Whenever I get drawn to contributing to a charity, usually based on sentimental TV ads, I send them an email and ask how to access their IRS Form 990, which has to be publicly available, usually via a web page. The last time I did this was for Shriners' Hospital for Children. If I read the form correctly, in a recent year they had $700,000,000 in income, paid $500,000,000 in executive salaries and fundraising. I don't believe remaining $200,000,000 all went to medical and family travel/lodging expenses. But I may not be reading it right. Any accountants out there?
Frank On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 2:36 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: > Heh, it's funny how something you say can be perfectly inverted by the > audience to mean the opposite of what you intended. The Telephone Game is > always relevant. > > My point to Steve was about "effective altruism", the idea that the > philanthropist has any idea whatsoever of the relative optimality of one > charity compared to another. My position is one of ignorance and against > the (mostly wealthy, tech-savvy, arrogant) person's most likely *mistaken* > belief in their own competence, especially in a domain that is > fundamentally different from where they operate "professionally". My point > to Steve was that meritocracy is a sham and a sibling effect to the Great > Man Theory. > > Now, to the extent that my reading of von Hayek (not Friedman) argued for > market forces because it is *arrogant* to pretend you can design a system > more efficient than the one nature relaxes into, then I would argue for > such natural, organic solutions over engineered ones. But that's precisely > *because* those who think they can singularly, themselves, engineer a > reality better than the one that grew, stigmergically, socially, naturally > are most likely wrong. > > But I have *never* insisted there is such a thing as a *free* market. > Everything that seems to be "natural" is constrained by the engineering of > the agents in and around it, even if those agents are termites or bacteria. > Whatever the Robin Hood foundation might mean by "free market", their very > use of the term means I would not support them in any way. The term "free > market" is a trigger phrase for this delicate snowflake. >8^D And I've > already blown several cherries at billionaire phlanthropists. Ptouie. E.g. > Bill Gates' magnanimity comes at the cost of decades of slimy and > exploitative practices. It's reputation laundering in the extreme. If Bill > Gates really gave a flying fsck about these things, he should have begun > working on them *before* (or instead of) exploiting the world to make > siphon off and concentrate billions of dollars. > > So, I tend to stick with established charities with proven track records > including both the united way and the red cross. My tiny personal donations > are doled out at the end of the year to organizations like mozilla, MAPS, > software in the public interest, etc. with ZERO regard to how "efficient" > or "effective" they are. And my real contributions are paying (and voting > for) taxes and buying goods and services from the smallest businesses and > co-ops I can find. > > On 4/22/20 1:04 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > > I was listening to a podcast by the guy who runs Robin Hood, an > organization dedicated to getting at the institutional roots of poverty. > When asked where we should give money in this crisis, he said, give it > where you feel passion, because that is where you are likely to give it > again. I confess I feel passion for these young folks, who in the 60’s > would have been in graduate programs, or art or music schools, teaching, > learning, inspiring, but are instead meagerly supporting their passions by > making me coffee. And very good coffee at that. So that’s where my money > goes. Robin Hood <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Foundation> > might be better for Glen because “According to /Fortune < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(magazine)>/ magazine, "Robin Hood > was a pioneer in what is now called venture philanthropy, or charity that > embraces free-market forces. An early practitioner of using metrics to > measure the effectiveness of grants, it is a place where > > strategies to alleviate urban poverty are hotly debated, ineffectual > plans are coldly discarded, and its staff of 66 hatches radical new > ideas."^[ < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Foundation#cite_note-fm-2> ” > > > -- > ☣ uǝlƃ > .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... > .... . ... > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> > http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > -- Frank Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918
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