Your reply rubbed me the wrong way, as it implies that being poor, unemployed, or homeless are by definition failures. Perhaps you didn't intend that (or perhaps you do believe it). Not looking for a philosophical argument - just stating my opinion contrary to what yours comes across as.
How is being homeless not a failure on multiple levels? You can be poor by choice and happy with it, I agree. But is any sane person homeless by choice? Not traveling, hermit, not able to function in society, or many other cases. Just wanting to live somewhere and able to do work, but not having a home. To me that seems like a failure on multiple levels: country - global situation that allows people to be homeless, local - no community support or path to employment or investment into people, self - well... unless we give some income to everyone, and you can't claim benefits for not being able to work, you're expected to work for a place to live.
Unemployed is an artifact of the economy. I'd like to be successful enough to be unemployed, but rich and not homeless.
It is a failure on many levels - systematic ones, mostly. But if you read OP's post as not singling out the failure as being personally and solely responsible for their plight, rather than as a systematic failure, then we might simply differ on reading it. Donating money to combat homelessness at a systematic level is (in my opinion) probably a good thing. I just didn't get that sentiment in what I saw, though I allow for the (frequent and possible) chance that I am wrong in my interpretation.
This is exactly what I wrote. Not having a community-level support for cases of "you screwed up badly" is a failure. Same for no benefits when "life screws you up badly". Not sure where you see the empathy failure.
If one takes a very mechanical world-view, then yes, you could say that those properties are a signal of failure. Failure to plan, keep a job, save money, etc.
Being very risk-averse myself, I would constitute all of the above under normal situations to be a failing on my part. Abnormal circumstances obviously change the dynamic a bit as they're almost always unavoidable. E.g. natural disasters, war, large-scale riots, etc.
I agree that risk aversion, planning, and other factors are good preventative measures to avoiding homelessness. The contrary case I can think of is the child who is homeless because the parent is. I cannot rightfully view them as having failed.
But a "safety net" enables people to take risks that work out positive for society. E.g. in the US people are much more willing to start a business (something that should be a net positive for society) once they pass the Medicaid eligibility age, since they can be assured they'll have healthcare even if their business fails. Heck, the joint-stock corporation, the big innovation of capitalism, is basically a way to reward failure (by limiting investors' liability in failure cases).
You do need to be careful about perverse incentives, but being homeless or unemployed is so bad for you that I can't imagine a few hundred dollars make it suddenly worth doing deliberately.
Sounds very high minded. I'd research and find a need in your local community. Find some group doing good work already and allow them to expand.
Maybe it's a bigger kitchen for a group feeding the poor. Or a bigger office for college kids that are tutoring kids in math. If you take some time you will find something that has personal meaning for you.
As a sibling commenter somewhat flippantly notes, orgs like GiveWell, 80,000 hours (publisher of the post), Centre for Effective Altruism, and Giving What We Can are all focused on highly effective non-personal philanthropy. They are targeted toward "logical givers" and "impact investors" who do not need the sort of donor centric language and personal touches that many NPOs rely on for their fund development strategies.
This can be seen by orgs like OpenPhil that won't even take unsolicited minor donations.
These are orgs that are supporting "truly altruistic" giving, and trying to remove the personal connection from giving. These organization tend to use lines of thinking that remind me personally (though may or may not be inspired by) Mylan Engel and "Taking Hunger Seriously" (http://www.niu.edu/engel/_pdf/TakingHungerSeriously.pdf)
You could always check that box on your tax form that says you wish to make an additional contribution. That is, assuming taxes benefit the common good.
I've been struggling with this a little bit - my income / spending currently results in me taking the standard deductible, so I'm not able to take advantage of this tax deduction. Therefore, it makes the most sense for me to hold off on donating, and save the money until I'm not taking the standard deduction, and then donate it all at once.
I've been shuffling money off into a separate savings account every month to get into the habit, and then I plan to use the balance of this account once I am in a situation where I am able to take advantage of this tax deduction. I do still donate money out of this account, just not a substantial account.
edit: I went back and read the article now :) - this chart [0] was helpful. If you're at the beginning of your career, this makes the argument for holding off on significant donation even stronger.
I do a similar thing, but I have a fairly aggressive portfolio on Betterment that I store my eventual philanthropy in. I fund it out of my credit card's cash back, and unexpected extra income. It's very frustrating to not be able to take advantage of tax deductible gifts seemingly just because I don't own a home!
If you donate the investment directly to a non-profit, you will be able to deduct the full value of the investment, and won't have to pay capital gains on it.
Keeping the money in an investment account is a fairly good idea - I should have enough by the end of the year to make this worthwhile.
I worked briefly for a philanthropic organization that had high visibility among super wealthy people. They accepted whatever donations, but didn't really pay attention unless you had at least $100K. The vast majority of their endowment came in multimillion dollar gifts from people who wanted hospitals named after themselves.
It's unfortunate that HN readers would rather run through the weeds trying to add zero to infinity, rather than try to actually make a real difference. If we could make medical research donations more efficient, for example, we could make a big difference. Say, for instance, we identified the best medical research charities, and have people donate to those.
I said start a company. That's different than investing in someone else's company. You can't be much of an investor with $20k, that's about what Y Combinator gives a team for an initial seed. That money is quickly followed by VC money.
One thing this article didn't mention is giving money towards research. There's no lack of underfunded labs filled with scientists researching rarer diseases or unique approaches to humanitarian issues. 20K could go a long way in helping these smaller labs. It would take some searching and talking on the giver's end to find the right cause and scientists he or she trusts, but it wouldn't be too hard with the powers of the internet.
The Open Philanthropy Project is aiming to fund research. I'd prefer to let them do the research working out where to donate, rather than picking scientists myself.
No, I would see that as taking the initiative to actually understand the projects that you're funding for yourself. In doing this you become more invested in that cause and the community surrounding it.
I have a lab that's trying to find a way to use beer consumption to prevent cancer.
But seriously, make sure to find an objective measurement of a research topic's plausibility before you give the money. There's no lack of research projects where a donation is statistically identical to setting the money on fire.
I do not have a quote under hand, but preserving our history is important to make us better. Most of the recent history would already be lost if archive.org was not there. I do not see how giving to this cause could turn wrong.
It's probably shipping $20,000 of iodized salt to the developing world:
Iodine deficiency is a leading cause of preventable mental impairment, as iodine is a micronutrient crucial to brain development. An estimated 2 billion people-- almost a third of the earth’s population--have low iodine intake and are at risk for suffering from the complications of iodine deficiency.
