[HN Gopher] A few months ago, a complete stranger gave me $10k (...
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A few months ago, a complete stranger gave me $10k (2021)
Author : mooreds
Score : 101 points
Date : 2022-09-07 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sarahdrinkwater.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sarahdrinkwater.medium.com)
| socialismisok wrote:
| I love to see mutual aid! These microgrants are a perfect example
| of building community together. Finding people whose care and
| passion improves the lives around them and enabling them to do
| so.
|
| We have so many people looking to put in the work to make things
| better, but are just lacking the small amount of funding to make
| it happen.
|
| There's a huge body of theory about mutual aid out there, but
| it's always nice to see it done in practice.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Seems a little sketchy. It would be a great advance fee scam to
| tell people that you are getting a $10K anonymous grant but you
| need to pay up some money first to receive it.
| jononomo wrote:
| I'm honestly disappointed that this person just gave the money
| away and tried to be a do-gooder instead of doing something fun.
| jononomo wrote:
| Just blow it all on learning to surf in Costa Rica or
| something. Life doesn't have to be a chore.
| lessthanseventy wrote:
| Doing selfless things can be fun.
| unwind wrote:
| E17 is a postcode area [1] in East London, this was not very
| clear to me upon first reading.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_postcode_area
| capableweb wrote:
| In that vein, TED is "American-Canadian media organization"
| that does conferences, as it's never explained in the blogpost
| either.
| lantry wrote:
| the article also failed to explain what money is!
| onion2k wrote:
| Dev on a UK salary here. What _is_ money?
| knorker wrote:
| What is the UK?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10
| [deleted]
| hamiltonians wrote:
| I wonder if this can apply to basic income?
| reillyse wrote:
| Do you know how much money the government allocates? I think
| there is no evidence for the thesis and massive amounts of
| evidence against it. The concept of a failed state is one where
| the government has failed leaving the population to allocate
| their money as they see fit. Generally they don't work out too
| well.
|
| I'm not saying basic income doesn't work, I'm just saying this
| isn't the reason it might work.
| notfish wrote:
| I do think planned economies generally fail though -
| capitalism (meaning the process of letting individual agents
| decide on resource allocation) is a very powerful tool for
| optimizing something, and trying to centralize that decision
| making requires way more processing power. There's just a
| huge amount of parallelizability here that you miss out on by
| having the government try to do allocation.
|
| Don't take this as me saying unregulated capitalism works
| even a little bit, you definitely need someone in charge of
| operating that tool or you end up in our current mess.
| pjscott wrote:
| The core problem here is not processing power but
| _information:_ often a central planner just doesn 't know
| what people want or need, and can't realistically get that
| knowledge out of their brains without using something like
| a price system. To make this intuitive, consider a farmer
| with unpleasantly acidic soil. In a centrally planned
| economy, that farmer had better hope that the central
| planners know about the local soil conditions and allocated
| some lime for adjusting the pH. In a less planned economy,
| it'll be in stock at a local store because farmers in the
| area buy it frequently.
| astrange wrote:
| Central planning attempts did lead to some useful
| research though; the decentralized planning that enables,
| say, grocery stores is based on this.
|
| (Some of this was invented by Soviet mathematicians like
| Leonod Khachiyan, whose children now do useful(?) things
| like run ironic post-Marxist NYC podcasts.)
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| When we talk about UBI, we have to ask, where does the money
| come from?
|
| The answer likely involves inflation, maybe deficit spending.
| An answer like that makes UBI unsustainable.
| astrange wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily mean that, it just means taxes and
| interest rates need to balance it out. It's useful as a
| countercyclical stabilizer.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| If it were to be implemented, I think we'd want that money to
| largely come from increased taxes on corporations that have
| seen increased profits resulting from factors such as
| automation and offshoring.
| astrange wrote:
| Do those profits actually exist in real (inflation-
| adjusted) terms and not nominal ones?
