
Sergey Brin has a secret disaster relief charity - rdp
https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-has-a-secret-disaster-relief-squad
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flyinglizard
> But the use of ex-military personnel for humanitarian and conservation work
> is also controversial, according to Rosaleen Duffy, a professor of politics
> and international relations at the University of Sheffield.

No, Professor Duffy, the use of ex- or active - military personnel to render
aid is not controversial. It's a widely accepted and successful practice.

~~~
0xy
Switzerland is a model for this. Given their neutral and famously anti-
confrontational manner, their armies do a lot of civil construction and aid
work. The US should do more of that kind of thing.

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areyousure
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_En...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_Engineers)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Response)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Assistance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Assistance)

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BooneJS
Team Rubicon is another NGO that provides disaster relief.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Rubicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Rubicon)

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yardie
So he’s just doing this for the ‘gram. Even the NGO director stated they
respond to exciting disasters: hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. I
wonder if they’ll be equally deployed to the disasters that don’t fit a 24
hour news cycle: drought, sea level rise, and pandemics. The kind of disasters
that sneak in slowly and then overwhelm all at once.

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awillen
Truly commendable that he would do this, but deeply terrible that a private
citizen, no matter how wealthy, can beat governments to the punch on this kind
of aid.

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throwawaygh
_> can beat governments to the punch on this kind of aid._

Yes, exactly this. Not "can provide the aid", but "first to the punch". You
really hit the nail on the head.

The morality of massive wealth accumulation -- and the morality of various
mechanisms for changing that accumulation -- is definitely something that
reasonable people can have a polite and respectable debate about.

But it is _absolutely unacceptable_ that wealthy individuals are beating
government to the punch in disaster relief and preparedness. COVID-19 is the
dry run, and the USA has absolutely failed on such a profound level that we
should have actual existential concerns about how broken our government has
become (and there's plenty of blame to go around).

I really hope the outcome is "competent government, regardless of size, and
sabotaging implementation is treasonous" as a bipartisan consensus.

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wutbrodo
Is this really that surprising? Governments' advantage is crafting certain
kinds of incentives that markets can't, but it's pretty much a guarantee that
government will be more incompetent at whatever specific task they put their
mind to, in large part because of the burden of democratic accountability.
Conditioned on the resources and incentives being centralized (in Brin), why
wouldn't you expect his organization to be more competent?

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3131s
> _democratic accountability_

That's so far from what exists now in the US, it's doubtful that it's an
inherent factor in our government's dysfunction.

There are many governments that aren't totally useless, so if you're looking
at the US and thinking that we can't do any better, that shows a serious lack
of imagination and perspective.

~~~
throwaway2048
The USA sure seems to have a lot of mysterious problems that people throw up
their hands as utterly unfixable, that no other country in the world does.

~~~
wutbrodo
Because we're a massive, layered,diverse federal system. It's blindingly
ignorant to suggest that the US has a literally uniquely dysfunctional
government: other countries with categorically similar levels of diversity and
scale (India, Brazil) face many of the same problems. And polities that have
these characteristics in part face these problems in proportion: the EU is
another source of signal here.

European govt's stability and relatively cohesive civic cultures come after
centuries of world-spanning bloodbaths, genocides and ethnic cleansing to
reach the status quo of relatively tiny, relatively ethnically homogeneous
states. And there are plenty of dark sides to this cohesion as well.

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waterofclear
This wing was donated by "anonymous". _All eyes look at Ted Danson_

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jdkee
Tax billionaires and let democratically elected governments perform this
public service.

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tasuki
The government already has infinite cash, yet Brin is faster in sending
disaster relief. Would more cash somehow make the government's response
quicker?

In my opinion, it is great we have ultra-rich people who decide to spend their
resources in ways that help others in ways the government currently isn't able
to.

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michaelangerman
Besides monarchs in the past, for the first time in the history of Planet
Earth we have many people and corporations that have more money than
governments and so with that comes the responsibility of "acting accordingly".
I believe that in a good light this will continue to assist humanity in ways
never thought of before as human ingenuity is always more nimble than large
bureaucratic organizations.

~~~
saddlerustle
Who has more money than governments? Sergey Brin is worth about $65 billion.
The US federal budget is ~$3 trillion _per year_

~~~
selectodude
The US is the wealthiest country on earth. Sergei Brin's checking account
would be the 74th largest GDP in the world.

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cycrutchfield
Why are you comparing somebody’s net worth to a GDP, which is a rate? That
makes zero sense.

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Cyph0n
No, it does make sense: Brin could pay to run the 74th largest economy for a
year.

~~~
cycrutchfield
That's not what GDP means, and also a person's net worth is not necessarily
liquid.