Eradication of iodine deficiency is highly cost-effective— worldwide, the cost of salt iodization per year is estimated at $0.02-0.05 per child covered, and the cost per child's death averted is $1000 and per disability-adjusted life year gained is $34-36.
haha, well I think that was implied. It's not as if you can literally write "the developing world" on a shipping label and just pour in a ton of morton's.
I agree that the advice given is overly vague. GP should list an actionable way to to give iodized salt.
> What about delivery? Without a delivery mechanism to those who need it this would be a well meaning but not very useful.
It doesn't, which is why it's a really bad idea, there exist charities that can deliver it already just give them the money. Even if you could get it to people they possibly won't use it without the complex knowledge of local issues.
I agree micronutrients are a very promising intervention, along with some other cheap, proven health interventions like malaria nets (I mention Against Malaria Foundation in the post).
Here's a list: http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/201...
You also need to find a competent group to implement the intervention. That's basically what the charity evaluators GiveWell and Giving What We Can do.
Yup. Now, logistically, how hard is this? It seems promising.
Let’s assume to do this we’d want to dedicate at least one person full-time to this. There’s the sourcing of the iodized salt, determining how one ships such a thing (presumably overseas), and to what specific place it should go. I assume there’s customs to get the shipment across. Then, once it’s there, how it should be distributed.
Phew, that’s sounds like more than one person’s worth of work, and that’s just the first shipment. We need to repeat the process – including raising more funds.
I assume this person that’s hired is desirable for their logistical skills. Let’s imagine they already have money in the bank, and so will work for less than the market would otherwise pay them. How about $60K/year? Add supplies, taxes and benefits to that, I can see $100K per year for this rare value of an employee.
How far did our $20K go? Not very. Everyone is skilled and honest and working hard, but we find that $20K doesn’t supply $20K of iodized salt to people in need.
In fact, it mostly went to the salary of the skilled Westerner who is our organization. Now we see why people create charities, but also why it’s hard for charities to meet their mission even when things like malaria netting are cheap.
To be clear, this is not cynicism. It’s just that if it were a simply problem of multiplying dollars times cheap-but-effective product, it would already be solved.
Shipping salt is less effective than adding iodine to salt that's already being shipped. Paying someone to make these connections is expensive, but directly lowers costs over just shipping iodized salt. In the end you might average spending 50:50 on manpower vs materials but get 10x value in iodized salt shipped vs cost of said salt.
Don't take this wrongly, but this suggestion seemingly has cognitive bias; you're too focused on one issue. Even if you're really concerned about this particular issue, than helping the existing production/Logistics chain of salt manufacturing to add Iodine is a better spend than shipping $20,000 worth of iodized salt.
If you want to be utilitarian about it, maximizing common good derived from a modest donation, then pick (a) the venture that will produce the greatest gain in common good if implemented, and (b) an organization with a low administrative overhead that is in your opinion doing a good job of making progress towards (a). That is the 80/20 calculation. You'll never know if you got it right, but it has the best chance of doing something rather than nothing.
For my money, (a) is ending degenerative aging by periodic repair of that damage that causes it, and (b) is the SENS Research Foundation. There is no other single cause of death and suffering as large as the biological wear and tear that causes degeneration and death in aging. There is no other organization I know of that will definitely put all donations to research, advocacy, and scientific organization relating to this task. There are other single-disease or single-field patient advocate and research organizations out there that do a little work relevant to age-related damage, but you've got no way to ensure a donation as small as a few thousand dollars will actually go to the aging-relevant 1% of what they do. Even cancer and stem cell fields are doing a large amount of work that has no bearing on the best path forward.
In fact I'm personally donating $25K to the SENS Research Foundation this year, and running a matching campaign in search of others willing to do the same.
There are other options for using modest amounts of money that are more of a lottery; use your money to persuade other people to give money, try to grow your money to give later, etc, etc. But these are much more unreliable, or for a few thousand dollars just not even worth trying versus outright donation to a cause.
Planning to give later is a VERY effective use of money for early career professionals (who will be able to make stable investments over long periods of time and then give larger payouts when their own situations are more stable as well) or people who do not as strongly believe in a given cause as you do (who can wait until the causes they believe in are more stable or until they have researched more sufficiently).
I have a retirement portfolio and a wealth building portfolio. The latter is currently funded by my credit cards cash back policy, aggressively seeks market gains, and forms the basis of my personal philanthropic efforts. My giving currently focuses on arts organizations and local community development, as that's a personal passion. My long term giving is hunger focused, where a $50 donation is less meaningful and it makes sense for me to grow my money first.
Another option is a local Church that support missions such as building schools for impoverished nations. I support a church that does this along with a missionary that runs an after school sports program in very poor area of Elkhart, Indiana. This helps gets kids off of streets, gives them food, shelter and a develops the community. Benefit of this is that I get to actually see the faces of the youth this impacts both in my backyard as well as in other nations.
Say what you will about religion but there are a lot of people out there who have a heart that yearns to help others, I don't care if they do it in the name of a god or not, the fact of the matter is they are going out there every day and touching peoples lives.
it certainly helps more than it hurts, but you can find the same thing without the baggage in many different charities. I've seen one too many missionaries get screwed because rumors overseas start telling congregations they aren't doing religion the right way. Usually it's just one supporting congregation and nothing comes of it, just hard times for the missionary, but I have seen one case personally where some epic rumors started and every supporting church pulled out at once and left a guy stranded overseas away from his family. The guy apparent was doing religion wrong or something. I was acquaintances with the guy and spoke with him regularly, although I never did get the low down on the whole story so maybe he deserves it for all I know.
The concern here is that the purpose of a church mission is first to convert locals to Christianity, then to provide follow-on benefits like education and economic development. Donating the same amount of money to a secular organization should create more of those secondary benefits, because no effort needs to be spent on collecting followers for Christ.
However, you are right that church missions seem to have the easiest access to donations and labor, so they might be able to provide better secular education out of sheer scale.
> The concern here is that the purpose of a church mission is first to convert locals to Christianity, then to provide follow-on benefits like education and economic development.
So cynical. This definitely isn't true across the board. I grew up Southern Baptist, where charity was literally treated like a foot-in-the-door to evangelization and saving souls was the #1 agenda. So I get your sentiment. But in other veins of Christianity like Catholicism (which is roughly where I am now), the theology around charity is very different and it really is about serving others as Christ would--no strings attached. I think the proportion of Christian charities that behave as you describe is pretty small compared to those that focus on service first.
It's not a particularly interesting question. It's almost the definition of a wrong question.
Most smaller church / religious outreach organizations that focus on poverty _within their local community_ end up being very efficient. But a soup kitchen is already a huge asterisk on the word common. You can't reliably feed humans with a global strategy: successful charity only happens locally.
