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87 sats \ 8 replies \ @freetx 8 Oct \ on: Does this story show us the right way to do charity? culture
For a few years I did IT consulting to a non-profit. The question of "effective charity" is a very complex one that is fraught with difficulty. Every rich donor will say "earning the money was much easier than giving it way...."
You're right to question it and there are lots of different arrangements (like your relatives) that don't need to be traditional "give money" arrangements. However they are one-offs and don't scale well....
The issue we face as a society is that those that have an overabundance of wealth want to dedicate some of their wealth into giving back. The result winds up "flooding the zone", that is the sheer amount of money pouring into some programs starts to create perverse incentives.....at a certain point Food Bank programs become drug-addict-subsidy organizations.
There is no clean way to solve this problem....its actually an economic problem of sorts. Much like the flood of capital into the stock markets winds up creating malinvestment, so to it happens in non-profit space. Too many funds pouring into a too concentrated bucket.
I think the Catholic Catechism has a helpful approach to it. In summation, it basically says that "charity should be done at the smallest possible level". That is, its better for you to help the needy family down the street rather than the parish church. Its better the parish church help than the city, better the city help than the state, etc....
This honestly goes back to your elderly relatives example. That solution was a "small scale" of charity. But we are back to the original problem....how do you scale it?
Jimmy Song recently had a podcast that also addressed that same theme, about "earning the money was much easier than giving it way...."
Giving it away would be easier only if you didn't do it carefully.
But with most charities, you scratch the surface just a tiny bit, and instantly find inefficiencies, fraud, misaligned incentives, all kinds of things you don't want to put money into.
Take, for instance, libraries. Andrew Carnegie established a lot of public libraries in the US. And to be honest - I've used libraries a tremendous amount, in my life, and they've been hugely positive.
But now, most libraries are centers of wokedom. Where I use to live, they were shut down during covid for MORE THAN A YEAR (they did have a "hands off" book retrieval service). Actually I think the libraries may have been closed more than 18 months.
And my last experience of the local library, where I lived previously, was being kicked out for not wearing a mask, once they did open again.
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Maybe charity should not scale
I like the example of help your neighbors vs donating to your Parrish
Regarding philanthropy, it’s a status game. Why did Carnegie establish libraries and concert halls and universities? Legacy!
Do people even remember he was a steel magnate?
We are still talking about him today
A few months ago I gave my old car to my handyman. 2005 Infiniti. He is a documented immigrant from Mexico. He can stay. The other 20 million should self deport.
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Maybe charity should not scale
Agree. Its likely impossible to make it scale.
BUT the rich will keep dumping their money into "United Way" and other mega-sized charities and the malinvestment will continue. Why will the rich do that?
Its the same problem Warren Buffet has....if you are trying to donate $200M, trying to find enough small charities at $50K each is impossible....so you wind up giving $25M at a time to the mega-charities. Much like Buffet trying to invest $30B of funds, he can only do that with bluechip stocks, there aren't enough quality small companies to absorb it.
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Didn't Buffet actually give most of his money to the Gates Foundation?
The Gates Foundation, BTW, is a rotten setup. I know some people who worked there.
Another similar story (I remember reading about this a while back and just asked AI to summarize it for me)
Joan Kroc, McDonald's heiress, bequeathed an unprecedented $1.5 billion to The Salvation Army in 2003 for building community (Kroc) centers. However, her will's strict conditions—requiring local matching funds and dictating how the money was used—created significant "golden handcuffs" for the organization. This led to slow, complex implementation, financial sustainability challenges, and concerns about mission drift, widely reported as problematic despite the eventual success of many Kroc Centers.
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Saint Jude’s hospital
City of Hope
Mayo Clinic
Donate money to private hospitals that rely on private donors
She used to own the San Diego Padres
The founder starring Michael Keaton is a great movie
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Give money charter schools
Donate to the military
Donate to air traffic controllers
I agree that rich people have a scaling problem.
Buy a professional sports team.
Build a new stadium.
Donate to cities with high crime and understaffed police departments.
Setup an anti Soros fund
Etc etc
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