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This phenomenon also happens when people think that their physical goods donations (usually mailed/shipped) to distant places after natural disasters = helping.
by supernova87a 5y ago
This phenomenon also happens when people think that their physical goods donations (usually mailed/shipped) to distant places after natural disasters = helping.
Often in fact, it's called the 2nd disaster -- the flood of useless, disorganized junk that people send, thinking they're helping but actually adding work to the system. Dirty blankets, old shoes, random toys.
Charities/NGOs really don't want your disorganized stuff. They need $. Money. Funds that they can just spend on buying exactly what they need, in bulk, that can be distributed in an organized way.
Hard to get random people to understand that, or prefer to give money over sentimental junk.
- paulcole 5y agoImportant to keep in mind that the random person in America has more miscellaneous junk than disposable income.
- florin_g 5y agoHere's a good old business idea. Create a gift registry where donors upload their donations to be validated / accepted by the charity org. The registry could be open source or for-profit.
- loonster 5y agoGoodwill has a natural time delay that gives a chance for things to die off.
- tapland 5y agoIf someone can solve the huge drop in people who donate if they have to put in any effort it would be amazing.
- long11l 5y agoFacebook has done it essentially already with their donations
- notjulianjaynes 5y agoThis would only work for high value items, or 'semi-fungible' goods with an easy to determine resale value (e.g. books, media, smartphones). For the latter it probably wouldn't work either. You already have things like Eco-ATM and the BookScouter app that let you quickly and easily liquidate an old phone or a stack of books, etc. It's more work than donating (you have to sort through the books, generate an invoice, etc.) but you get some cash. If donating were the same process, many people would probably opt for the cash. I've known people who made six figures driving around to thrift stores, buying up any books worth >$10 and shipping them straight to an Amazon warehouse. I do believe I've also heard of some Goodwills scanning book donations and sorting out the valuable ones themselves for resale elsewhere. Someone mentioned "stuff arbitrage" below and I think this is really the value goodwill, et. al provides. Sorting and classifying donations provides a lot of overhead that doesn't scale well for things like clothing. In the past when I was broke and unemployed I used to go to Goodwill and buy a bunch of low-middle end designer clothes (Levis, Ralph Lauren, cashmere sweaters, etc.) for $3-5 a pop, and sell them on ebay for $20-50. The margins aren't bad, but it's a labor intensive endeavor. Between finding the right items, inspecting for defects, cleaning, measuring, photographing, creating an ebay listing, shipping and handling, etc. I made maybe minimum wage. Called it quits after ebay raised their fees for the umpteenth time. If I'm understanding your idea correctly it would make donating more complicated, meaning less donations. Additionally, if you have things at a thrift store priced at "market value" you eliminate a.) the social benefit of making low cost used items available to the community (think a homeless guy buying a suit for a job interview for $5) b.) the fun of finding that hidden gem, which is the real reason most people shop there to begin with. For things like art, high-end furniture, musical instruments, it might make sense though.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThis would be a great scene in a dystopian star warsesque universe. Planet is bombed, human suffering, etc. Then, because of light speed travel, minutes later broken lamps and broken toasters fall from run down ’good will’ ships that finish off the planet.
- deadbunny 5y agoSee Autofac by PKD. Short Story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac TV Show: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/
- 0_____0 5y agoread the short story as a kid, always stuck w me. more relevant than ever with the continual drive towards efficiency and consumption fueled by amazon et al. the tv ep unfortunately changed the ending in a way that completely lost the character of the original (imo). still interesting but less dickian.
- ineedasername 5y agoMCU beat them to it with the trash planet in Thor: Ragnarok.
- cable2600 5y agoReminds me of this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/719719.The_Garbage_Chronicles https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/719719.The_Garbage_Chron... Where they dump Earth's garbage on another planet, that has life forms based on fruit people. Willy Watermelon Attorney at Law.
- msla 5y agoMore Douglas Adams than Star Wars.
- drewzero1 5y agoTrue! Reminds me of the fate of the Poghrils[1] and (to a lesser extent) the Shoe Event Horizon[2]. [1] https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/p/756092 https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/p/756092 [2] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Shoe_Event_Horizon https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Shoe_Event_Horizon
- ggm 5y agoWhich is a strong indication that state or pan-nation but tax-funded aid and reconstruction programmes are better than charity. Yet, we insist in the feel good model of donations for reuse, or only for the tax write-off. Not that it doesn't have or keep perpetuating problems of its own: obligatory labour laws, and forced market models are strings attached to world bank funding which can ruin an economy faster than you can say "chicago boys"
- anthony_romeo 5y agoIn theory the tax write-off makes sense: instead of the government serving as a middleman for charities and making political decisions on who-gets-what, it allows the citizens to more freely support the charities they like directly. Sadly, in its present form, most people in the US seem to be too exhausted and cash-poor to donate larger amounts more frequently (even before COVID), slowly increasing the reliance on larger endowments based on the whims of fewer and fewer people/organizations. People with lower incomes also probably don’t pay enough in taxes to really reap the benefits of the write-off since it’s only a deduction.