|
| Europe uses a VAT for this. You probably want that, because
| it's the most effective tax at raising revenue, although
| compliance is a pain and Americans would hate it.
| sfe22 wrote:
| I'd suggest to go one step further to advanced income.
| Government guarantees advanced income for everyone, why stop at
| basic, are you not generous enough?
| greenthrow wrote:
| What is a government made up of? Hamsters?
| logifail wrote:
| > people can allocate money better than governments
|
| (Full disclosure: we live in Europe) and my OH - who earns way
| more than I do - has been moaning about her taxes and
| deductions since, well, forever.
|
| However in the last few years - and as an entire family - we
| have hit the state healthcare system pretty hard, including
| every single member of the family, for a whole variety of
| reasons. Trips to the ER, accidents, stays in hospital,
| operations, you name it.
|
| Got some more somewhat frustrating news this morning from our
| family doctor meaning yet more appointments at the hospital,
| this time for _two_ more family members, including - but not
| limited to - an MRI and a gastroscopy.
|
| I was pretty down on the way home from the doctor, but on the
| plus side, there's basically no cost to us _at all_ for all
| this additional medical care, other than from having paid the
| contributions to the state up-front through the taxation
| system.
|
| Q: You'd prefer to roll the dice that you'll stay healthy?
| weaksauce wrote:
| > Q: You'd prefer to roll the dice that you'll stay healthy?
|
| not op but I think that in order to have a BI that works you
| would need to have a functioning single payer health care
| system like the NHS has. The poor people would still spend
| the money and the money trickles back up into the wealthy but
| there is a velocity of the money that the rich don't have
| that poorer people do have because it's spent in the
| community immediately instead of ticking up in some wealthy
| person's bank account accruing interest.
| robocat wrote:
| > people can allocate money better than governments
|
| Maybe for quotidian expenses. But absolutely not for many
| long term expenses and risks.
|
| My New Zealand government is pretty good at allocating money
| for common infrastructure and for people's long-term costs
| (retirement, healthcare, benefit of education). Most
| infrastructure wouldn't happen if we could avoid paying for
| it as individuals - fairly provable by comparing between
| countries that have good and poor infrastructure. We all see
| how much taxation costs us, but too many people deny/unsee
| the value of the massive benefits we all accrue.
|
| The other aspect that governments can do is to manage risk
| and insurance, for rare events, which in my experience most
| people are extremely poor at planning for. When my city
| Christchurch was hit in 2010 by a devastating earthquake,
| everyone has the opportunity to see the value of the
| infrastructure that they lost (destroyed/damaged), and the
| opportunity to see the value of belonging to a society that
| fixes our infrastructure.
|
| Also taxation shares the costs between the financial winners
| and the losers. We tax those that have benefited financially
| from belonging to a healthy society (people don't "make"
| money, their society provides them with their opportunity and
| the safety to enjoy their gains), and we pay those that screw
| up (poorly paid job) or have bad luck (lose the genetic
| lottery, illness etcetera). This is easy to see: take someone
| who is well off (made themselves) and move them with nothing
| to a shitty country and see if they rebound: most people
| would not do well. Cue foreigners with degrees driving taxis.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > ... no cost to us at all for all this additional medical
| care, other than from having paid the contributions to the
| state up-front through the taxation system.
|
| This is a contradictory statement. Either it is no cost to
| you, or you paid up-front.
|
| I wish you the very best.
| logifail wrote:
| > This is a contradictory statement. Either it is no cost
| to you, or you paid up-front.
|
| Perhaps I wasn't quite explicit enough: no _additional_
| cost to us, after a condition is diagnosed...
|
| I'm sure there are people who are happy to pay as they go.
| This is fine, right up until the moment when you roll the
| dice and discover it isn't.
| glofish wrote:
| It worked because it was a surprise, one-off project.
|
| Start doing it predictably and large scale and it might end up
| worse than what governments do.
