
Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck? - edward
https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/02/can-effective-altruism-maximise-the-bang-for-each-charitable-buck
======
monadgonad
I think the Effective Altruism movement really belies its own values and cause
with the fact that one of its own funds is for supporting:

> organizations that work on improving long-term outcomes for humanity. Grants
> will likely go to organizations that seek to reduce global catastrophic
> risks, especially those relating to advanced artificial intelligence. [1]

Yes, an argument can be made that it's important to fund prevention of global
catastrophes, as while they're unlikely compared to the immediate threat of
malaria, they'll cause much greater damage, thus increasing risk. However, to
consider artificial intelligence to be a potential global catastrophe at all,
let alone the single one requiring extra funding, is mostly unfounded. We
currently can barely even define what the actual risk is, let alone how to
mitigate it.

It's one thing to walk past homeless people in my city and not give them
money, because I know that money could much more easily and effectively safe a
life in malaria-ridden parts of the world. I think it's absolutely morally
repugnant to walk past them and not give them money, because instead you're
paying people to sit around thinking about AI.

[1] [https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-
future](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future)

~~~
ogennadi
I used to feel similarly until I realized that the EA movement isn't a
hierarchical organization: it's just a bunch of totally separate orgs who have
a common philosophy about how to do good in the world.

Sure, OpenPhil funds AI research. But Givewell (who, last I checked, share the
same office) has in their Top Charities list, only those that work in poor
countries

[https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-
charities](https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)

[2] [https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-
charities](https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)

~~~
jaggederest
Agreed. I've loosely held an EA-like philosophy for about a decade and I think
that OpenPhil orientation towards AI is pretty disappointing.

I account for my time in terms of things like number of people saved from
blindness or death due to malaria, and I definitely do not count future
simulated persons as worthy of any of the same concern as actual humans who
exist today.

~~~
danielbigham
I watched a debate involving William Macaskill last summer and he poses the
hypothetical question:

"You are outside a burning building and are told that inside one room is a
child and inside another is a painting by Picasso. You can save one of them.
To do the most good, which do you choose?"

The point he's trying to illustrate is that, if you knew for certain that you
could turn around and sell the Picaso for millions and use that money to
purchase malaria bed nets, the expected number of lives saved by using the
Picaso could be hundreds, and so there's a moral dilemma present.

Like many hypothetical questions, this one feels a bit "off" or "unrealistic",
but if you don't get hung up on the oddities, I think one can sense the
essence of his question, and it reminded me of the point you're making here as
well as a responder's question asking you why you think the way you do.

I do think these questions are hard for us to wrap our heads around -- how to
value high probability immediacy against somewhat uncertain non-proximal/non-
immediate things that might be "much higher value". Part of my human brain
goes _splat_ when I try to weigh these things.

In terms of the moral dilemma with the painting, I do have quite a bit of
sympathy for the argument that one should do what they feel will produce the
most good, which might be to save the painting and purchase malaria nets. My
father on the other hand seemed to believe that to be absolutely morally
wrong, which seems to be siding with your sentiments. Practically speaking, I
think I'd almost certainly save the child's life, because one's human impulses
would be so strong that they would override any high-and-lofty-rationality,
and one wouldn't have time anyway to do deep analysis. But the question in a
hypothetical sense does seem quite valid and hard.

~~~
Vinnl
> But the question in a hypothetical sense does seem quite valid and hard.

I appreciate this sentiment, and tend to think likewise. However, the
situation _is_ a hypothetical. In the end, perhaps most important is the
_practical_ decisions we make, which is almost never situations like the ones
you describe above, but more like "what cause should I donate to"? In that
sense, it might be hard to discern between different causes in the Givewell
top lists, but picking either of those at random is probably a good heuristic
that already beats a fairly widespread heuristic of just giving to something
like Make-A-Wish, _if_ you're starting from the point of donating €x to a
charity.

------
11thEarlOfMar
It's not clear why they see this as a nascent movement. My impression of the
Gates Foundation is that it uses the funds it donates in a highly analytical
fashion to maximize the 'net positive gain' in the welfare of humanity. First
example that comes to mind is their commitment to eradicating polio.