This blog post looks like a reasonable assessment of the allocation of US$20,000 of capital in isolation. But it's clear that such a small amount of money can't possibly have an impact on the global population of humans, taken in isolation. By definition, any assessment of the common good depends on all common actions:
If you want to know what the common good is, it always depends on what everyone else does.
> Is it possible you are thinking superficially and not considering the longer term ramifications of actions?
No.
> That isn't a definition. That's a sales speak type platitude. What exactly is "the common good"?
Seems like you're misunderstanding my connection of "common" to "every single human" here. There is no way to meaningfully divide twenty grand amongst eight billion people. When we discuss "human rights" we are usually conflating positive government action and negative government action. Providing a minimum set of non-controversial services from the government (like "food" for example) is never the right answer in these debates.
To wit: If you have $20,000 sitting around, and you don't know what to do with it? Fuck you. As a general analysis of the impact any given $20k has in isolation, this post is interesting.
"> Is it possible you are thinking superficially and not considering the longer term ramifications of actions?
No."
Manifestly a wrong answer. Examples of correct answers would be "I don't believe so", "I doubt it", "It doesn't appear likely from my perspective".
"Impact" and "Fuck You" and "Post is Interesting" aside, I still ask... what comprises the common good? If you really think about this you may find the answer is not as easy or as certain as you appear to believe.
You don't understand that "common good" is impossible to define. This is one of the most basic discoveries of utilitarian ethical theories. It is sensible to ask what someone means if they use the term "common good" within the context of a proposal, but there is no general meaning of common good. There absolutely can't be.
"You don't understand that "common good" is impossible to define"
Maybe I do understand that. I'm not "sea-lioning" you at all. I'm just responding to a derisive and dismissive remark you made to a (IMOP) valid point. I don't necessarily believe in the validity of "discoveries" of utilitarian ethics. But I do believe "good" has, as you say, no general meaning. Which is why it is an interesting question.
I think that's not only an excellent question, but really the only interesting question.
If you cannot determine what the common good is -- if you cannot define your goals, then , as the Chesire Cat observed, it really doesn't matter which way you choose to go.
My understanding is that it isn't even true for professional startup investors, and they have preferential access to dealflow that your $20,000 doesn't.
The median return is certainly lower, but the expected return at least should be higher. So most startup investments, and probably most startup investors will fail, but some will succeed spectacularly. The point is, if everyone who is interested in investing to eventually donate did so by investing in startups, their aggregate returns should be higher than if they invested in the S&P or whatever instead - so it's superior even if most of them end up with a negative return. (As opposed to when you're investing to fund your own retirement, in which case you don't so much care how others' investments go.)
My understanding is that the median fund underperforms the S&P, and that investment managers at pension funds and endowments put money into VC funds because their strategies require them to put a slice of money into that asset class.
And, again: that's the outcome for investors that have preferred access to dealflow.
I don't have evidence to back up my assertion - only the theory that in an efficient market riskier assets should be priced appropriately. So I don't know for a fact that the expected return is higher. That said, the fact that the median fund underperforms the S&P doesn't necessarily prove that the expected return on an individual startup investment will do so. For one thing, funds will have overhead - probably significant overhead in startup investing. (Of course, they provide valuable diversification, but as mentioned above, that shouldn't be the priority in this particular case.) Also, even if the median fund underforms before costs, the average might still outperform, if the winners are relatively concentrated.
The application of the EMH to a market as overhyped, information-poor and illiquid a market as startup investment is questionable. And another consequence of competitive markets is that funds with board seats, insider information and ability to negotiate preferential terms based on expected follow-on investment take on less risk than you when investing, but they shape the market prices for the asset.
$20k is friends & family or crowdfunding money, and I suspect that whilst there will be some winners, the median return on those asset classes will be -100%
All good points. And I agree that the median return will likely be -100%. Honestly I think you're probably right that even the average return will probably be underwhelming, even if theoretically it shouldn't be. I am curious though. I certainly wouldn't invest my money in startups on the theory that on average I would end up with more to donate, even if I intended to donate 100% of the proceeds regardless...
My reasoning is that if you accept something like the efficient market hypothesis, investing in startups is higher risk than investing in the S&P500, so the return should be higher. You could also just buy the S&P500 with leverage.
If I had the money, I think I'd give half to my local primary school. They could do with some books and PCs.
The other half I spend in Uganda, I'd just do random acts of kindness. Buy medicine for someone, school books for a kid. Shoes or clothed for someone else. Would be a really fun way to spend the money.
Rich people seem so clinical about their money. Get yer hands dirty, talk to some people in need.
In seriousness, GiveWell ranks charities by their effectiveness. You could give to one of their top charities: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities "These are evidence-backed, thoroughly vetted, underfunded organizations."
Edit: (in reference to z3ugma's comment) further down that page is actually a charity whose mission is to aid salt iodization programmes in developing countries. I honestly had no idea this was even an issue until now.
GiveWell is great, and I seriously considered making "give to GiveWell recommended charities" the recommendation of the article. However, I think it's even better to give to the Open Philanthropy Project (a collaboration between GiveWell and Good Ventures) or to give to GiveWell itself, rather than their recommended charities (which has the effect of increasing OpenPhil's funds). It depends on the extent to which you share GiveWell's values though.
It's only 20 grand. As I tried to mention below, aim higher. You've got the nerds running around in the weeds here on HN.
This other story on HN is not gaining any traction but it's interesting because a 33 year old Malayasian billionaire is financing using Watson to assist with cancer treatment.
"Jho Low, the 33-year-old billionaire who is bankrolling the $50 million MD Anderson project with Watson, said the effort grew out of his grandfather’s treatment for leukemia in Malaysia. Low said that he felt fortunate to be able to connect his grandfather’s doctors remotely with MD Anderson specialists to devise the best treatment plan. He believes everyone, rich or poor, should have the same access to that kind of expertise."
If you're a young personal at the start of your career, then I agree it could easily make more sense to invest it in yourself (e.g. education, trying out a startup, graduate school).
Whole-heartedly agreed. Until you have more money than you know what to do with, the expected social returns from just about everywhere you put your money would be far dwarfed by the returns you'd get from investing in yourself and giving back once you've got enough piled up to where it doesn't matter one whit whether you have it or not.
That doesn't make sense to me. If you give money to poorer people, it allows them to invest in themselves at a higher rate of return than you can achieve.
No; ten people accruing compound interest (for example) on $100 is not nearly as good as one person accruing compound interest on $1000, and then distributing the dividends. Why? Because fixed costs eat away the interest gains of the ten much more than the one.