| googlryas wrote:
| Consider that this isn't a random person, but someone which
| $10k didn't move the needle very much(which is why she gave it
| away). Even the selection process wasn't random, probably if
| you're interested in TED talks and on Twitter, you're different
| enough from an average person in terms of your interests and
| means.
| sarahdrinkwater wrote:
| I think "10k not moving the needle" dramatically depends on
| your perspective - not sure the food bank that got one
| working laptop vs using mismatched sheets of paper would
| agree. Definitely massive donations preferable, but small
| amounts can be useful - it feels a little privileged to think
| they cannot.
| googlryas wrote:
| I meant specifically about moving the author's needle,
| trying to explain her willingness to give it away, and how
| it isn't a great exemplar for UBI since she is not an
| average person. I wasn't talking about those she provided
| grants to - definitely, to some, $10k can be a life
| changing amount. There are people who never earn $10k over
| the course of their lives.
|
| From the author's bio and article, it appears she is
| involved in venture capital, angel investing, and gets
| surprise tax bills which amount to more than the average
| English person earns in a year. That's probably the kind of
| person who can part with $10k without much hand wringing.
| Having said that, I do think the author is commendable in
| giving it away, because for a ton of people just like her,
| I believe they would just take the money and do something
| much more selfish with it.
| robocat wrote:
| > but someone which $10k didn't move the needle very much
|
| Assuming she gave it away because she is "well off" is just
| not nice. The journalist I know was poorly paid for a
| stressful job - the internet has vastly changed the economics
| of the industry - in fact they lost their job because their
| is no money in it any more.
|
| I would guess that the writer is a reciprocation type of
| person: that feels uncomfortable to be just given things. One
| lady I knew from the UK had it so ingrained that when given a
| slice of cake, she _had_ to give us something in return. I
| also see the same thing a lot in New Zealand culture.
|
| There is also a pride aspect. I literally cannot give money
| to my friends that could really do with it, even though $20
| is disposable for me and is really not for them. Social
| obligation and status signalling make cash really difficult.
| Oddly enough people often accept gifts of my time and
| indirect costs, without reciprocation. For example I can
| spend time and petrol chopping firewood and they will accept
| the firewood for free, even though it would economically cost
| me far less to just buy some firewood for them however that
| would not be acceptable!
|
| Edit: Also she is living in East London which is stereotyped
| to be relatively poor. The 2021 figures I could find were
| Waltham Forest (part of Walthamstow) average salary for
| female PS31.6k/year, compared with PS27.5k/year for workers
| in North East England (a poor part of the UK). London is way
| more expensive to live, so she is relatively worse off at a
| guess. My stereotype of female journalists is that they are
| doing it for their beliefs, not for the money (those that
| chase money go to the dark side).
| [deleted]
| nraynaud wrote:
| I have a weird rich kid story. My dad gave my siblings and I a
| lump sum that I saved for a while. After a couple of years, as my
| job had ended, I just bought a small CNC router and toyed with it
| at home, re-did the electronics, re-did the software (Fusion 360
| was nascent), and put all of it on github. After a year or so I
| ran out of money and had to take a job again.
|
| But the github thing slowly produced interest in my CNC work, I
| got a few gigs related to CAM development (I'm not a machinist)
| once in a while. Until recently where at last I got a _real_
| well-paying gig for some real CAM development work. It 's a weird
| redemption: I went from bumming around with my dad's money to
| earning more than him _because_ of what I did when I was jobless.
| toss1 wrote:
| YES!
|
| And this freedom is one of the best arguments for universal
| healthcare as a right and universal basic income. So many
| people have amazing ideas that they will implement and
| literally pay it forward in multiples if given the chance. I'm
| quite convinced it would enormously magnify the productivity,
| creativity, and happiness of an entire society.
|
| (&yes, I know that there would be many that would only become
| more idle, but the overall benefit would outweigh this. it
| would be more wasteful to attempt to bureaucratically examine
| everything to "prevent waste"...)
| nmaggioni wrote:
| Nice to see the MPCNC here!