This analytical approch been their M.O. for 20 years.

~~~
jseliger
Effective altruism is well-known among a small number of nerds and not at all
known or used in many other sectors. I do grant writing for nonprofit and
public agencies, and I just wrote about how little government is (really)
interested in it: [http://seliger.com/2018/06/01/youre-not-organization-isnt-
wo...](http://seliger.com/2018/06/01/youre-not-organization-isnt-worried-long-
term-grant-evaluations)

Those of you interested should read the philanthropy chapter in Robin Hanson
and Kevin Simler's book _The Elephant and the Brain_.

------
stevenking86
It's mentioned in the article several times, but if you're interested in
making some analytically driven donations, quickly,
[https://www.givewell.org/](https://www.givewell.org/) is the place to start.

------
gringoDan
For those interested in Effective Altruism, Will MacAskill's book _Doing Good
Better_ is a great read that raises a lot of thought-provoking questions.

\- [https://www.effectivealtruism.org/doing-good-
better/](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/doing-good-better/)

~~~
spectrum1234
Its a great book!

------
nandorsky
This also assumes that decisions to donate to a cause are driven by logic
based on an ROI calculation but they are often driven by emotion, not logic.
Donors give to causes they care about and feel connected to. If you grew up
homeless for example, you're more likely to give to a cause that helps
alleviate homelessness vs buying nets to combat Malaria (where you may have no
connection) even if the ROI for donating to buy Malaria nets is higher.

~~~
spectrum1234
Effective altruism is saying one _should_ donate by logic/ROI.

~~~
nandorsky
The way I read it is people would follow this method if the data was more
readily available and the issue is access to data.

~~~
whack
They are both generally true. In the absence of data, people default towards
their emotional connections. Ie, a cancer survivor donating to a cancer
charity. But if someone could provide data showing persuasively that you can
save 10x more lives via malaria charities, that would often override the
emotional appeals for many people.

It's much easier to give in to your emotions, when you aren't encumbered by
contradictory data.

------
ajonnav
I would recommend checking out the podcast ‘The 80,000 hours’ if you are
interested in this kind of stuff. It’s hosted by Rob Wiblin who is the
executive director at Effective Altruism. He talks to very interesting people
(mostly academics) about “the world's most pressing problems and how you can
use your career to solve them” (taken from his website).

~~~
Bernicus
Just to clarify, Rob is the Director of Research at the nonprofit, 80,000
Hours, whose aim is to help people have high impact careers. There is no
organisation called Effective Altruism. Effective altruism is a social
movement in the same way that environmentalism is a social movement, made up
of many individuals, nonprofits and even for profits, working on different
things, of which 80,000 Hours is just one. The podcast is excellent though and
I second your recommendation.

[http://www.robwiblin.com/](http://www.robwiblin.com/)
[https://80000hours.org/podcast/](https://80000hours.org/podcast/)

~~~
tonfa
Technically, there kinda is an EA foundation: [https://ea-
foundation.org/](https://ea-foundation.org/)

Tho for me it's mostly an umbrella org, that allows to easily donate to orgs
following the EA movement (since many of them are not registered in Europe, I
wouldn't be able to get tax deductions otherwise).

------
specialist
Sign me up for some scientific rigor in all policy work, journalism.

State hypothesis, compare predictions to reality, show your work, cite your
sources, peer review.

The "replication crisis" touches everything. What I like to call "governance
technology".

We live in exciting times. I'm irrationally optimistic. Eager to see what
happens next.

~~~
VikingCoder
And publish your failures.

The part where we don't publish our failures is a huge failing.

~~~
jimmy1
And fund opposing research and opposing hypothesis -- we need more than ever
_diversity of thought_. There's no sense in doing all of this science with
nothing to challenge it. The best policies or whatever it may be should be
able to stand up against it.

------
thatfrenchguy
GiveWell’s CEO’s compensation is 200k:
[http://files.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Meeting_2017_06_06...](http://files.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Meeting_2017_06_06/Attachment_F_Executive_Compensation_Proposal.pdf)

That, after working at a investment firm and having a BA in religion.

Not sure that’s the skills and salary I would trust the use of the word «
reason » and « science » with. Having a 200k salary in San Francisco
definitely skews your vision of the world.

~~~
castlecrasher2
200k in SF is...not a lot. At all.

~~~
gowld
Why does the CEO of Givewell need to live in SF?

~~~
Viliam1234
This is a question that should be taken seriously. I am not sure whether they
did or did not. But I can imagine there _could_ be valid reasons. For example,
living close to potential major donors could increase the chance of convincing
some of them to donate. But this too is a thing that should be measured.