Every system has friction. You have to concentrate power to overcome friction and get things done. We'd be knocking off the world's problems a lot faster if we could "focus fire" on them. Ten diseases that might each take a decade to cure with 1/10th the donation could be solved half the time or less if each disease got a year of all the donations. But charity is more about signalling your clever pet cause than global optimization of future world-states, so nobody will let go of their second-best (or, realistically, 897th-best) charity.
If it is indeed socially optimal to concentrate wealth, then we should advocate a regressive tax policy and encourage the poor to donate to the upper middle class.
Do you know of published research that supports this conclusion? I'm honestly curious.
It's probably not gaining traction because much of Jho Low's wealth comes from (allegedly) the embezzlement and misappropriation of money from a state-funded Malaysian investment fund. Just google Jho Low and 1MDB. The case currently threatens to destabilize the Malaysian government.
This would be the most optimal use of $20k IMHO - giving to an organization that guides donations to more honest, better operated charities means more people effectively helped. $20k could be used to cover hosting and operations costs so that people like you and I have a resource to show us what will give the most bang for our collective buck.
Billions of dollars go to charities annually but high administrative costs and poor management means only a fraction reaches the intended target.
What are the benefits to giving to Open Philanthropy Project / GiveWell / Giving What We Can Trust over donating directly to the charities they recommend?
The recommended charities don't change often, so it wouldn't be much of a time saving. And it puts a lot of power into the trusts' hands.
OpenPhil is planning to give to substantially different charities from GiveWell recommended charities:
http://www.open-philanthropy.org/
Giving to GiveWell or Giving What We Can means your money is spent on research and advocacy, probably resulting in a greater total impact:
https://80000hours.org/2015/06/donating-to-giving-what-we-ca...
Giving to GiveWell also has the effect of increasing the funds available to OpenPhil, since OpenPhil (to some extent) makes up the short fall in GiveWell's funding.
The Giving What We Can Trust is just a convenient way to have a Donor Advised Fund. The money goes to whichever charities you like.
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/trust
What's really interesting is that if you are (far) less intelligent than the average person you should almost certainly destroy it (assuming you can't just give it to someone smarter than you.)
This assures you don't do something stupid and guarantees everyone else is at least a tiny bit better off (because their money is now worth more).
Use it to lobby people of influence to release even more funds for your hobby-horse charity. More abstract; use it to fund the creation of a site that's a merger of Getup.org and Kickstarter so that we can crowd-source lobbying. That way the common person can compete with the petrochemical and military industrial companies by dropping a dollar or ten on their chosen hobby-horse issue. Small donations multiplied by many participants will result in considerable funds.
Politicians are an interface to policy and money is the API.
On the other hand, and this is something I've always felt about Bill Gates, I'd need to see a full economic accounting of all the loss to global society from their monopolostic rent-seeking behaviour, before I'd believe that their giving the profits away to charity would counterbalance that behaviour.
despite the many ways you could interpret "common good", i'd bet that feeding a couple of kids healthy food for several years would rank up there with just about anything.
He's wrong. Spending 20k on a hybrid car facilitates demand for a hybrid car, which leads to better hybrid cars. If your buying it to better the environment, you don't get what your are doing.
You make a decent point, but I think you're being downvoted due to a mix of poor grammar and the unsupported (and rather blunt) statement, "He's wrong." Yes there is a greater benefit to buying a hybrid than the direct CO2 offset; however, I strongly suspect that no, that doesn't make it superior to the other options, so his main point stands.
He's wrong. Spending 20k on a hybrid car facilitates demand for a hybrid car, which leads to better hybrid cars. If your buying it to directly (rather than indirectly) improve the environment, you don't get what your are doing.
That's true it's another effect, but I doubt it means hybrid cars win e.g. it seems you could have a greater impact by speeding up the development of hybrid cars just by giving the $20,000 in cash directly to Toyota.
Keep the money for yourself, and spend 100 hours of your time talking to a poor person. Help them find a better job, or make a better financial plan, or eat healthier, or just listen to what they have to say and tell them they can call you if they need someone.
This is by far the biggest impact a person like Paul Buchheit could make on the world. Even if his $20k could go 100% to a better water bottle in Africa, or a more efficient hybrid, or whatever, it will pale in comparison to how he could personally change someone's life if he walked up to them and took the time to try.
So go blow $20k at the club or on a cool car, after you've earned it by hitting the streets and solving your neighbor's problems for 100 hours. Someday your neighbors might do the same ;)
This doesn't do much for the common good though. Let's dive into Bentham and see how good this is. Obviously the hedonistic calculus is not completely numeric, but we can do some work here. Let's compare malaria nets with getting a poor person a job.
Intensity: How strong is the pleasure? -- Well, many "common good" philanthropic causes deal with terrible diseases. That said, getting a job probably is better than not getting malaria. Passive vs active.
Duration: How long will the pleasure last? -- Here, not getting malaria is obviously longer lasting than a job. Jobs go away. Malaria nets when properly utilized are pretty solid for the long term.
Certainty or uncertainty: How likely or unlikely is it that the pleasure will occur? -- Probably equal here.
Propinquity or remoteness: How soon will the pleasure occur? -- Probably equal here.
Fecundity: The probability that the action will be followed by sensations of the same kind. -- This one is hardest to quantify. There's obviously a ratchet quality to someone experiencing success.
Purity: The probability that it will not be followed by sensations of the opposite kind. --- Malaria nets DEFINITELY can win out here. See above notes re: firing.
Extent: How many people will be affected? -- And here malaria nets take the cake and win the entire calculus. 20k invested in malaria nets will affect MANY more people than your hundred hours.
It's not a given that the best use of "$20k worth of time/effort" is in the kinds of labor that you, personally, can produce. Nor is it a given that, even if you make $200 an hour, that you'd be worth $200 an hour on the talking-to-a-poor-person market. For that much you could likely pay for five times as many person-hours from trained social workers! (Which is a fairly good use of the money, come to think of it- a very practical form of education.) Likewise, if you consider you're taking the role of a social worker yourself (and likely without even a degree in said work,) it's only fair to "pay" yourself what real social workers make.
But I mean, if you really want to talk yourself into buying that car, go for it I guess. :)
Point taken, but I could make the reverse point: "if you really want to talk yourself out of speaking to that scary-looking man on your block, spend some money with the Gates Foundation instead!"
I think it's fine to spend money on charities and other social causes, but my point is that many don't have the courage to face the problems they can solve without money. I think that's the best answer to Paul Buchheit's original question.