|
| https://docs.v1engineering.com/mpcnc/intro/
| efitz wrote:
| I read the headline and thought "they pushed the button".
|
| https://youtu.be/TBEC2A1uwt4
| jbirer wrote:
| I received an exact 1.246 BTC from an unknown source back in
| 2019. I used it to travel, hire escorts and eat food.
| leetrout wrote:
| I have never spoken about this publicly but I found a contract
| job that paid about $4k for the project a few years ago. It
| required me hosting a secure database for a couple months and was
| a run-of-the-mill django project.
|
| I coded it up, ran the project and got paid. I put back 30% for
| taxes and paid the AWS hosting bills (mostly for RDS) of about
| $500 and gave the rest to someone who was battling cancer. I gave
| it to them personally, in cash, in all 1's as a joke. It was
| pretty cool to see over $2,000 in singles packaged up in money
| transport ziplocks put down in a gift bag. They thought I was
| giving them a brick as a joke.
|
| I tell you what - it made me feel like I was on top of the world.
|
| I look back on it and I kind of wish I had figured out how to eat
| the taxes and give all of it except the hosting costs (I didn't
| have a ton of expendable income at the time).
|
| Reading this story and thinking about them seeing the tax bill
| reminded me of this. Kudos to them for being able to give all of
| it on to worthwhile causes. I bet they felt amazing. It is so
| nice to be able to do something for someone.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Taxes are fun!
|
| - You have an S-Corp and have a 401k attached to that
|
| Let's say you had a contract of $300,000 and the default tax
| bill is going to be close to 40% for a California resident
| (-$120,000, leaving $180,000)
|
| - contribute $60,000 to the 401k, since the S-Corp allows you
| to do both employee contributions ($20,000) and the separate
| employer contribution maximum ($40,000, when your employers
| have various matching schemes there actually is a limit to what
| they _could_ do, which practically none of them do.) _Note,
| that self-directed 401k 's contribution limits are also
| dictated by your revenue, of which 20% of it can be contributed
| up to the dollar maximums, hence the simple example of $300,000
| as 20% of the revenue is $60,000 - the current total
| contribution maximum for the year_
|
| This reduces the remaining taxable income to $240,000, with the
| governments only getting $91,000
|
| - Next step is to double dip, borrow against the 401k. You can
| borrow half up to $50,000. If this was the first year of having
| a 401k then that would be $30,000. Otherwise borrow the entire
| $50,000
|
| - Donate that $50,000 to charity. There are two or three types
| you can control yourself. At these proportions of your
| remaining taxable income, the deduction is 1:1 and the same.
| The same money, two deductions.
|
| - This brings your taxable income down to $190,000, with the
| governments only privy to $69,000, and now you have dry powder
| in your non-profits to donate compliantly.
|
| As you might notice, you also have less discretionary income,
| for now. If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, the
| point is to follow the government's incentive model of pursuing
| certain kinds of transactions, and your failure to do so
| results in the remainder being taxed. The government
| incentivizes spending - the movement of money at a high
| velocity - and penalizes and cripples saving in multiple ways,
| velocity is more useful for the economy as well. Said another
| way, the goal is to not let the government have any of it, but
| there are really good state-approved rationales for that which
| have nothing to do with having an opinion on its spending
| habits or a misguided sense of "duty". The roads and schools
| you care about are still going to be built from other capital
| sources the state figures out, or property taxes they already
| levy.
|
| so $69,000 is still too much to send over.
|
| The S-Corp likely has QBI qualified income, and that's another
| 20% tax deduction
|
| But lets fast forward, your overhead costs and business
| expenses are another 1:1 tax deduction, and if you have any
| lines of credit or external money (savings) that you spend on
| the overhead costs and business expenses then you can spend
| more than you have made and the tax can go to $0 and you may
| have losses.
|
| Your net operating losses carryforward to future tax years. And
| also your charitable deductions are not applied if you have no
| income and those carryforward for several years as well.
| Starting your next tax year already in a privileged position.
