Aristotle In The News

Currency cheats the population out of an equivalent exchange. Aristotle explains this in his book Politics. We see this concept demonstrated in our profit-minded country in the actions that our credit card companies made when handling charitable donations. Credit card companies make millions off of the disasters good hearted people choose to donate their money to. By charging fee after fee, the money that could be going to a starving homeless child in Haiti goes instead to the drooling greedy capitalist behind the credit card companies.
If you really wanted to make the most out of a donation, you would have to give a commodity, rather than an instrument to attain one. By eliminating that middle-man of sorts, the exchange is guaranteed to be legitimate and fair. You don't see companies stealing water bottles from the case you send to aid people in devastated areas, only money.
Aristotle explains that the existence of money creates a cheat. Money creates a distortion in the idea of exchange, otherwise known as the desire for profit. Profit creates an unequal exchange like we see here in the credit card companies profits from the donations.
For every donation the company takes a fee out of it for "transaction costs." As much as 2.5% can be taken out of a donation. Fees accumulated from donations can add up to millions in a year that a disaster occurs. While some companies claim to reduce or remove their fees, others refuse to comment on the matter. But it isn't you, the donor being cheated, it is the massive population you had hoped to help that suffers from this capitalistic characteristic.
For the children in Haiti currently receiving less aid than deserved, it is to the greed of companies and their ever growing hunger for profit that they need to turn their weary little heads to.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/14/as-wallets-open-for-haiti_n_423238.html