------
emodendroket
Well, measuring overhead isn't a great way to measure efficacy (trying to game
this metric often leads to behaviors that are penny-wise and pound-foolish),
but I don't find utilitarianism a compelling moral philosophy and really find
the idea of trying to quantify how much good a charity does kind of silly.

~~~
jopsen
Obviously, it's impossible to capture all the variables, but in quantifying
the good we do, we value all lives the same, and strive to maximize the good
we do.

If the EA movement forces big charities to focus a bit more on bang for buck,
then that's a win. Perfect efficiency will never be possible anyways.

~~~
emodendroket
I have some experience in the nonprofit sector. While you obviously don't want
to see people being cavalier with donor dollars, nonprofits that are obsessed
with cost cutting are more effective at scolding people for wanting a chair
that isn't falling apart or making a few too many photocopies than they are at
their missions.

~~~
jopsen
Looking at givewells analysis, they don't seem too focused on office supplies,
but rather whether the charity did any follow-up studies, how far it scales
and what it costs.

But the follow-up studies seem far more important, than the per unit cost of
mosquito nets.

------
samuelthomas
I want to make sure it's said that effective altruism is intertwined with the
rationalist movement (Scott Alexander[1], Eliezer Yudkowsky[2], Robin
Hanson[3]) and that, among these so called rationalists and the parts of the
effective altruist community where they hold sway, there are a lot of
advocates of AI risk mitigation research (what this means, who knows). These
people see AI as the greatest risk to humanity, if you agree to a very long
list of tenuous assumptions and implications.

I don't think the one paragraph in this article where this is mentioned does
enough to emphasize this part of the community. Many members of effective
altruism use it as a front to recruit people into their belief system, which
is centered around devotion to / fear of future AIs that exist solely as
thought experiments. And while their leaders don't necessarily explicitly
endorse it, the communities they foster tend to also be fairly right wing /
race realist / misoginistic / bigoted.

Many of the people in the rationalist and effective altruist community believe
that if they don't help create AI any future AIs will create a hell and punish
them in it. Seriously. That is a serious belief.

Check out more:
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Effective_altruism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Effective_altruism)

[http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-
re...](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-
recommending/)

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/26/book-review-twelve-
rule...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/26/book-review-twelve-rules-for-
life/)

[2] [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-
vs...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-
specks)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/989535565895864320?la...](https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/989535565895864320?lang=en)

~~~
Gnuffles
I feel like this criticism is largely unfair.

First off, yes, there is overlap between effective altruism and the
rationalism community. I think that makes sense when you want to try to use
reason instead of intuition to make decisions.

I fail to see why you should qualify them as "so called" rationalists. Though
besides Yudkowsky (and maybe even him) I honestly haven't heard enough of them
to defend them. If you do want to sling in some defamatory remarks at their
expense I feel like they should be backed up (or left unsaid), though.

You mention that some people see AI as the greatest risk to humanity. Perhaps
I misunderstand but the way you phrase this, it sounds like you think this is
absolutely ridiculous. If so, why would that be? And what long list of
assumptions would you need to agree to? And why would it be bad for there to
be a common starting point for discussing this? I think there's a fair amount
of uncertainty in how any superintelligent entity would act, so a certainty of
AI being terrible seems silly. However, a strong belief that it can pose a
large threat seems, honestly, evident.

You say people use "AI risk" as a front to recruit people into their belief
system. There is so much wrong with this... first off, why is it a front? That
implies deception. Secondly, it is one of many facets. The core of EA is the
desire to do have a (large) positive impact. If some people think that they
can make their impact by working on the AI safety issue, why do you feel the
need to portray that as nefarious? Finally, "belief system" sounds incredibly
dogmatic. EA is not a church. Yes, there is a set of beliefs that most people
in the EA community would ascribe to. But I don't experience EA as some echo
chamber where everyone is forced into some kind of mold. Rather, people
challenge both each other's and their own ideas. There's inevitably going to
be some biases and filters, but your portrayal of EA as a cult (purposefully
or not) is inaccurate.

As far as EA communities tending to be alt-right... what on earth are you
smoking? I help run a local chapter and the focus is highly left-wing. And
anyone I've noticed that's slightly more right wing is definitely not of the
misoginistic or racist side. I recently listened to an 80000 hours podcast
with Bryan Caplan, and noticed he's libertarian. While I think libertarian
views are mostly bonkers, at the very least the way his libertarian views
showed (e.g. arguing for open borders) are not insane on the level I'm used to
from libertarians. Either way, this is an exception. Even if you can list some
well known names that also have some strange views, I can say with a high
degree of certainty that it is not even remotely representative of the
community as a whole, especially not as I've seen it in the Netherlands.