|
| Right, but now you have no money for the house, car, vacation
| and consumptive spending, what's the point? Again, this is for
| now. What you can do is grow your 401k tax free and invest in
| nearly anything. You can grow your non-profit nearly or totally
| tax free and invest in nearly anything as well as donate, just
| like you could if you were using those same funds as an
| individual. These two vehicles can vastly exceed the financial
| firepower in your own name.
|
| For your goal of having money for the house, car, vacation and
| consumptive spending: hopefully the business continues growing.
| At your discretion you can absolutely spend on consumptive
| things you like. But ideally you can sell shares in the future
| and get the long term capital gains tax rate, which is way
| lower than income. Or you can convert to a C-Corp and sell
| shares tax free under the QSBS tax rate, if qualified. (QSBS is
| distinct from QBI, and also California state tax would not be
| nullified) and in those years you are still rolling over tax
| deductions from the other years to reduce any outstanding
| income you recognized in your consumptive spending. You can
| even convert balances from your 401k to a Roth 401k those years
| tax free, because the prior year deductions can push that
| income tax event down to zero as well.
|
| YMMV talk to a CPA to confirm or learn relevant realities.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Dude, don't be a dick. Just pay your taxes.
| m4jor wrote:
| That's not being a dick. That's just use the tax system in
| creative ways to reduce the amount of taxes you owe.
|
| F paying 100% of the taxes you owe.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Nah, everyone should pay as little taxes as possible and do
| something more constructive with it.
| socialismisok wrote:
| I did something similar, I paid back the profit I made from
| every renter who had been a tenant of mine. I found their
| dates, estimated what they paid above cost, figured how much my
| property had appreciated since they stayed with me, and cut
| them all checks.
|
| That was thousands of dollars from me, but it was great to be
| able to say, "I believe profiting from housing is unethical and
| I'm willing to actually do something about that."
|
| Reactions were incredible. Lots of happiness was shared. A
| couple folks were able to start savings they didn't have
| before.
|
| I highly encourage the successful folks in this thread to find
| opportunities for giving like this.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| If you believe profiting from housing is unethical, why did
| you buy and rent housing to tenants at a profit in the first
| place?
| saghm wrote:
| Given how much later they seemed to have done it, I'd
| imagine either they didn't come to the conclusion about it
| being unethical until later, or needing the money at the
| time enough to do it anyways and later having enough
| financial safety to be able to pay it back.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Both of those, actually. As I have become more
| financially stable myself, my opinions on the nature of
| wealth have evolved. I'm not the person I was 12 years
| ago both socially and financially.
|
| I'm lucky my career has worked out, it's given me
| opportunities to help others and really sit with the
| question, "what do I feel is right and moral?"
|
| Edit: I think I had read about someone doing this via
| hacker news, actually, and asked "what would it cost _me_
| to do the same "
| bombcar wrote:
| I've often thought that would be something useful to do,
| especially since renters often have such a hard time saving
| (but often are quite able to pay rent on time) - just collect
| some portion into an account (the deposit account you likely
| have anyway) and then when they leave fund it all back to
| them (minus any repairs).
|
| Looks on people's faces when you say "so we needed to
| repaint, so your $1,000 deposit has left over ... $3k."
| socialismisok wrote:
| Agreed, deposits should be returned with interest at a
| minimum!
|
| Even better, if the company has increased in value, your
| deposit should be returned with that increase reflected.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| ... Do you have any current vacancies?
| socialismisok wrote:
| Sadly no, our unit is in use! We have adapted to a model of
| "here's what our costs are to maintain and insure the
| space. Adjust your payments based on your income and
| ability to save."
|
| We've had people rent for nothing, rent in exchange for
| teaching a skill or hobby, pay at cost, or pay more (the
| money is held to offset people who cannot afford to pay the
| full cost of room).
