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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?

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