5 ms·
I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for
by bloqs 3mo ago
I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for a meaningful career. Instead of engineering for the pocket lining of your chosen billionaire, why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering
- bratbag 3mo agoBecause i would rather solve the problems close to home, the problems involving those billionaires. Im not going to put effort into turning those other people in another country into a new cash crop for billionaires.
- nchmy 3mo agoIn my fairly extensive experience, non-profit organizations are not just full of and run by grossly incompetent people, but deeply arrogant and/or deluded ones as well. I have NEVER found an organization that has a genuine desire to seek truth, efficacy etc. They often go with whatever their first (inevitably insufficient) idea was, and not only reject all criticism but respond with indignity, etc... There's no meaningful/competent oversight. It's all just about feels and optics. And thus no real progress has or will be made. Anyway, yes, I agree that competent and genuine people (who are extremely rare) ought to try to make a meaningful impact in the world. But there's generally more money in something else. (one rare exception that comes to mind, though i haven't visited them, is The Ocean Cleanup project. They seem to be experimenting and succeeding towards the worthwhile goal of making effective engineering interventions for cleaning up waterways and oceans)
- swiftcoder 3mo agoTo some extent, one doesn't even see the competent non-profits. They don't market aggressively, they don't scale up rapidly, they just stick to their niche and quietly hammer away at it for decades on end (often on things that have no feasible exit, like schools that will need to be externally funded forever)
- fragmede 3mo agoThat seems like a simple money regulations issue. If the school has a $100 million endowment, but doesn't spend into it, the school would exist forever. If we say 10% returns a year, that's $10 million to spend on students in the form of teachers and classrooms and housing and books and everything. Unfortunately, that only teaches N students per year. But it would last ~forever. If, however, you get greedy with wanting to teach more than N students per year, then you get into the treadmill of needing external funding forever, but on the face of it, I don't accept that external funding is required forever.
- swiftcoder 3mo agoA 100 million endowment is effectively "forever funding" from the perspective of a school that takes in maybe 200k/year of donations. You don't get 100 million endowments without the scale and marketing, unfortunately
- ForHackernews 3mo agoThe Carter Center has nearly eliminated the Guinea Worm: https://www.cartercenter.org/programs/guinea-worm/ https://www.cartercenter.org/programs/guinea-worm/ I'm sure there's plenty of incompetent nonprofits out there, but there's plenty of incompetent for-profits as well.
- nchmy 3mo agoThe difference is that the non-profits come with the expectation that they're genuine, well-run, accountable etc. For profits don't really have any moral expectation
- WillAdams 3mo agoThe vast majority of the chicken flocks in South Korea are descended from chicks donated by Heifer International during and shortly after the Korean War. https://www.heifer.org/blog/historic-gift-from-south-korea-aims-to-transform-nepals-dairy-sector.html https://www.heifer.org/blog/historic-gift-from-south-korea-a...
- idiotsecant 3mo agoThere are plenty of nonprofits making a difference, your cynicism aside.
- cwmoore 3mo agoHow is that difference measured, in general? Setting aside cynicism is one thing but what answers are there for skepticism besides the very common moralizing personal attacks? When I see a lot of nonprofit leadership improving their own lot much more reliably than the people “they serve”, I wonder if the handouts are just being politically diverted to the best and most politically valuable promoters. If UBI is off the table, competition for gatekeeping resources becomes a dark market.
- idiotsecant 3mo agoSo your honest position that you're arguing here is that literally every nonprofit is not making a difference? Every one of them? What are we even talking about here?
- cwmoore 3mo ago>How is that difference measured? So it is personal attacks? Are you joking? Is there no gatekeeping of pools of money?
- ForHackernews 3mo agohttps://www.cartercenter.org/programs/guinea-worm/#by-the-numbers https://www.cartercenter.org/programs/guinea-worm/#by-the-nu... > Since our efforts began in 1986, the incidence of Guinea worm has fallen by more than 99.99% to 10* human cases in 2025
- cwmoore 3mo agoNotice I am not asking for an example. Anecdata of one, and for sure there are many, in isolation is—demonstrably—mostly PR.
- fragmede 3mo agoWho's taking care of me when I'm old and my body and mind are failing? Billionaires aren't gonna, but the money they pay me can be used to trade for goods and services, so hopefully when it's my time, it's less shitty.
- idiotsecant 3mo agoWe spend 60 years of our lives being miserable so that the last 10 will be slightly less miserable. How does that make sense?
- Geezus_42 3mo ago> why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering Because no one is willing to pay them for it and they have bills to pay.
- cwmoore 3mo agoThis is the reason we won’t tax the bots for UBI, they have bills to pay too.
- ipsod 3mo agoCheck out David Malawey's work: https://www.youtube.com/@davidmalawey https://www.youtube.com/@davidmalawey He's teaching proper engineering with commodity parts and accessible technologies.