|
| In general, our rental timelines are short, 3 to 12 months
| usually. People often need a stepping stone to get
| themselves a leg up and move on to something else. We're
| happy to make that possible.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Fascinating. I was just thinking that this would be
| incredibly risky to do in SF. If you rented to them for
| very cheap for more than 30 days, they'd have the right
| to live there forever for that much (plus 7% / year which
| will be nothing).
| Graziano_M wrote:
| Unfortunately it feels better to give to an individual than it
| does many people, even though we can maximize the good we can
| do by donating more strategically. If it weren't the case many
| more would donate to e.g. the effective altruism movement.
|
| I'm no better. I donate to charity, but I still feel best about
| myself for times I helped people change a flat, etc.
| jamespwilliams wrote:
| You might find https://www.givedirectly.org interesting
| alexb_ wrote:
| Effective altruists really are the type of people to tell
| someone that donated thousands of dollars to someone they
| know with cancer that what they did was a moral fault because
| it could have saved more lives somewhere else
| astrange wrote:
| Calling yourself "effective" before you've been effective
| instead of after is a poor strategy for success.
| andai wrote:
| A lot of charities let you "remote adopt" a poor child or
| animal, where you make monthly payments to the organization
| and they send you pictures of or letters from who you
| adopted. This seems to combine the best of both worlds, where
| you're funding the whole organization and all its activities
| in that area, and have this "anchor" to remind you that
| you're benefiting the lives of real individuals.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _If it weren 't the case many more would donate to e.g. the
| effective altruism movement._
|
| Hmm, should I help a human being or spend all my money
| writing blog posts on why AI will kill us all? Okay, sure,
| maybe you want to give to a substack for AI alignment people
| whose sole output is voluminous reams of content on why AGI
| is around the corner and a harbinger of doom, but I think
| this may not be everyone's jam.
|
| However, for those who prefer the utilitarian mindset, a
| friend built https://cosmicbraintrust.org/ so that you can
| donate to a more worthy cause - an aleph_1 to AI alignment's
| aleph_0.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Your feelings aren't lying to you. The personal satisfaction
| and motivation to do more that comes from you directly
| helping your neighbor makes it even better than just changing
| a flat tire.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Charities are often corrupt griftworks. It's hard to know
| which ones are and which ones aren't.
|
| I think helping people in our proximity personally is the
| best course of action. That way, we _know_ that our money isn
| 't ending up in some greedy grifter's pocket - and if enough
| people do it, the effect can be greater than that of any
| charity.
| themitigating wrote:
| "Are often" do you have data to backup your accusation that
| covers what I assume would be more than 60% of all
| charities?
| yboris wrote:
| > Charities are often corrupt griftworks. It's hard to know
| which ones are and which ones aren't.
|
| 1. Could you quantify "often"? Are you suggesting at least
| 10%? If so, that's a bold empirical claim that needs
| justification. If it's under 10%, then giving $100, even
| when you know $10 goes to "waste" shouldn't be a deterrent.
|
| 2. It's _not_ hard to find charities that are not corrupt
| (and most-importantly are _cost-effective_ ) with the money
| you give, look at this list of _very_ thoroughly-vetted
| charities: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I can't quantify "often" - that's the part of the
| problem. If I knew that, say, 90% of charities were
| actually sincere, then I could play the numbers game and
| know that 90% of the money given will go to those in
| need. But it could also be the other way around - 90% of
| charities _could_ actually be fraudulent. If that kind of
| money went into the pockets of the very people who 're
| making the problem worse (corrupt politicians and other
| powerful individuals who're destroying their countries),
| that would make charity a net-negative. There's just _no
| way to know_.
|
| Websites that act as arbiters of charity justice don't
| help either, for the same reason - who is verifying the
| verifiers? It seems to me that the most corrupt charities
| would be most motivated to boost their numbers on various
| vetting websites, while the legitimate ones would be too
| busy actually _doing something_ to bother dealing with
| internet politics.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > It's hard to know which ones are and which ones aren't.
|
| https://www.charitynavigator.org/
| jnwatson wrote:
| The hardest part about true charity is accepting that much
| of it will not be spent in a way that you deem to be
| correct. This applies just as much to individual giving as
| well as government welfare and NGOs.
