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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Wouldn't you get the same feeling volunteering in or contributing to a local soup kitchen? Or mentoring through Big Brothers/Sisters? Coaching Little League/Pop Warner/AYSO (team activities cut suicide risk!)? Filling in potholes in the road to cut traffic accidents? Are local people any less "real?"

No, those are good activities, too, and I did some of them as well. But that doesn't say anything about my main point in that paragraph, which is bang for the buck. The price of my time is generally considerably high, so really, I was contributing potentially a lot more than just a few dollars when I was volunteering my time. And still, even when I would give time or money to those places, I doubt I was really saving lives, the way paying for malaria nets would be.

Why wouldn't you think that far-away cases would have their own complex social politics? Why would you think that "aid" parachuted in from strangers would be any less likely to fall afoul of these problems than you, working in an area you're presumably at least a little familiar with, among people you presumably share at least a few things in common with?

Because they don't know the person who's giving it, and also they probably understand how life and death things are. If my life were at stake, I'd take aid from anyone.

And that I seems like a moral superstimulus to me, which substitutes the sugar-water of depersonalized "effectiveness" for the hard, hard work of improving ourselves and the uncomfortable things close to us.

I mean, maybe. I personally mostly thought about it as the QALYs-per-dollar thing. I wanted to try to help in the most efficient way possible. Save the most people with as little money as possible. I just think that some far away places probably need that kind of help more than the northeastern US.

And still, even when I would give time or money to those places, I doubt I was really saving lives, the way paying for malaria nets would be.

Why? Were there not hungry people at the soup kitchen who would otherwise starve? Depressed and troubled kids who, absent mentoring or sports-socialization, would have spiralled downward?

I personally mostly thought about it as the QALYs-per-dollar thing. I wanted to try to help in the most efficient way possible. Save the most people with as little money as possible.

We just disagree on whether or not the flattening of locality in the efficiency calculation represents a loss or not, I guess.

Why? Were there not hungry people at the soup kitchen who would otherwise starve?

Truly, I don't think the people who were coming were THAT bad off. Orders of magnitude below me in income, yes, but I don't think I saw a single person who was dressed in rags, strung out, covered in filth, or completely crazy, over the course of years that I volunteered there. I'd guess that they were all very low income, but not destitute. They were well off enough that almost all of them were able to afford to get there in a car, or get there with a friend who was in a car.

Then there's the factor that if I wasn't helping at that location, it was a fact that there would be other people who would be instead. There are more people in my area who want to volunteer than there are spots to volunteer in such facilities.

Then there's the factor that if I wasn't helping at that location, it was a fact that there would be other people who would be instead. There are more people in my area who want to volunteer than there are spots to volunteer in such facilities.

That's good, and honestly a bit of a bubble-burster. I guess I'm too used to living in "communities" which really aren't worth the name.

Even in ultra atomized liberal Chicago people never starve for lack of options unless they're profoundly crippled and somehow not known about. Freeze to death in the winter for lack of shelter(and unwillingness to abide by the rules of shelter)? Sure, occasionally. But the absolute floor of those around many of us are incomparable to the floor in these other places where life is cheap in every sense.

Anecdotal, but this was my experience with a decent variety of in-person volunteering (food banks, soup kitchens, summer camps for troubled teens and for mentally disabled, habitat for humanity, special olympics, etc) in the cities I spent my high school through early career years (pops ranging from around ~.5 mil to 1 mil).

For basically all of those, there were either decently long waiting lists, make-work (i.e assigning multiple people to perform a task easily performed by just one) or both. Also similar impression of the people I was helping- I do not believe that was because those cities lacked the truly destitute or the profoundly handicapped, just that they weren't who I was dealing with as an uncredentialled volunteer.

Honestly my experiences with volunteering in my younger years have led me to focus on the near (friends, family, immediate co-workers, same-block neighbors) and the far (malaria nets, etc) for giving. The middle seems saturated.

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