- BurningFrog 5y agoMy impression is that poor people donate a lot through their churches, which do tons of important social work, but we HN people have zero contact with those layers of society.
- nradov 5y agoCharitable donations increased 5% from 2018 to 2019 (before COVID). We don't have the data on 2020 yet. https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-giving-statistics/ https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-g...
- jogjayr 5y agoIt's only a deduction you can take if you itemize your deductions. This rules out nearly all renters.
- kaybe 5y ago
- drewrv 5y agoI’ll add that food banks also prefer money over the can of beans that’s been sitting in your pantry for six months. They can buy in bulk at great rates and they know what the community needs.
- jelling 5y ago100% correct. For example, the Chicago food depository is an amazing organization with a really well run warehouse. It’s best just to give them cash because they can buy in bulk and obviously it’s easier to manage large quantities of identical products than one-off donations.
- nradov 5y agoFood banks also get a lot of bulk food donations from grocery stores and distributors. But they need cash to pay for trucks to pick up the donations, and to rent operating space.
- ralph84 5y agoIn general they also don't need your sporadic untrained volunteer time either. The volunteering events that HR departments love to organize where employees earning six figures spend hours on make work always strike me as an incredibly inefficient way to actually help people in need.
- mssundaram 5y agoFeel good virtue signaling
- dehrmann 5y agoI'm not the volunteering type, but I went to a work-arranged event where we tutored kids. I ended up feeling mostly guilty after doing it because it would be better for these kids to have ongoing mentoring by the same person than a revolving pool of tech randos.
- gscott 5y agoSometimes it is just that many randos care at all that matters, and that inspires a person to feel that they matter because you care.
- spfzero 5y agoSo true. I helped out sorting produce at a food bank for a company organized event. Clearly we were an imposition on the workers there who were far more efficient and then pulled away to spend a half hour training us to do their job poorly for three hours. Great for coverage in the company newsletter though.
- ethbr0 5y agoI'd give a call-out to Habitat for Humanity in the US (providing lower-cost homes to qualifying families). From the builds I've worked, they seem more than happy to exploit your muscle and tell you exactly what needs doing. It helps that home construction is mostly repetitive (nail this way, 100 times). Also, surprise finding that about 1/4 of IT colleagues don't know how to drive a nail.
- analog31 5y agoI apply the same principle to wedding and graduation gifts. Here are people who probably don't even know where they're going to be living in six months. The last thing they need is more stuff.
- dehrmann 5y agoNot just more stuff: more high-end stuff they'd never buy for themselves.
- analog31 5y agoIndeed, especially because you're not supposed to get them stuff that's actually useful, like a decent oscilloscope or a proper set of cone wrenches.
- deadlyllama 5y agoWe used a Google spreadsheet for our gift registry ten years ago. One of my friends, a sheet metal worker, gave us a really decent toolbox. Still using it.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoIf only people bought high-end stuff... often enough, they buy low-end stuff, blocking off a product category for a while - e.g., you're not going to buy a proper quality coffee maker for yourself if you just got a shitty one as a gift from a relative, because you'll worry about offending that relative.
- publicola1990 5y agoEven giving money to charities may not be a good idea. I think it is sound financial advice never to donate funds/anything to a charity. If you want to donate money, donate to somebody/something that provides a free service/product to you, or perhaps some political organisation whose ideas you espouse, or to a friend in need, but never to a charity.
- krisoft 5y agoWhat do you mean by “sound financial advice“? Of course you are not going to get richer by donating. In fact you are going to be poorer financially! But that is not the only aspect of life which matters. > “If you want to donate money, donate to somebody/something that provides a free service/product to you” That sounds very much like paying for the service or product in question. Can you elaborate on what you meant by this? “... but never to a charity.” Why? You spent a lot of characters and 3 ornately wrought sentences wich all just reitareted this “wisdom” as if it is a fact without explaining why you think so. Are you against altruism in all forms? Or perhaps you have this opinion from an effective altruism perspective?
- publicola1990 5y agoI really don't get the appeal many Americans have for charity, and I think there are better ways of helping people than giving to these organizations whose only real effect is going to leave you poorer. Charity is a non-solution for any of the worlds problems, and a distraction from finding real solutions.
- URSpider94 5y agoPlease elaborate. I’m having a hard time understanding your argument. Are you saying, for instance, that charities should not exist because they are a band-aid for missing government policies? I would submit that the dog rescue charities that I support are not going to be made redundant by a guaranteed minimum income plan for canines…
- anonytrary 5y agoTainted altruism is a good paper to read. Selfishness (in this case, the desire to get rid of junk) is slippery when it is in the name of altruism. When we have psychological cover, we are more willing to do the wrong thing. Many great papers on this. Look up "tainted altruism" and follow the rabbit hole of papers.