Philanthropy as behavioral screening

Foundations and private donors can convert charity into conditional programs that screen, surveil, or experiment on recipients (for example via medicalized tests, psychological evaluations, or covert trials) and then tie cash or services to those procedures. That dynamic turns aid into an instrument of behavior-shaping and transfers discretion from public accountability to private actors. — If private giving increasingly conditions aid on opaque tests or experiments, it reshapes welfare, civil liberties, and who gets to set social policy outside democratic oversight.