FINALLY: I've honestly only ever seen Roko's Basilisk being mentioned on a
meme page for EA. So much for taking it seriously.

------
dandare
I am a bit skeptical about the "scientific rigor" part. Sure, all charities
are not equal and there is a big difference between donating to musical
education in the US and curing blindness in Africa. But estimating the impact
usually involves a lot of guesswork and quantifying the "quality of life"
factors. What is the impact of George Soros' pro-democracy foundations? What
is the impact of Amnesty International? What is the impact of me supporting
the education of one child in Bolivia via ActionAid?

------
rbongers
I'm probably missing something, but I have some serious concerns about the
effectiveness of this approach to charity.

First of all, without some coordinated effort to spread out donations, won't
some of the more effective charities still suffer? If everyone gives to the
top 4 charities, for example, won't the 5th most effective one suffer? I don't
believe this movement yet has the traction behind it to have this kind of
negative effect, but won't it get worse as the movement grows?

Second of all, who decides what is the most effective cause (or who interprets
the studies that indicate which cause is most effective)? If I could spend 1
dollar and know it would save 5 lives or prevent 50 people from living with
horrible mental illness, I would have trouble deciding which one to give to,
even if given empirical evidence as to which is cause is the most beneficial
to society. Any field dealing with this many human variables is bound to
produce at least some skewed results. To me, it seems like the trolley problem
with a limitless number of tracks with different situations.

Third of all, some of the causes that are not effective might still benefit
from some amount of involvement. The example they give - volunteering at a
soup kitchen - is one such example. Say giving to the homeless is effective,
but volunteering at a soup kitchen is not. Someone still needs to volunteer at
the soup kitchen, even if it's not many people.

~~~
Paul-ish
I suspect, but don't know for sure, that most charities experience diminishing
marginal utility for each dollar received after some point. Therefore if
people give too much to a single charity, it's rank will fall. If there is not
diminishing utility, you would have a utility monster[1], which would cause
the problem you pointed out.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster)

~~~
gatheredprior
> I suspect, but don't know for sure, that most charities experience
> diminishing marginal utility for each dollar received after some point.

This is absolutely true. If you're a charity and your primary activity is
distributing anti-malarial bed nets, once you have enough bed nets to meet
demand, your going to have to move on to other activities that won't
necessarily be exactly as effective as the bed nets.

In a contrived thought experiment with "perfect" information about the
effectiveness of activities, EA would suggest a "Greedy" (algorithm) style of
allocation. For each incoming dollar, you send it to whichever activity has
the greatest utility per dollar give, and repeat that for as many dollars as
you have.

------
abvdasker
I first heard of this movement in the book _Strangers Drowning_. The book is
structured as a varied series of accounts of extreme altruism along with some
philosophical discussion of cultural attitudes towards it. This movement
appears in one chapter about members of Giving What We Can, an organization of
individuals donating at least 10% of their income to charity. The chapter
follows one woman who gives away almost all of her six-figure salary every
year.

I'd highly recommend _Strangers Drowning_ if this sort of thing interests you.
It's a fairly short read and made me reconsider how I regard altruism by
looking at the most extreme examples of this human impulse. One of the best
points the book makes is the surprisingly cynical views towards altruism which
prevail in the US.

~~~
ggm
_One of the best points the book makes is the surprisingly cynical views
towards altruism which prevail in the US._

This comment echoes something I have felt for some time. I feel that aspects
of the US economic development which root in 'self reliance' have encouraged
this. Ayn Randian world views?

~~~
abvdasker
The book talks about Ayn Rand a bit, but spends more time discussing the
damage done to altruistic ideals by Adam Smith's _The Wealth of Nations_ and
much of Freud's work. Freud considered altruism and philanthropy a form of
masochistic pathology.

~~~
ggm
Freud/fraud

------
norepicycle
An entertaining, particularly biting, and horribly shortcoming-riddled
statement of the case against EA that nevertheless captures a common set of
views:

[https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_elitist_philanthropy_of_...](https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_elitist_philanthropy_of_so_called_effective_altruism)

(This is the "defective altruism" article.)

Is there a name for a set of views that are correlated with each other in
prevalence, in the sense that they occur together more often than could be
explained by chance alone? It's similar to the idea of a syndrome in medicine:
"opinion syndrome", perhaps?