I think it's sad that the author of this blog post, and other commenters here, truly believe that by running some numbers they can prove how much their money is changing the world.
Changing the life of one person in a community can change that whole community. The world is not made of numbers, it's made of people. You have the best chance of making a big change in the world, if you focus on helping the people who live right next to you.
> Changing the life of one person in a community can change that whole community. The world is not made of numbers, it's made of people. You have the best chance of making a big change in the world, if you focus on helping the people who live right next to you.
This sounds like unsupported platitude. What about helping someone local will help the overall world more than malaria nets or vaccinations? It gives you good feelings, but it's not actually BETTER.
There may be an argument that pulling someone out of poverty in the US makes them more likely to create change in the world themselves than pulling someone out of poverty abroad, but I'd find that to be tenuous.
Thank you for that. That's the stance that I naturally gravitate to, but one I have been doubting lately. Your comment is encouraging.
This might not be the most effective way to steer your resources towards common good, but there's this persnickety failure scenario where a man in need may receive material support but still lack a human connection and a sense of belonging.
Of course, you're still literally trading off human lives for a warm fuzzy feeling of personal involvement.
I'm looking forward to Peter Singer's upcoming Coursera lectures on effective altruism, I want to see him develop this position with rigor. Meanwhile http://www.givewell.org/ has a good analysis.
I'm sorry, if you're serious, this is the most entitled and egotistical suggestion I've ever read in my life, it's kind of shocking. The best way to spend $20K charitably is to bill oneself $200/hr and spend 100 hours sharing one's massive brain with homeless people by giving them... a talking? (While, again, billing $200/hour for it.)
Then spend that well-earned money on hookers and blow? You've made a difference?
I don't think it's helpful to others to go clubbing, in fact it's not an activity I'd do myself if I had that much money (nor would I waste money on a car).
My point is that the $20k can't help someone as much as you can personally.
So someone who is homeless and forced to beg or commit petty theft in order to eat would appreciate a chat more than $20k? You should try that and mention you're paying yourself $200 an hour because you think that's better for them.
100 hours is nowhere near enough time to meaningfully change someone's life. You'll spend that long just gaining their trust -- and why should they follow your advice, anyway?
This doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it's a much bigger investment than 100 hours.
It's nowhere near enough time in most cases. If you're justifying this volunteer work based on billing yourself, what are you going to say to the person with which you've made a relationship? "Sorry, your hundred hours are up, I gotta get back to my routine now."
Though I disagree with some of the logistics of this comment (like paying yourself or 'earning' a car), I agree that sometimes what people need are more people, not money or handouts or programs. There are some problems that can't be solved just by throwing money at them. Time and commitment are valuable resources as well. There are lots of people willing to donate money towards a cause. But how many would, say, foster a kid? That's a huge time commitment and an emotional commitment as well. It's also riskier on your end because you open yourself up to all the heartache that human relationships can bring.
It's weird how so many commenters here seem obsessed with this utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest amount of people" approach to charity. Option A gives clean drinking water to 1000 people. Option B adds a drop in the bucket of funding for breast cancer research. Option C helps one child escape a life of violence on the streets. Who are you to look at these and try to quantity which has done the greatest good? It's one thing to compare the effectiveness of programs in achieving their own goals, it's another thing to try and rank totally different humanitarian efforts. These types of things can't be quantified.
I was focusing on what to do with money in the article. I agree that sometimes time is needed instead.
It's definitely hard to compare the effects of different humanitarian efforts. The problem is that you have to choose something. Whenever you spend money to you're acting based on an implicit ranking. Rather than throw up our hands with "this can't be quantified" and give randomly, or give according to your whims, I think we should try to make the best decisions we can.
The original commenter made a suggestion to exchange money for time on the giver's end and I think that's valid suggestion. I don't remember suggesting one to throw up his hands and give out money randomly. I was only arguing against the purely utilitarian approach that some HN commenters seem to have in selecting where to spend one's money.
Wait, so just walk up to a poor person and say "hey, I'm going to rescue you?" Then give them all your "advice" they probably don't care to hear?
I have a lot of very poor family that make a lot of very poor financial choices. Unless they ask for my advice, I won't say a word - its very rude otherwise.
"Keep the money for yourself, and spend 100 hours of your time talking to a poor person."
The rich have been telling the poor what to do since bibibical times, and before."
I don't think I have ever heard much value in any of their quips? Sure, they offer advice, but it's always advice that helped them in their unique situation.
They always leave out the important stuff; like just how much
help, support(including emotional) they received from family. The school tuition, business advice, the garage in order to tinker in, money, attorneys that don't advertise , trust funds, good medical care when needed, the rehab, the pat on the back when the world decides to treat them like the poor, etc.)
I was in Barnes & Noble the other night(my exciting Friday nights). There was a guy who obviously had a lot of problems(from the looks of it--a mental disorder, and a lack of money) from my twisted perspective. A lady decided she was going to help him. Help him loudly--so everyone sipping their $4 drinks, and coffee cake--could hear her "helpful" sentiments. She loudly offered him $10, but "only use it for food?" She then asked him "What's the problem?"
He walked away in embarrassment. I will never forget the pain on his face.
So give money without strings. Give advice if the poor person asks for it. In my county(Marin County); I can honestly say that if not from the early support these rich kids received, many would be homeless, or stuck in nowhere jobs.
Imagine a person working a minimum wage job with $10k in credit card debt due to a family member's unplanned medical expenses. Now imagine which would help them more: 100 hours of you telling that they need to increase their earning power to pay off their credit card debt? Or $20k to immediately pay off their credit card debt and build a rainy day fund? I don't think poor people are so ignorant that 100 hours of your advice is going to be worth $20k to them, no offense.
Honestly, your answer just seems like a shield for selfishness. $20k is a significant sum of money that would make a significant difference in other people's lives.
I had the opportunity to speak with some Bangladeshi labor organizers who help workers organize unions in the textile factories there. It sounds like they are doing some great work[0][1]. Organizers' salaries are apparently well under five hundred USD per month, and they are on the front lines of a struggle against the global wage race to the bottom and unsafe working conditions. There are some organizations I've worked with in the US that have connections with some of them, and I am strongly considering to these groups in Bangladesh.
The main question is whether or not this will simply lead to these jobs being pushed to even poorer countries with even lower wages -- though that would probably help those poorer countries.
There's a crisis-pregnancy center a block from where I live (in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA). I do volunteer work there, and one of my friends is their director of child-care:
They do great work helping poor women in Saint Louis and their already-born children through difficult times. In addition to food, shelter and other basics, they provide professional counseling (many of their clients struggle with drug addiction) and try to help their clients get a solid footing with respect to employment and a safe place to live after they finish the program (about six weeks to several months after their child is born). Great attention is given to making sure the clients' children get to school on time, do their homework and are being given proper care.
