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One thing I think about non profits and volunteering, is the jobs displaced by volunteers; For example; Adopt-A-Roads In "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Hardy's

One thing I think about non profits and volunteering, is the jobs displaced by volunteers; For example; Adopt-A-Roads In "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Hardy's dad becomes a street sweeper in the midst of the depression to pay his bills; What if, instead of volunteering to clean up roads, the city collected taxes, and paid a living wage with benefits to people cleaning up the streets. This line of thinking also applies to the Coronavirus, restaurant + school shutdowns; If only, instead of asking for volunteers, non profits were paid by the state to re-employ restaurants and/or their workers, to make meals for children now without a meal.

Consultant32452 6y ago
There's a Youtuber named Hotep Jesus who had an interesting plan about cleaning up after the various protests/riots. His idea was to give all the government contracts for cleanup to minority owned local businesses. Additionally, he discouraged people volunteering to help cleanup for free. This would create a big local stimulus for the local community, people would be learning skills like how to install windows, how to rebuild structures, re-pave roads, plumbing, etc. Some wiggle room could be given on licensed professionals there. Of course, the work would have to be to code, and oversight by a skilled/experienced person is necessary for important things like buildings, but with guidance people could pick up a lot of skills.
- dewy 6y ago
  Creating a perverse incentive scheme for more frequent and destructive riots to increase the number of subsequent government clean-up contracts? Be careful what you wish for...
  - TylerE 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    How do you feel about job training and free healthcare that is provided in prisons?
    - dewy 6y ago
      I think the stick outweighs the carrot! Like many of these complicated problems, there are always pros and cons, and the question is how does society weight the importance of achieving/avoiding those. I suspect the unpleasantness of prison plus the shackles of a felony on your record more than outweighs the benefits of the education you receive - at least in the USA. But like many people, I think that prisons should reform as well as punish, so I assign a strong weight to the importance of this (IMHO) very minor moral hazard. I was being a little facetious before re: post protest cleanups rather than engaging with you properly, and I certainly support the idea of helping minority owned businesses in principle. I suspect (or hope?) that most cleanup companies would not try to make rioting worse. On the other, the moral hazard definitely exists, there are limited downsides (i.e. the off-chance that you get caught), and if the financial incentives for the cleanup operations became big enough...
rayiner 6y ago
> What if, instead of volunteering to clean up roads, the city collected taxes, and paid a living wage with benefits to people cleaning up the streets. Viewed through the lens of equity concerns, I worry that the result of your hypothetical is a bureaucracy of unionized, mostly white college educated managers overseeing the street cleaners. My hope is that recent events make us think hard about the nature of need in America and how we address it. Over 90% of white people are above the poverty line. The median income of a white household is $70,000, versus $40,000 for a black household. 60% of all homeless people are black or Hispanic. We talk a lot about middle-class "stagnation." But median wealth for white people has more than doubled, after inflation, since 2000. It hasn't budged at all for black people. More than ever, we are recognizing today that a huge part of systematically addressing poverty in America is about addressing race disparities. That’s critical: the black-white income gap (at the median, so forget about Jeff Bezos) is proportionally the same size today in 2020 as it was when George Wallace ran for President in a segregationist platform. Meanwhile, we have spent vast sums on the premise that the best way to remedy racial disparities is through government programs for education and creating “good jobs with benefits.” State and local spending per person has therefore doubled since 1977. But it turns out that much of that spending merely perpetuates those gaps. For example, increased education spending (which has tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars per student since 1970) has overwhelmingly gone to white, college educated teachers and administrators. (Indeed, black people were actively excluded from many of these jobs by unions.) Cities with majority black and Hispanic populations owe hundreds of billions in retirement and health benefits to retired teachers, police, etc., who are overwhelmingly white. Now, that’s not an argument for saying that we should, for example, renege on those obligations. But we certainly shouldn’t perpetuate the disparities. If we are appalled by say homelessness in American cities (and we should be), we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Not to some government bureaucracy which by its nature is likely to be staffed with people who have various indicators of privilege (white, college educated, from a middle class household—who do you think government agencies tend to hire?)
- HouseOfLard 6y ago
  > we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Governments entail some degree of bureaucracy, much the same way that corporations require some degree of management. It's a question of balancing that overhead with actual results. Civil services need to better align with making a meaningful impact. More focus on the actual impact of civil services, and less on aggregate budget allocation.