|
| It is true that many charities are inefficient. Some are
| fraudulent. Still, it is overall far more effective in the
| whole to give to organizations that can impact at scale.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| > Still, it is overall far more effective in the whole to
| give to organizations that can impact at scale.
|
| You can't know that. Those organizations might as well be
| making the problem worse, if nothing else then for the
| sake of keeping the money flowing.
|
| See cobra effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_
| incentive#The_origina...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think this is probably reasoning to reach the conclusion
| you had already decided you wanted.
|
| The impact of a dollar in the developing world is so much
| more than anyone that you could help who is in close
| proximity to the typical HN commentator that it would take
| an absolutely massive amount of graft to equalize the two.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| You're ignoring the impact of your money going into the
| pockets of _the very people who are making the problem
| worse_.
|
| Yes, some of charity money actually goes to those in
| need. But what part of it does go to the people who use
| that money to further exploit those very people they're
| helping? What if the total result is actually net-
| negative?
|
| I believe that greed is a much more common motivator than
| altruism.
| munch117 wrote:
| If you don't believe in altruism, then why are you here
| discussing how best to do it?
|
| The kind of charity that is most likely to be fraudulent
| or completely ineffectual, is a small, local one. The
| bigger the organisation, the more cost-effective it is to
| do checks.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I don't think it is so clear cut. Charity money going to
| third world countries often ends up finding corrupt
| governments and destroying local markets.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If you're saying such a large proportion of charity money
| goes towards graft that it is better to donate locally, I
| would love a source. If I donate to an organization
| providing malaria nets, most of that money goes to the
| malaria nets and some goes to funding rigorous
| verification that the money is going to malaria nets.
| lozenge wrote:
| https://www.givewell.org/
|
| https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
| umvi wrote:
| I'd argue there's something to be gained though for directly
| helping your neighbor vs. donating to charity. When you
| directly help your neighbor (anonymously or not), there's a
| human element there that uplifts and enriches the lives of
| both parties that is largely absent when the help is in the
| form of an impersonal check in the mail from some
| organization. When I've done this (personally gone out of my
| way to help an individual monetarily or otherwise) I've found
| it increases my empathy and desire to serve others more than
| having money auto withdrawn from my bank account annually to
| a charitable organization (which I also do).
|
| So I guess what I'm saying is... why not both? Donate to
| charitable organizations, but not exclusively. Also go out of
| your way to (anonymously or not) do charitable things to
| individuals.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > So I guess what I'm saying is... why not both? Donate to
| charitable organizations, but not exclusively. Also go out
| of your way to (anonymously or not) do charitable things to
| individuals.
|
| I think this is hard for monetary assistance where there
| really is a direct tradeoff. It's hard to say well I'll
| keep this $1000 to help someone I find individually when
| those $1000 instead donated to a faceless charity would
| probably save another persons life.
| umvi wrote:
| I think equating dollars to lives is too utilitarian a
| take to be useful IMHO. The goal of charity could be so
| much more than "lives saved (globally)". It could also be
| "lives improved (locally)" which cascades into "societies
| improved (locally)" which further cascades until the
| effects of local acts of love are far reaching and impact
| cities, state, and countries.
|
| If you don't know an individual who needs the $1000, then
| sure, donate to charity. But not all charity has to be in
| the form of large cash gifts and not all charity
| recipients have to be cancer patients on the verge of
| death. Sometimes being charitable to individuals is as
| simple as taking out a coworker or neighbor to lunch and
| just talking to them. Lots of people suffer from
| loneliness, depression, and things other than cancer and
| would benefit enormously from someone going out of their
| way and showing an act of love to them.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Right. I agree in the cases where monetary assistance are
| not involved.
|
| > I think equating dollars to lives is too utilitarian a
| take to be useful IMHO. The goal of charity could be so
| much more than "lives saved". It could be "lives
| improved" which cascades into "societies improved".