I know the organization to be extremely thrifty – nothing goes to waste and they are very careful regarding how they spend money donated to the center. The organization also owns and runs a couple of resale shops in the same neighborhood, where many of the clients take their first steps (or first steps in awhile) carrying out job responsibilities, working under a manager. All proceeds from those shops flow back into the crisis-pregnancy center.
191 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] threadGiving money to failing schools rewards failing schools.
Giving money to the poor and unemployed rewards being poor and unemployed.
Giving money to the homeless rewards being homeless.
Use the money to create opportunity, not to reward failure.
Unemployed is an artifact of the economy. I'd like to be successful enough to be unemployed, but rich and not homeless.
Being very risk-averse myself, I would constitute all of the above under normal situations to be a failing on my part. Abnormal circumstances obviously change the dynamic a bit as they're almost always unavoidable. E.g. natural disasters, war, large-scale riots, etc.
You do need to be careful about perverse incentives, but being homeless or unemployed is so bad for you that I can't imagine a few hundred dollars make it suddenly worth doing deliberately.
Maybe it's a bigger kitchen for a group feeding the poor. Or a bigger office for college kids that are tutoring kids in math. If you take some time you will find something that has personal meaning for you.
Why should personal meaningfulness be an important criteria?
This can be seen by orgs like OpenPhil that won't even take unsolicited minor donations.
These are orgs that are supporting "truly altruistic" giving, and trying to remove the personal connection from giving. These organization tend to use lines of thinking that remind me personally (though may or may not be inspired by) Mylan Engel and "Taking Hunger Seriously" (http://www.niu.edu/engel/_pdf/TakingHungerSeriously.pdf)
I'm sure the money will be spent wisely.
I'd recommend http://machineproject.com/ for the HN crowd
Also funding for workshops/education through makerspace type groups.
Also funding for clean water infrastructure in 3rd world regions.
I've been shuffling money off into a separate savings account every month to get into the habit, and then I plan to use the balance of this account once I am in a situation where I am able to take advantage of this tax deduction. I do still donate money out of this account, just not a substantial account.
edit: I went back and read the article now :) - this chart [0] was helpful. If you're at the beginning of your career, this makes the argument for holding off on significant donation even stronger.
[0] https://3d4k2r1b9zry49ki142owdm5-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
Keeping the money in an investment account is a fairly good idea - I should have enough by the end of the year to make this worthwhile.
https://philanthropy.com/interactives/giving-usa-2015
If you really want to make a big difference, start a company, create jobs, make millions then donate a larger sum of money.
http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
Their top two recommendations were invest in a startup, or give to the Gates foundation.
But seriously, make sure to find an objective measurement of a research topic's plausibility before you give the money. There's no lack of research projects where a donation is statistically identical to setting the money on fire.
Very very true.
Iodine deficiency is a leading cause of preventable mental impairment, as iodine is a micronutrient crucial to brain development. An estimated 2 billion people-- almost a third of the earth’s population--have low iodine intake and are at risk for suffering from the complications of iodine deficiency.
Eradication of iodine deficiency is highly cost-effective— worldwide, the cost of salt iodization per year is estimated at $0.02-0.05 per child covered, and the cost per child's death averted is $1000 and per disability-adjusted life year gained is $34-36.
I agree that the advice given is overly vague. GP should list an actionable way to to give iodized salt.
1. same 'who do I write on the shipping label' concern
2. assumes a sufficient existing salt supply (perhaps these people already needed salt, so this aid healed two birds with one bandaid)
3. assumes knowledge about proper iodization (ratios, sanitation, etc)
It doesn't, which is why it's a really bad idea, there exist charities that can deliver it already just give them the money. Even if you could get it to people they possibly won't use it without the complex knowledge of local issues.
Similar - http://www.luckyironfish.com/
You also need to find a competent group to implement the intervention. That's basically what the charity evaluators GiveWell and Giving What We Can do.
Here's a promising group specialising in micronutrient supplementation in particular: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/top-charities/project-health...
Let’s assume to do this we’d want to dedicate at least one person full-time to this. There’s the sourcing of the iodized salt, determining how one ships such a thing (presumably overseas), and to what specific place it should go. I assume there’s customs to get the shipment across. Then, once it’s there, how it should be distributed.
Phew, that’s sounds like more than one person’s worth of work, and that’s just the first shipment. We need to repeat the process – including raising more funds.
I assume this person that’s hired is desirable for their logistical skills. Let’s imagine they already have money in the bank, and so will work for less than the market would otherwise pay them. How about $60K/year? Add supplies, taxes and benefits to that, I can see $100K per year for this rare value of an employee.
How far did our $20K go? Not very. Everyone is skilled and honest and working hard, but we find that $20K doesn’t supply $20K of iodized salt to people in need.
In fact, it mostly went to the salary of the skilled Westerner who is our organization. Now we see why people create charities, but also why it’s hard for charities to meet their mission even when things like malaria netting are cheap.
To be clear, this is not cynicism. It’s just that if it were a simply problem of multiplying dollars times cheap-but-effective product, it would already be solved.
http://www.saltinstitute.org/news-articles/iodized-salt/
For my money, (a) is ending degenerative aging by periodic repair of that damage that causes it, and (b) is the SENS Research Foundation. There is no other single cause of death and suffering as large as the biological wear and tear that causes degeneration and death in aging. There is no other organization I know of that will definitely put all donations to research, advocacy, and scientific organization relating to this task. There are other single-disease or single-field patient advocate and research organizations out there that do a little work relevant to age-related damage, but you've got no way to ensure a donation as small as a few thousand dollars will actually go to the aging-relevant 1% of what they do. Even cancer and stem cell fields are doing a large amount of work that has no bearing on the best path forward.
In fact I'm personally donating $25K to the SENS Research Foundation this year, and running a matching campaign in search of others willing to do the same.
There are other options for using modest amounts of money that are more of a lottery; use your money to persuade other people to give money, try to grow your money to give later, etc, etc. But these are much more unreliable, or for a few thousand dollars just not even worth trying versus outright donation to a cause.
I have a retirement portfolio and a wealth building portfolio. The latter is currently funded by my credit cards cash back policy, aggressively seeks market gains, and forms the basis of my personal philanthropic efforts. My giving currently focuses on arts organizations and local community development, as that's a personal passion. My long term giving is hunger focused, where a $50 donation is less meaningful and it makes sense for me to grow my money first.