Consultant32452 6y ago

There's a Youtuber named Hotep Jesus who had an interesting plan about cleaning up after the various protests/riots. His idea was to give all the government contracts for cleanup to minority owned local businesses. Additionally, he discouraged people volunteering to help cleanup for free. This would create a big local stimulus for the local community, people would be learning skills like how to install windows, how to rebuild structures, re-pave roads, plumbing, etc. Some wiggle room could be given on licensed professionals there. Of course, the work would have to be to code, and oversight by a skilled/experienced person is necessary for important things like buildings, but with guidance people could pick up a lot of skills.

dewy 6y ago
Creating a perverse incentive scheme for more frequent and destructive riots to increase the number of subsequent government clean-up contracts? Be careful what you wish for...
- TylerE 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  How do you feel about job training and free healthcare that is provided in prisons?
  - dewy 6y ago
    I think the stick outweighs the carrot! Like many of these complicated problems, there are always pros and cons, and the question is how does society weight the importance of achieving/avoiding those. I suspect the unpleasantness of prison plus the shackles of a felony on your record more than outweighs the benefits of the education you receive - at least in the USA. But like many people, I think that prisons should reform as well as punish, so I assign a strong weight to the importance of this (IMHO) very minor moral hazard. I was being a little facetious before re: post protest cleanups rather than engaging with you properly, and I certainly support the idea of helping minority owned businesses in principle. I suspect (or hope?) that most cleanup companies would not try to make rioting worse. On the other, the moral hazard definitely exists, there are limited downsides (i.e. the off-chance that you get caught), and if the financial incentives for the cleanup operations became big enough...

rayiner 6y ago

> What if, instead of volunteering to clean up roads, the city collected taxes, and paid a living wage with benefits to people cleaning up the streets. Viewed through the lens of equity concerns, I worry that the result of your hypothetical is a bureaucracy of unionized, mostly white college educated managers overseeing the street cleaners. My hope is that recent events make us think hard about the nature of need in America and how we address it. Over 90% of white people are above the poverty line. The median income of a white household is $70,000, versus $40,000 for a black household. 60% of all homeless people are black or Hispanic. We talk a lot about middle-class "stagnation." But median wealth for white people has more than doubled, after inflation, since 2000. It hasn't budged at all for black people. More than ever, we are recognizing today that a huge part of systematically addressing poverty in America is about addressing race disparities. That’s critical: the black-white income gap (at the median, so forget about Jeff Bezos) is proportionally the same size today in 2020 as it was when George Wallace ran for President in a segregationist platform. Meanwhile, we have spent vast sums on the premise that the best way to remedy racial disparities is through government programs for education and creating “good jobs with benefits.” State and local spending per person has therefore doubled since 1977. But it turns out that much of that spending merely perpetuates those gaps. For example, increased education spending (which has tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars per student since 1970) has overwhelmingly gone to white, college educated teachers and administrators. (Indeed, black people were actively excluded from many of these jobs by unions.) Cities with majority black and Hispanic populations owe hundreds of billions in retirement and health benefits to retired teachers, police, etc., who are overwhelmingly white. Now, that’s not an argument for saying that we should, for example, renege on those obligations. But we certainly shouldn’t perpetuate the disparities. If we are appalled by say homelessness in American cities (and we should be), we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Not to some government bureaucracy which by its nature is likely to be staffed with people who have various indicators of privilege (white, college educated, from a middle class household—who do you think government agencies tend to hire?)

HouseOfLard 6y ago
> we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Governments entail some degree of bureaucracy, much the same way that corporations require some degree of management. It's a question of balancing that overhead with actual results. Civil services need to better align with making a meaningful impact. More focus on the actual impact of civil services, and less on aggregate budget allocation.