Question

Passage:

The legal doctrine of *cy-près* (Law French for "as near as possible") has long provided courts with the equitable power to modify the terms of a charitable trust when the settlor's original specific intent becomes impossible, impracticable, or illegal to execute. Historically, English chancery courts applied *cy-près* with strict adherence to a principle of proximity: if a trust established in the eighteenth century to fund a hospital for sailors suffering from scurvy in a specific port could no longer operate due to the eradication of the disease, the court would redirect the funds to another medical charity for sailors in that same port. This classical formulation demanded that the substituted purpose remain meticulously tethered to the settlor’s presumed subjective desires, specifically prioritizing the demonstration of the donor's "general charitable intent" over any objective assessment of contemporary social utility. Under this rigid framework, if a general charitable intent could not be deciphered from the trust instrument, the trust would fail entirely, and the assets would revert to the settlor’s heirs through a resulting trust.

However, the latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a gradual but significant jurisprudential shift in American courts, catalyzed heavily by the promulgation of the Uniform Trust Code (UTC) and the Restatement (Third) of Trusts. Modern statutory frameworks have subtly expanded the *cy-près* doctrine by relaxing the threshold standard for its invocation. While traditional common law required absolute impossibility or severe impracticability, modern iterations permit modification if the original purpose becomes merely "wasteful" or "substantially impaired." More crucially, while courts nominally still seek to honor the settlor's original vision, the methodology for determining the "next best" purpose has increasingly incorporated utilitarian considerations. For instance, in prioritizing alternatives, a contemporary court might evaluate which of several competing charities operates with greater administrative efficiency or serves a larger demographic, factors that classical chancery courts would have explicitly dismissed as irrelevant to the donor’s historical intent.

Critics of this modern expansion, notably conservative legal scholars emphasizing property rights, argue that elevating social utility subverts the foundational premise of private philanthropy—the autonomy of the donor. They contend that the introduction of a "wastefulness" standard provides judges with unwarranted latitude to reshape trusts according to their own ideological preferences or contemporary political pressures, under the convenient guise of modernization. Conversely, proponents assert that perpetual trusts inherently risk obsolescence. Because charitable trusts, unlike private trusts, are exempt from the Rule Against Perpetuities and can theoretically exist forever, proponents argue that an inflexible adherence to historical proximity often results in trapped capital. This immobilized wealth serves neither the donor's ultimate charitable spirit nor the public good. Thus, they view the integration of efficiency metrics and modern utility not as a usurpation of donor intent, but as a necessary evolutionary mechanism designed to preserve the vitality and societal benefit of perpetual charitable endowments in a dynamic society.

Question:
According to the passage, proponents of the modern expansion of the *cy-près* doctrine argue that an inflexible adherence to historical proximity often results in which of the following?