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Comment by outime | Hacker News Reader

There are NGOs that don't take public stances, you just have to look out for them (depends on your country as well I guess?). It's fine if you want to accept everyone is corrupt and will have hidden causes ("that's naive") but I don't and other people share this.

>Or do you want them to share your political alignment, and in that way be non-controversial?

Please stop these kind of assumptions - it just feels childish. I don't want political stances of any kind from an organization that's getting my money to make a specific thing better.

If I was to donate to MDN to make docs better, I don't want stances on far-right or far-left. I want my money to be used to produce better documentation, period.

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> I don't want political stances of any kind from an organization that's getting my money to make a specific thing better.

Your notion of what "better" means is in and of itself a political stance.

No, not really. If I want to donate to achieve a specific technical goal (e.g. documentation about something completely apolitical) and nothing else that's not a political stance.

The choice to prioritize a charity which writes documentation over charities which address political issues is itself political.

I'll admit that's a bit slippery of me. A charity that writes technical documentation is about as apolitical as it gets. But my point is that every decision we make about how we should allocate resources in our society is political, because that's what politics is about. Expecting charities not to have political stances is silly, because the fundamental proposal every charity makes -- "let's all get together and spend money on X" -- is in and of itself political.

> Please stop these kind of assumptions - it just feels childish.

It was a genuine question, not an assumption. I was just challenging the way you were positioning your opinion. I thought my comment was phrased in a way that was polite and direct. I don't see how that warranted an insult.

I won't address the rest of your comment as I think bccdee did a fine job of saying what I would've said.

>I thought my comment was phrased in a way that was polite and direct.

Well, I said I wouldn't want a NGO to use my money to take any stance unrelated to their original apolitical goal and your follow-up questions is along the lines of "oh so would you be ok if they aligned with your political stance?". Don't say thay's a genuine question because it's not, it just feels like a bait.

> Don't say thay's a genuine question because it's not, it just feels like a bait.

Well, I guess you can believe what you like. It wasn't intended as bait, but if you read it that way and refuse to believe me when I say I had no ill intent, I certainly can't change your mind at this point.

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