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To answer basically all of your questions: you glossed over charities using the money fraudulently or irresponsibility (e.g. hiring their friends for no good ph

by kolbe 5y ago

To answer basically all of your questions: you glossed over charities using the money fraudulently or irresponsibility (e.g. hiring their friends for no good philanthropic reason) by simply claiming they have to fill out reports. Filling out a report is not a sufficient check on power. If you don’t like that answer, then I hope you treat all endeavors with the same disregard for the possibility of human corruption and indecency.

jrochkind1 5y ago
You HOPE I do that? why would you hope that? i don't think you're paying attention to what I am writing. Right, when I said "misuse", I understand that as including using the money fraudulently or irresponsibly. I am not sure what you mean beyond "filling out reports", "reporting" is the word that means documenting how you spent the money in the philanthropic world. Do you have much experience with non-profits and charitable giving and how it works? There is obviously a continuum of degrees of how much time recipients (or philanthropists) spend on making sure the money is spent non-fraudulently and responsibly, right? It's not all or nothing. If 95% of philanthropic money were spent making sure the other 5% were being used responsibly and non-fraudulently, we would agree there was a problem, right? (or maybe we would not?) If we found that 5% of the total philanthropic money were being spent "irresponsibly", but to reduce that further, it would take spending 25% more of the total on "oversight" -- would that be an appropriate trade-off, even though it actually results in net 20% less to "responsible" uses? So it's a question of the "appropriate" balance, and who gets to decide what that is and what it looks like and what "responsible" spending of the money looks like.
- kolbe 5y ago
  And if, in your hypothetical, assisting philanthropists in doing proper research into the usage of funds takes less than 5% of their time, then it’s a net benefit. What is the appropriate balance? Luckily you nor I get to decide. People donating their money get to choose what level is appropriate for them. And the overwhelming number of experienced philanthropists do research into whether or not the organizations they donate to are doing what they claim to do. Again, I hope you apply this same flippancy to the possibility of human misbehavior in the rest of your life. Do you buy Dell computers with no research because they claim to be the best? Do buy whatever item on Amazon has the highest rating? Do you invest in bloodwork startups because they say they have nationwide deals with Walgreens? If you do, then cool, you’re just a really trusting person. And that’s fine. But if not, you’re giving a free pass to some people and not to others, and I cannot fathom what makes some organization formed around a non-profit structure inherently more trustworthy than one formed around profitability.

by kolbe 5y ago

jrochkind1 5y ago

You HOPE I do that? why would you hope that? i don't think you're paying attention to what I am writing. Right, when I said "misuse", I understand that as including using the money fraudulently or irresponsibly. I am not sure what you mean beyond "filling out reports", "reporting" is the word that means documenting how you spent the money in the philanthropic world. Do you have much experience with non-profits and charitable giving and how it works? There is obviously a continuum of degrees of how much time recipients (or philanthropists) spend on making sure the money is spent non-fraudulently and responsibly, right? It's not all or nothing. If 95% of philanthropic money were spent making sure the other 5% were being used responsibly and non-fraudulently, we would agree there was a problem, right? (or maybe we would not?) If we found that 5% of the total philanthropic money were being spent "irresponsibly", but to reduce that further, it would take spending 25% more of the total on "oversight" -- would that be an appropriate trade-off, even though it actually results in net 20% less to "responsible" uses? So it's a question of the "appropriate" balance, and who gets to decide what that is and what it looks like and what "responsible" spending of the money looks like.

kolbe 5y ago
And if, in your hypothetical, assisting philanthropists in doing proper research into the usage of funds takes less than 5% of their time, then it’s a net benefit. What is the appropriate balance? Luckily you nor I get to decide. People donating their money get to choose what level is appropriate for them. And the overwhelming number of experienced philanthropists do research into whether or not the organizations they donate to are doing what they claim to do. Again, I hope you apply this same flippancy to the possibility of human misbehavior in the rest of your life. Do you buy Dell computers with no research because they claim to be the best? Do buy whatever item on Amazon has the highest rating? Do you invest in bloodwork startups because they say they have nationwide deals with Walgreens? If you do, then cool, you’re just a really trusting person. And that’s fine. But if not, you’re giving a free pass to some people and not to others, and I cannot fathom what makes some organization formed around a non-profit structure inherently more trustworthy than one formed around profitability.