|
| Sure, but I guess I think "life saved" is probably the
| extreme case of life improved.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| I agree! I am not so utilitarian that I say to the
| homeless, "Sorry I can't give you a dollar, it would better
| serve those who need malaria medicine" :D.
|
| There's something to be said about helping those around you
| directly as a way to build a better local community.
| Especially when you can help 'for free' (e.g. by helping
| someone with a flat, as I mentioned).
|
| Now, that said, if we are talking about giving out $10'000,
| and we're sort of encouraging more to do it (by sharing how
| we donate), at that magnitude and scale I think it would be
| better if we encouraged people to donate more effectively.
| [deleted]
| jongjong wrote:
| I'm a software developer and I had been trying to raise funding
| for my startup projects for over 10 years but I never managed to
| raise a single dollar. During this time, I was also working on
| open source projects on the side.
|
| One day, someone from my community who I never met gave me $10K
| worth of crypto because they liked what I was working on. They
| later made more donations over the following year; the total
| amounted to about $25K in crypto. It was 100% free money, no
| strings attached, they didn't get anything in return except a
| special thanks mention on one of my projects.
|
| These donations have been life-changing. I was able to stake the
| cryptocurrency tokens to gain a special position on a blockchain
| project. Over the following 3 years, I was able to earn over
| $100K (just in 'dividends') from that initial $25K investment. I
| am still earning decent passive income from that original gift
| (though now it's not enough to live on after crypto crash). The
| income allowed me to work on various cryptocurrency and open
| source projects full time for 3 whole years. I completed several
| major open source projects during this time.
|
| Now I finally understand the expression "A gift that keeps on
| giving."
| praptak wrote:
| So what about breaking the condition not to tell? Weren't the TED
| people even miffed about this?
| [deleted]
| mooreds wrote:
| Here's why she wrote about it:
|
| > I'm coming out of stealth because - in the kindest way -
| journalists now have my name & want to write about it. Here's
| the twenty grants I made and what I've learnt doing this:
|
| -
| https://twitter.com/sarahdrinkwater/status/14025435969565245...
| whycombinetor wrote:
| From what I can gather from the twitter hashtags, the "report
| back on how it was spent" requirement effectively shamed the
| recipients of these TED grants into using it on almost entirely
| charitable ends. Not a bad thing I guess.
| sarahdrinkwater wrote:
| So half the group HAD to keep it quiet, half the group were
| able to share - but not everyone that got cash chose to do so.
|
| Reporting back was done only to TED and tbh I never heard from
| them again. Only constraint was no saving, no pension - you
| genuinely could do anything.
| [deleted]
| sarahdrinkwater wrote:
| omg! front page of hacker news. I am honoured.
|
| - E17 is an area of east london - I never, ever heard from TED
| ever again. - I would do this again in a heartbeat.
| m4jor wrote:
| Did you follow up on any of the people you gave your micro
| grants to?
|
| How many actually used it for what they said and how many just
| took the $ and never did anything?
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| She seems like an interesting person. I wish her luck, and hope
| that she doesn't have to pay it back (I suspect that she could,
| if she needed to), for "breaking Rule C."
|
| I've found that doing Service seldom results in direct monetary
| or ego benefits, and folks that do it for that, may end up
| disappointed. I guess, maybe they can do a LinkedIn "humblebrag,"
| but those are pretty much worthless, these days.
|
| Sometimes, the recipients of our largesse are not exactly
| thrilled with it. Being anonymous could actually be a measure of
| self-protection.
|
| Also, sometimes, they don't need our "help."
|
| https://youtu.be/mYLsRTKhyYM?t=100
| skizm wrote:
| I wonder how many people ignored the email claiming they were
| being given $10k. There is nearly a nearly 100% chance I'd mark
| the email as spam, wonder how it got past gmail spam filters, and
| never think about it again.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Same. I would immediately mark it as spam. Surprised anyone
| still clicks on these.
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