Why is it less meaningful?
Say what you will about religion but there are a lot of people out there who have a heart that yearns to help others, I don't care if they do it in the name of a god or not, the fact of the matter is they are going out there every day and touching peoples lives.
However, you are right that church missions seem to have the easiest access to donations and labor, so they might be able to provide better secular education out of sheer scale.
So cynical. This definitely isn't true across the board. I grew up Southern Baptist, where charity was literally treated like a foot-in-the-door to evangelization and saving souls was the #1 agenda. So I get your sentiment. But in other veins of Christianity like Catholicism (which is roughly where I am now), the theology around charity is very different and it really is about serving others as Christ would--no strings attached. I think the proportion of Christian charities that behave as you describe is pretty small compared to those that focus on service first.
https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/the-meaning-of...
Most smaller church / religious outreach organizations that focus on poverty _within their local community_ end up being very efficient. But a soup kitchen is already a huge asterisk on the word common. You can't reliably feed humans with a global strategy: successful charity only happens locally.
This blog post looks like a reasonable assessment of the allocation of US$20,000 of capital in isolation. But it's clear that such a small amount of money can't possibly have an impact on the global population of humans, taken in isolation. By definition, any assessment of the common good depends on all common actions:
If you want to know what the common good is, it always depends on what everyone else does.
Is it possible you are thinking superficially and not considering the longer term ramifications of actions?
<quote>By definition, any assessment of the common good depends on all common actions</quote>
That isn't a definition. That's a sales speak type obfuscated platitude. What exactly is "the common good"?
No.
> That isn't a definition. That's a sales speak type platitude. What exactly is "the common good"?
Seems like you're misunderstanding my connection of "common" to "every single human" here. There is no way to meaningfully divide twenty grand amongst eight billion people. When we discuss "human rights" we are usually conflating positive government action and negative government action. Providing a minimum set of non-controversial services from the government (like "food" for example) is never the right answer in these debates.
To wit: If you have $20,000 sitting around, and you don't know what to do with it? Fuck you. As a general analysis of the impact any given $20k has in isolation, this post is interesting.
No."
Manifestly a wrong answer. Examples of correct answers would be "I don't believe so", "I doubt it", "It doesn't appear likely from my perspective".
"Impact" and "Fuck You" and "Post is Interesting" aside, I still ask... what comprises the common good? If you really think about this you may find the answer is not as easy or as certain as you appear to believe.
You don't understand that "common good" is impossible to define. This is one of the most basic discoveries of utilitarian ethical theories. It is sensible to ask what someone means if they use the term "common good" within the context of a proposal, but there is no general meaning of common good. There absolutely can't be.
Maybe I do understand that. I'm not "sea-lioning" you at all. I'm just responding to a derisive and dismissive remark you made to a (IMOP) valid point. I don't necessarily believe in the validity of "discoveries" of utilitarian ethics. But I do believe "good" has, as you say, no general meaning. Which is why it is an interesting question.
If you cannot determine what the common good is -- if you cannot define your goals, then , as the Chesire Cat observed, it really doesn't matter which way you choose to go.
Is that actually true, or is the author using some meaning of the phrase "expected return" that isn't common?
And, again: that's the outcome for investors that have preferred access to dealflow.
$20k is friends & family or crowdfunding money, and I suspect that whilst there will be some winners, the median return on those asset classes will be -100%
I've also seen some empirical evidence in support, though I haven't vetted it: http://sites.kauffman.org/pdf/angel_groups_111207.pdf
The other half I spend in Uganda, I'd just do random acts of kindness. Buy medicine for someone, school books for a kid. Shoes or clothed for someone else. Would be a really fun way to spend the money.
Rich people seem so clinical about their money. Get yer hands dirty, talk to some people in need.
$1 stores do more to help the poor than a lot of charities (But not all charities)
In seriousness, GiveWell ranks charities by their effectiveness. You could give to one of their top charities: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities "These are evidence-backed, thoroughly vetted, underfunded organizations."
Edit: (in reference to z3ugma's comment) further down that page is actually a charity whose mission is to aid salt iodization programmes in developing countries. I honestly had no idea this was even an issue until now.
This other story on HN is not gaining any traction but it's interesting because a 33 year old Malayasian billionaire is financing using Watson to assist with cancer treatment.
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/27/watsons...
"Jho Low, the 33-year-old billionaire who is bankrolling the $50 million MD Anderson project with Watson, said the effort grew out of his grandfather’s treatment for leukemia in Malaysia. Low said that he felt fortunate to be able to connect his grandfather’s doctors remotely with MD Anderson specialists to devise the best treatment plan. He believes everyone, rich or poor, should have the same access to that kind of expertise."
Every system has friction. You have to concentrate power to overcome friction and get things done. We'd be knocking off the world's problems a lot faster if we could "focus fire" on them. Ten diseases that might each take a decade to cure with 1/10th the donation could be solved half the time or less if each disease got a year of all the donations. But charity is more about signalling your clever pet cause than global optimization of future world-states, so nobody will let go of their second-best (or, realistically, 897th-best) charity.
Do you know of published research that supports this conclusion? I'm honestly curious.
This would be the most optimal use of $20k IMHO - giving to an organization that guides donations to more honest, better operated charities means more people effectively helped. $20k could be used to cover hosting and operations costs so that people like you and I have a resource to show us what will give the most bang for our collective buck.
Billions of dollars go to charities annually but high administrative costs and poor management means only a fraction reaches the intended target.
The recommended charities don't change often, so it wouldn't be much of a time saving. And it puts a lot of power into the trusts' hands.
OpenPhil is planning to give to substantially different charities from GiveWell recommended charities: http://www.open-philanthropy.org/
Giving to GiveWell or Giving What We Can means your money is spent on research and advocacy, probably resulting in a greater total impact: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/donating-to-giving-what-we-ca... Giving to GiveWell also has the effect of increasing the funds available to OpenPhil, since OpenPhil (to some extent) makes up the short fall in GiveWell's funding.
The Giving What We Can Trust is just a convenient way to have a Donor Advised Fund. The money goes to whichever charities you like. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/trust
This assures you don't do something stupid and guarantees everyone else is at least a tiny bit better off (because their money is now worth more).
Politicians are an interface to policy and money is the API.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox
On the other hand, and this is something I've always felt about Bill Gates, I'd need to see a full economic accounting of all the loss to global society from their monopolostic rent-seeking behaviour, before I'd believe that their giving the profits away to charity would counterbalance that behaviour.
It seems to me they've made possible for countless businesses to do their day-to-day work more efficiently.