~~~
balfirevic
Memeplex maybe?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex)

------
lacker
I think the Effective Altruism movement is great. I was wondering recently
what the most effective way would be to donate money specifically to help the
less fortunate within California, and unfortunately it is not clear to me how
to do it. GiveWell seems to do a pretty good job evaluating charities fighting
diseases in poor countries, so hopefully similar operations spring up to
evaluate other types of charity as well.

~~~
rumcajz
That's because saving a life in a poor country is cheaper that in rich
country. If your goal is no maximize number of lives saved you'd naturally
look at poor countries.

------
quirkot
> Not all of this money was given with the intention of maximising human
> welfare. Take, for instance, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which helps
> children stricken with life-threatening illnesses, by granting “wishes”,
> such as meeting celebrities or visiting theme parks. The typical wish costs
> the foundation around $10,000 to fulfil—heartwarming for the recipient but
> of little help in improving health generally.

This pretty much captures my main complaint about EA. Being mindful about your
philanthropy is a good thing, but EA seems to turn into shaming people who
value things differently.

[edit] I would add that the Make-A-Wish foundation has a very significant
quality of life impact on the kids AND their support network

[edit2] EA = Effective Altrusim (the term was in the original post title, but
has been edited out)

~~~
akvadrako
Are you suggesting donors to make-a-wish actually value making one dying kid
(and his support network) happy more than saving the lives of several?

I doubt that's usually the case because if you consider it for a moment is
seems so unfair and cruel. No, it's probably something else that motivates
their decision...

~~~
contravariant
They probably _do_ value spending $10,000 on making one dying kid happy higher
than $10,000 worth of medical research.

If you claim $10,000 worth of medical research will save the lives of several
people then clearly we're doing something wrong with the other billions we
spend on medical research.

~~~
bobcostas55
$10k worth of malaria nets will save a couple of lives.

~~~
contravariant
That's a fair point, but ultimately people are going to care more about
children that are 'closer' to them. You're free to criticize people for this,
but it probably won't do you any favours.

~~~
kinsomo
> That's a fair point, but ultimately people are going to care more about
> children that are 'closer' to them. You're free to criticize people for
> this, but it probably won't do you any favours.

Also, making charity _too much_ about distant problems and far off research
outcomes factors out the civic and community-level thinking that actually
drives and sustains a lot of charity.

It also makes charity solely the domain of experts. Instead of seeing a
problem firsthand in your first-world community and reacting to fix it, you
have to delegate to someone who you hope knows the highest needs in far off
lands.

~~~
Gnuffles
Our intuition regarding communities stems from a history where we only ever
communicated with those near us. Right now, we are able to go anywhere in the
world within a day. We are able to communicate worldwide within seconds.
Clearly our intuition has not caught up, but maybe given these changes in our
community (which is now far less defined just by some kind of radius around
our location), we should update our actions to reflect this?

It makes sense not to feel morally responsible for things that happen out of
view when you cannot know what is going on and have no way to impact it. Thing
is, we do know a lot about what is going on and we do have tools to impact it.
It just doesn't feel intuitively satisfying. It is possible to internalize
this satisfaction regardless, though.

------
antpls
Why is The Economist being upvoted that much lately? I was a subscriber and
they were a pain to unsubscribe to. Articles are OK but do not contain actual
information or news, imho

------
bjelkeman-again
This is something close to what I work with. Ten years ago we started an
organisation to help international development organisations use IT tools more
effectively. In 2012 we took over the development and operation of a field
data collection system from Water for People and together with them released
it under an open source license. We work with 20+ governments and 200+
international NGOs in providing them with data solutions.

In my opinion, using data in international development work to see what is
effective and how you can improve the work, has by a surprising number of
people working in the sector, not been seen as particularly important. This is
changing.

The awareness that more and better data, as well as the understanding how to
handle the data and working on a sustainable technical infrastructure, has
existed for some time in the sector, but has been slow to come to the
forefront. At the end of the work with the Millennium Development Goals [1] an
independent expert group was set up to give advice to the UN Secretary General
[2] and to highlight this problem (Tim O’Reilly was probably the only person
you would recognise that was part of the group).

But to actually get the sector to change has been very slow progress. An
analysis by a group of organisations have identified the underspending on data
and analytics that is essentially endemic. [4] They estimate that to be able
to track the indicators chosen for the Sustainable Development Goals [4] we
need to spend some US$ 350-500 million/year more than we do today.

(Not that all the indicators in the SDGs are that easy to measure and track. A
colleague in the sector said “Of the full set of indicators (232), 88 are not
backed up by available data or a suitable method to gather it, and 55 have
some form of method but no data. […] Many of them are bordering on the realm
of the unmeasurable”.) [5]

However, there is a change coming, but I don’t think it is happening fast
enough. My opinion is that we won’t be able to achieve the SDGs for 2030
without data and we are not investing enough.

As part of our work we have since 2012 helped 11 governments collect data
about water access and sanitation to cover about 130 million people, mainly in
West and East Africa, in South East Asia and the Pacific. And we are working
with organisations such as UNICEF and WHO, together with governments, to
approach this in a systematic way with long term sustainability for the
processes and systems that get put in place, but it is an uphill struggle.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals)

[2] [http://www.undatarevolution.org](http://www.undatarevolution.org)

[3] Paris21, UNICEF, World Bank, ODI, Earth Institute, Open Data Watch, Simon
Fraser University, UNIDO
[https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&ty...](https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=400&nr=2017&menu=35)

[4]
[https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&ty...](https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=400&nr=2017&menu=35)

[5]
[http://news.trust.org/item/20180524172651-1sjk4/](http://news.trust.org/item/20180524172651-1sjk4/)

------
kingkawn
Let’s see how long the reproducibility crisis takes to show up here too

------
jrochkind1
Not new, and not helpful in my opinion. For a bunch of reasons, including
Goodhart's/Campbell's Law (look em up), and
[http://prospect.org/article/state-debate-lessons-right-
wing-...](http://prospect.org/article/state-debate-lessons-right-wing-
philanthropy)

------
buvanshak
I for one, will never trust the rich (Especially when it is clear when they
pay people to promote their deeds and paint them an angel).

I think what ever they do, they do it to gather more wealth (Even if it is not
apparent for the common man).

For an example, see how gates foundation tried to operate in India [1].

[1]
[http://jacob.puliyel.com/paper.php?id=370](http://jacob.puliyel.com/paper.php?id=370)

