The Entropy of Charity

Maui Sunset - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Scott Sturman and Doug Goodman

A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Doug Goodman spent a career in Silicon Valley before becoming a high school physics teacher.

A number of United States Senators participating in a round table forum are asked to determine the more efficient way to dispense charity. Is it preferable for individuals to care for their neighbors or for the government to collect these charitable donations and redistribute them to those in need? Most of the discussants are attorneys trained to trust social and political systems and to use their formidable oratory skills to respond to the question. The consensus is the latter option which allows experts like themselves to determine who needs help and how to give it. Within the group is a rare commodity - a lone physicist trained to trust nature’s laws, who is also a United States Senator. He takes exception and uses a novel approach to address the problem.

The Senator from the Northeast begins. Senator, I have great respect for scientists like yourself, but the dispensing of charity is a social science. Numbers and equations confuse more than enlighten the average citizen, who is more comfortable trusting his feelings.

The Senator from the West Coast agrees. Your reputation as a scientist is impeccable, but you are new to this profession, Senator. When reading your preliminary argument you lost me as soon as you referred to natural logarithms. Resorting to mathematics and the physical sciences is not an appropriate method of analyzing a problem of this scope. Are you really serious when suggesting the laws of thermodynamics can be used to determine the best way to manage charitable acts? For the sake of the rest of the committee, would you be so kind as to review your proposal?

Thank you, Senators. You are correct when you say I am a newcomer to politics, but my constituents elected me because of my analytic approach to governance. They particularly are concerned about the inordinate amount of waste in government and feel technically trained individuals have novel ideas to correct problems which have plagued Washington for decades. Let me begin with an introduction to entropy and discuss how it applies to the distribution of charity.

Entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness. It can be thought of as an expression of unavoidable waste or inefficiency. Without additional work inputted into a closed system, entropy always increases. Think of a glass window pane falling to the floor. It shatters on impact as the object becomes more disordered. Sweep up the remains and throw them to the floor again, and the glass pain will not reconstitute to its original form, since entropy would have to decrease for a more random system to become more ordered.

Entropy (S) is defined as S = Kb ln(W), where Kb is the Boltzman constant, ln is the natural log, and W is the number of micro states of a system. The number of states is simply a measure of complexity. When making decisions based on entropy, W is the most important parameter since only it changes. When the potential states of a system increase, so does entropy or its by product – waste.

In theory systems can be designed to be 100% efficient by implementing stringent quality control, but they cannot avoid random events that lead to errors. Furthermore, the law of entropy dictates that once a mistake is made in any process, it cannot be corrected with 100% efficiency. Mistakes, which are inevitable in any organization, add to the loss of resources. When money from a donor is given to an organization that distributes it to large number of unorganized recipients, substantial sums are lost in the process.

Charity is defined as the voluntary giving of help to those in need or generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless. The problem is how to insure those legitimately in need receive the resources intended for them. As in physics, large, complex systems diminish the amount available for the intended recipient. The ideal solution is to personally administer charity to someone who is known to the benefactor. Little of the intended contribution is lost in the process, and the giver can insure that the donation is used for its intended purpose. Supporting local agencies staffed by people known to the giver is the next best solution. Established relationships insure that waste is kept to a minimum and the gift will be used appropriately. Even these agencies cannot operate without the costs of salaries, food and shelter, rents, and transportation, so the original contribution will be less when it is delivered to the needy. The farther the recipient is located from the giver and the more levels of organization necessary to distribute the charity, the more of the original gift that is lost in the process.

Government has the assumed the role of the country's primary charitable provider. However, its Byzantine rules, lack of personal contact with those receiving benefits, and political motivations make it the worst choice for this endeavor. Furthermore, the tax payer has no choice who will receive the benefits, how much will be given, or if the result will benefit the recipient in the long run.

For example, if I decide to give a needy person who I know personally a $100, I know the entire gift goes to that person, and I can establish certain stipulations to insure the money is not squandered. In certain circumstances cash may not be the best option, so I may elect to provide food, clothing, or shelter. I control how the gift will be used and monitor the recipient to determine if the act of charity is beneficial.

Now let the federal or state government give this same $100 to someone I do not know who lives hundreds of miles away. The process would make any physicist wince. The $100 derives from taxes collected involuntarily and transferred to the IRS or state tax revenue agency. Eventually, politicians and bureaucrats for whom I pay their salaries decide which people deserve the $100. However, by this time after the money has sifted through layers of bureaucracy it no longer worth $100. Its value has been reduced by those making a living giving it to other people, and by outright theft as the money slowly makes its way to the intended target. So let us say conservatively by the time it is received by the recipient the value is closer to $50. Yet there are other considerations. I may not agree with the cause or the type of charity the government sponsors, and I have no way of knowing the money will be spent prudently when it reaches its final destination. What's the $100 worth now - $5 or $10?

The welfare state came about once individuals forfeited the responsibility for administering charitable acts. Rather than relying on instinct and emotion, politicians should embrace the scientific method to reduce waste and deliver the right type of assistance to the right person in a timely fashion. My argument demonstrated how employing a fundamental principle of physics can yield vast rewards. To ignore the obvious encourages lawmakers to continue dealing with enormous social problems with pennies on the dollar.


QED