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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2796 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 13, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Entrepreneurial charity...

I'm pretty well off but I haven't given a lot of money to causes recently because they all suck. I mean, really, they suck. Many I've dealt with are just incompetent. To the point where they can't even cash checks in a timely manner or return phone calls. I shouldn't have to nag you to cash my $20,000 check. Others enable the very thing they are trying to solve. Breast cancer charities don't want to cure breast cancer. Homeless charities don't want to end homelessness. Many non-profits exist merely as grifts to employ non-productive college graduates. But the worst problem is that nearly every non-profit seems to be infected with the woke mind virus. Even if they were doing good work (which I doubt in most cases) I wouldn't feel good about donating to a non-profit that supports that stuff.

But I'm still an altruist at heart and I have more money than I need. So I'd like to go solo and do charity work on my own.

I've done a few things that are really minor like pick up trash or shovel the sidewalk near my house. But I think there are a lot of opportunities to do something bigger. What's something that a person could do with their time and money to make the world a better place. Something that doesn't involve interacting with any institution at all? Should I just straight up send people cash?

I think your intuitions that most charitable organizations will rip you off are correct. I’m not really sure how rich you are, but if you can afford 20000$ checks why not get involved in local politics instead? Even slightly improving you’re local government would be a hugely consequential charitable act relative to almost anything else you could be spending on.

I value my personal life enough not to do this. I live in Seattle where anyone to the right of Marx is tarred and feathered. I guess I just view local politics in Seattle as unredeemable although I do at least vote and support better candidates in small ways.

That’s fair, I accidentally replied to the wrong person below and didn’t realize that local meant Seattle.

Funding an underground/samizdat group seems like a good use of money. Seattle is reaching a critical point where the regime can't paper over the dysfunction any longer, and a group of smart people still moored to reality could find themselves having outsized influence.

Friedman's "keep sanity alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable," basically.

I have never lived in Seattle (just visited and not since 2019), and it aways struck me as one of the more functional American cities. Also wondering how much different Bellvue is politically?

How so?

I guess I'm modeling the average local government as...basically functional. Not much low-hanging fruit. It does paperwork, keeps the trees off the power lines, maybe hosts a festival a couple times a year. I don't feel like changing one or two of the names at the top would change much of that normal operation. The calculus is different if you've got a Sheriff of Nottingham situation, sure. But otherwise, what does that slight improvement look like?

I'm reminded of the corporate policy updates at my company. Every couple weeks, we'll get a mass email announcing that Policy Number Such-and-Such has been revised, and now if you submit a requirements compliance matrix, it has to have a row showing percent completion. Or if you make a purchase order, the form now has a field for which fiscal year we're in. Someone, somewhere, cares about this, and in theory expects an efficiency gain from the change. Would an outside shareholder care?

I know local government isn't and shouldn't be a business, but that's how I see influencing local politics. Getting one functionary elected rather than another isn't going to change the character of the government. It's more likely to generate a couple policy revisions, plus a bunch of "business as usual."

Oh, and political donations are possibly really ineffective. That doesn't really encourage me either.

So I didn’t realize that for you local government meant Seattle, which might be too big for you to have any meaningful influence. Although I will note that in general, every municipality has a mix of competent and incompetent politicians. At this level they really aren’t functionaries to nearly the same degree that any other politician you will encounter at the state or national level and having slightly better/less corrupt/smarter leadership really can improve quality of life for lots of people.

I think it’s also sort of ridiculous to assume that the city is competently run, you wouldn’t have any way of knowing unless you had worked for the city or had some political involvement. Corruption in municipal governments is absurdly common and only the most outrageous cases (such as this https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-payscandal-arrests/mayor-officials-arrested-in-california-pay-scandal-idUSTRE68K40N20100922 ) ever result in prosecutions. This is historically how the us has worked (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall as the most famous example in the us)

Finally I said you should get involved. This involves donating money but volunteering is probably more important. The benefit of a donation is that it will make you specifically known to the politician you are supporting.

Ah.

I'm Texan, though @jeroboam is some variety of Washington resident.

I don't doubt that local governments have corruption. My favorite example is the Battle of Athens.

Running for office (or at least consulting, if you work in something more technical) is probably an effective way to increase efficiency. I would think it is more expensive, though. $20,000 is a few weeks' compensation; what's the minimum time you'd need to spend to secure any real influence? Say, over a small team. Spending a whole career in politics might be further than OP is willing to go.

Hell, I don't think I have the interpersonal skills to coordinate more than a few people. But that's why I avoid management like the plague.

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