agree he isn't.

> Not to mention donating to the school is charitable, which is another nice trait for people to have.

Donating to the school in your catchment area will increase the sale value of your property, and improve the school for your kids and your neighbors. That's not charitable. What would be nice is donating the same amount to the least privileged schools in your city/county/state. A donation that benefits your own kids? Seriously?

> Evidently you believe that the purpose of school is enforcing equality?

Evidently you confuse equality of opportunities (which I do support) with equality of outcomes (which I don't). Overall, the more unequal a society gets, the less democratic it becomes.

You know what a proxy is. Please don't straw-man it's against the guidelines and not very interesting besides. One can always pick out individual exceptions. "My grandfather smoked two packs a day his whole life and never got lung cancer," doesn't refute that smoking is correlated with lung cancer.

> That's not charitable

Your highest obligations of charity are to yourself, your spouse, and your children. Once those obligations are met I agree that it's good to donate to your wider community. It's uncharitable to neglect your family for the dopamine hit of virtue signaling.

> least privileged schools in your city/county/state

It's observably true that poor school quality in the USA isn't due to a lack of funding. California's school system is proof.

> Evidently you confuse equality of opportunities (which I do support) with equality of outcomes (which I don't). Overall, the more unequal a society gets, the less democratic it becomes.

I don't confuse them, I consider them both equally impossible. Equality of opportunity is impossible because in large part one's opportunities are the result of the decisions one's parents made, beginning with choosing to procreate together. It's a heresy against the tabula rasa dogma to say so, and yet it moves.

As for a society being more or less democratic, that's a grave oversimplification. First, there are no extant democracies. We have constitutional monarchies, federal republics, and so on. Second, the extent to which democratic decision making is beneficial is very much a consequence of scale and locality. It makes sense for the citizens of a county to popularly elect the Sheriff that will police them. Paradoxically, a larger pool of electors is actually less democratic. If the citizens of the entire country voted on who was to be sheriff for the county, then the citizens of that county effectively have no vote at all over their own affairs.

That’s not charity. That’s self interest, specially if I can save on taxes while I increase the value of my property.

> It's observably true that poor school quality in the USA isn't due to a lack of funding. California's school system is proof.

There’s a multitude of reasons for school failure that are unrelated to funding - violence, poverty, discrimination, etc. Supporting those in need is always more important than supporting those who don’t need support.

> Equality of opportunity is impossible because in large part one's opportunities are the result of the decisions one's parents made,

And we should work towards not allowing that to reduce the opportunities for those who lack that privilege.

> beginning with choosing to procreate together.

I don’t see how genetics are involved here. It’s been proven many times it has little relation with academic success. Growing up in a favourable environment to learning is a much more powerful predictor.

> As for a society being more or less democratic, that's a grave oversimplification.

When you have people who can fund successful electoral campaigns you get people who effectively can vote multiple times, by convincing more people to vote for their candidates. You also get people who can influence the elected officials because they know that, if they don’t favour the people who got them elected, they’ll make someone else be elected.

One important role of public universal schooling is to form an informed electorate that can operate a democracy. If the last few years didn’t teach us we have been failing at that, I can’t imagine what will.

> Second, the extent to which democratic decision making is beneficial is very much a consequence of scale and locality.

I’m not sure why you brought this up. There are local authorities at various levels, but that has no impact on the argument I was making. All levels can be influenced with the right amount of money.

You are evidently using a definition of charity that’s somehow related to the tax code. From context it should be clear that by charity I meant our obligation to love our fellow humans. And a person who neglects his own family to provide for another is doing evil not good. Get your own house in order first.

> Supporting those in need is always more important than supporting those who don’t need support.

This is a surprising claim. If you also find this exchange interesting please elaborate. I’d agree that it’s true in some cases, but universally? Ought parents always give away all their resources except what is required for their family’s basic subsistence?

> I don’t see how genetics are involved here. It’s been proven many times it has little relation with academic success. Growing up in a favourable environment to learning is a much more powerful predictor.

The tabula rasa position has been thoroughly discredited. That said, growing up in a favorable environment for learning is also very much dependent on one’s parents’ mating strategy. Please construe that broadly: where they choose to settle, etc.

> One important role of public universal schooling is to form an informed electorate that can operate a democracy. If the last few years didn’t teach us we have been failing at that, I can’t imagine what will.

On this we agree. I believe I articulated my position on why that might be. What’s yours?

I never suggested that. I suggested it’d be more charitable to use the money set aside for charity in a way that benefits others. You don’t benefit your family and say it was charity.

> I believe I articulated my position on why that might be.

If you agree with that, then you agree it’s our job to maximise the number of functional well informed members of our society in order to have solid democracies. If we condemn a large part of the population to sub-par education, we get the flawed democracies we’ve seen flourishing in the past couple years.

Why not? What’s wrong with your family also benefitting when you give to your community?

Donating to your alma mater in no way exclusively benefits your family. It also provides scholarships for example. All of the most well endowed schools are very much looking for otherwise disadvantaged persons.