I haven't been back for a long time. Maybe next year.

Want to buy 56 acres on a mountainside, with a little house?

Yes, he got paid. The sisters say it was lower than it should've been, but I have no metric for the payment, or even the date. Think it was the early 70s.
Army Corp of Engineers probably. They are Nazis in reviewing your projects, but not so critical of Government ones.

One would hope that we could persuade a significant number of people of the basic truth of it, and cut out all the arguments regarding religion, politics, manipulation etc, and just get to the basic "do the right thing" ethic.

You have a point there...

"could their be a third way, which involves having faith and karma"
I agree with your right to do whatever you want with your giving, but I don't personally believe in faith and karma. I don't need a justification for giving my property away, not giving my property away, or using my property differently from how other people think I should.

I have a friend who inherited a family farm. Several times developers have tried to buy it. It would be worth much more as commercial and residential space than has a farm. So every month he keeps it as a farm, he's forging the returns he could get from developing it or selling it and investing the wealth in profitable enterprises. The farm has been in his family for 150 years, and he wants to keep it.

Pressuring him to sell it and invest in something else, sell it and give the money to the poor, or keep it despite the low returns are all equally wrong. It's his choice.

"is there anything else in AS where AR has a character give something away?"
I can't think of any positive examples of giving in AS either. Hank Rearen giving his wife the bracelet isn't really giving if it's marital property, but it's representative of how I think of giving in the book. He wasn't looking for something in exchange. He just wanted the personal joy for himself of sharing the product of his work with another person. He didn't get that joy because she rejected the "gift". He was looking for someone whom he could give such a "gift" who would appreciate it.

I also think of Roark in The Fountainhead. He consistently forwent money in favor of his own art. He didn't mind that much if other people took credit for and profited from his art. Art was his interest. He seemed more pleased when a young man on a bike appreciated his work than he was when he got paid. He was totally giving away his work as his gift to the world, but not in a self-sacrificing way, but because that's what he really wanted to do.

Not that your giving something away with out return of equal value...It would depend upon what is valuable to you at the time...you assess the risks and decide...will you see the outcome you wanted or hoped for.
Mankind or "Conscious Human Beings", just like each cell in our bodies, place first our own survival, our own wants, needs and desires...if at anytime those conditions are met...we are more than likely to share any abundance; like offering a surprise visitor at supper time some food...most times we willfully, with no qualms, offer that person something to eat...that just what "Humans" do naturally.