Keep the money for yourself, and spend 100 hours of your time talking to a poor person. Help them find a better job, or make a better financial plan, or eat healthier, or just listen to what they have to say and tell them they can call you if they need someone.
This is by far the biggest impact a person like Paul Buchheit could make on the world. Even if his $20k could go 100% to a better water bottle in Africa, or a more efficient hybrid, or whatever, it will pale in comparison to how he could personally change someone's life if he walked up to them and took the time to try.
So go blow $20k at the club or on a cool car, after you've earned it by hitting the streets and solving your neighbor's problems for 100 hours. Someday your neighbors might do the same ;)
You could teach way more people to fish in the third world than you could by helping homeless people here.
Intensity: How strong is the pleasure? -- Well, many "common good" philanthropic causes deal with terrible diseases. That said, getting a job probably is better than not getting malaria. Passive vs active.
Duration: How long will the pleasure last? -- Here, not getting malaria is obviously longer lasting than a job. Jobs go away. Malaria nets when properly utilized are pretty solid for the long term.
Certainty or uncertainty: How likely or unlikely is it that the pleasure will occur? -- Probably equal here.
Propinquity or remoteness: How soon will the pleasure occur? -- Probably equal here.
Fecundity: The probability that the action will be followed by sensations of the same kind. -- This one is hardest to quantify. There's obviously a ratchet quality to someone experiencing success.
Purity: The probability that it will not be followed by sensations of the opposite kind. --- Malaria nets DEFINITELY can win out here. See above notes re: firing.
Extent: How many people will be affected? -- And here malaria nets take the cake and win the entire calculus. 20k invested in malaria nets will affect MANY more people than your hundred hours.
But I mean, if you really want to talk yourself into buying that car, go for it I guess. :)
I think it's fine to spend money on charities and other social causes, but my point is that many don't have the courage to face the problems they can solve without money. I think that's the best answer to Paul Buchheit's original question.
I think it's sad that the author of this blog post, and other commenters here, truly believe that by running some numbers they can prove how much their money is changing the world.
Changing the life of one person in a community can change that whole community. The world is not made of numbers, it's made of people. You have the best chance of making a big change in the world, if you focus on helping the people who live right next to you.
This sounds like unsupported platitude. What about helping someone local will help the overall world more than malaria nets or vaccinations? It gives you good feelings, but it's not actually BETTER.
There may be an argument that pulling someone out of poverty in the US makes them more likely to create change in the world themselves than pulling someone out of poverty abroad, but I'd find that to be tenuous.
This might not be the most effective way to steer your resources towards common good, but there's this persnickety failure scenario where a man in need may receive material support but still lack a human connection and a sense of belonging.
Of course, you're still literally trading off human lives for a warm fuzzy feeling of personal involvement.
I'm looking forward to Peter Singer's upcoming Coursera lectures on effective altruism, I want to see him develop this position with rigor. Meanwhile http://www.givewell.org/ has a good analysis.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/altruism
Then spend that well-earned money on hookers and blow? You've made a difference?
Honestly... words fail me.
I don't think it's helpful to others to go clubbing, in fact it's not an activity I'd do myself if I had that much money (nor would I waste money on a car).
My point is that the $20k can't help someone as much as you can personally.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it's a much bigger investment than 100 hours.
It's nowhere near enough time in most cases. If you're justifying this volunteer work based on billing yourself, what are you going to say to the person with which you've made a relationship? "Sorry, your hundred hours are up, I gotta get back to my routine now."
It's weird how so many commenters here seem obsessed with this utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest amount of people" approach to charity. Option A gives clean drinking water to 1000 people. Option B adds a drop in the bucket of funding for breast cancer research. Option C helps one child escape a life of violence on the streets. Who are you to look at these and try to quantity which has done the greatest good? It's one thing to compare the effectiveness of programs in achieving their own goals, it's another thing to try and rank totally different humanitarian efforts. These types of things can't be quantified.
It's definitely hard to compare the effects of different humanitarian efforts. The problem is that you have to choose something. Whenever you spend money to you're acting based on an implicit ranking. Rather than throw up our hands with "this can't be quantified" and give randomly, or give according to your whims, I think we should try to make the best decisions we can.
I have a lot of very poor family that make a lot of very poor financial choices. Unless they ask for my advice, I won't say a word - its very rude otherwise.
The rich have been telling the poor what to do since bibibical times, and before."
I don't think I have ever heard much value in any of their quips? Sure, they offer advice, but it's always advice that helped them in their unique situation.
They always leave out the important stuff; like just how much help, support(including emotional) they received from family. The school tuition, business advice, the garage in order to tinker in, money, attorneys that don't advertise , trust funds, good medical care when needed, the rehab, the pat on the back when the world decides to treat them like the poor, etc.)
I was in Barnes & Noble the other night(my exciting Friday nights). There was a guy who obviously had a lot of problems(from the looks of it--a mental disorder, and a lack of money) from my twisted perspective. A lady decided she was going to help him. Help him loudly--so everyone sipping their $4 drinks, and coffee cake--could hear her "helpful" sentiments. She loudly offered him $10, but "only use it for food?" She then asked him "What's the problem?"
He walked away in embarrassment. I will never forget the pain on his face.
So give money without strings. Give advice if the poor person asks for it. In my county(Marin County); I can honestly say that if not from the early support these rich kids received, many would be homeless, or stuck in nowhere jobs.
Honestly, your answer just seems like a shield for selfishness. $20k is a significant sum of money that would make a significant difference in other people's lives.
The main question is whether or not this will simply lead to these jobs being pushed to even poorer countries with even lower wages -- though that would probably help those poorer countries.
0: http://www.ranaplaza-arrangement.org/ Compensation to victims of the Rana Plaza factory disaster.
1: http://www.voanews.com/content/labor-unions-bangladesh-garme... "Since 2010, the number of active garment industry unions grew from seven to 200. They represent some 150,000 workers."
https://www.ourladysinn.org/
They do great work helping poor women in Saint Louis and their already-born children through difficult times. In addition to food, shelter and other basics, they provide professional counseling (many of their clients struggle with drug addiction) and try to help their clients get a solid footing with respect to employment and a safe place to live after they finish the program (about six weeks to several months after their child is born). Great attention is given to making sure the clients' children get to school on time, do their homework and are being given proper care.
I know the organization to be extremely thrifty – nothing goes to waste and they are very careful regarding how they spend money donated to the center. The organization also owns and runs a couple of resale shops in the same neighborhood, where many of the clients take their first steps (or first steps in awhile) carrying out job responsibilities, working under a manager. All proceeds from those shops flow back into the crisis-pregnancy center.