~~~
miscreanity
There are wealthy individuals and organizations that seek to make profit from
charitable projects and the example presented is far from the worst;
corruption as seen in the Red Cross is one such issue. However, I expect the
proportion of those instances relative to genuinely good efforts is overblown
thanks to media.

The wealthy are wealthy generally because they look to make sustainable models
where the goal is to avoid simply throwing resources into a pit just because
it feels good to help. Doing that bankrupts everyone - consider a broader
analysis before throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for
life.

~~~
buvanshak
I cannot make much sense of your comment. But let me expand on my original
comment and tell this.

The only charitable work that I consider genuine is the one that you does not
know about. When you read about the work of a person 'x' of a foundation in
papers/media, their work cease to be charity. It is just that the person is
gaining something, in return, other than "feeling good" you mention.
Superficially, or in other words, as shallow as public perception goes, it
will appear as benevolent, and often times, it can be. But there is nothing
that guarantees it, since the end result is not of benevolence, but something
materialistic or sinister.

~~~
gowld
If the only genuine charity is invisible, how can we maintain a society with a
culture of genuine charity? If charity is secret, it's too easy to simply
_not_ do charity, since there are no consequences, neither positive nor
negative reinforcement.

I have my suspicions about the PR motives of
[https://givingpledge.org/](https://givingpledge.org/) , but ultimately, doing
good in exchange for positive PR (a form of "buying advertising") is a deal
I'd take every day.

~~~
438798275
> If the only genuine charity is invisible, how can we maintain a society with
> a culture of genuine charity?

Why would you want to maintain a society that extols charity, 'genuine' or
not? Wouldn't you rather live in a society that doesn't have a need to 'do
good' as a cleanup procedure for the 'bad done.'

Before you say that's a strawman argument, consider that charity exists
because things that should be considered human rights are often tossed aside
as impractical to implement due to the fundamental poverty of the governance
structure.

Here's some interesting tables of numbers of 'charitable giving' that will
reveal your assumptions and biases:

[https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm](https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm)

[https://cdn.vcapps.org/sites/default/files/upload/VCEP%20-%2...](https://cdn.vcapps.org/sites/default/files/upload/VCEP%20-%202016%20Form%20990%20Public%20Disclosure%20Copy.pdf)

[https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/docs/Fidelity-
Charitable-...](https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/docs/Fidelity-
Charitable-990.pdf)

~~~
gowld
Can you clarify this post? I don't understand what it's arguing.

How are fundamental human rights "implemented"? Why would a "right" need an
"implementation"?

You are making some argument about government working poorly? How is that
relevant to charitable spending?

