Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
If your company matches donations, take them up on that. That means for $1 pre-tax (~$0.60 out of your pocket) you can give $2.00 to an organization that could use the money. That’s almost 3.5x force multiplication.
Also I promise it will feel good, and if you choose a local organization that doesn’t have mega donors (not that the big ones are all bad) they will truly notice your help.
Which is not to say you shouldn't help people. It is to say that the best way to help may not be registered and legislated charity. Mutual aid is a powerful thing - you can enable communities around you to be self-determining, rather than funding a bunch of salaried assholes to decide what they need.
Go find a mutual aid organization near you. Set up a big chunky recurring contribution. And if you're feeling intrepid, get to know some of the people and learn how you can help out on the ground.
In terms of finances, the real money is in fundraising. From the perspective of the charity, spending $999 on fundraising to raise $1000 dollars in donations is a net positive and huge amounts of money are "wasted" on fundraising efforts. If you want a lucrative career in the industry, being a freelance fundraising consultant is definitely the way to go. You can ask for nearly as much as you can raise and you get none of the scrutiny the CEOs get.
If I ran a charity and had an exclusive choice to either spend $X to raise $Y or spend ($X + $0.99M) to raise ($Y + $1.00M), why wouldn't I choose the latter, assuming the charity has a use for the additional net $10K?
Having friends working in charities, it was eye-opening to see the divide between "development" and "programming" in charities. Development (fundraising) rarely struggled for money, so long as they could show a positive RoI. Programming (the actual, intended work of the charity) got whatever was left over, but that seems like the natural and intended way to run a charity.
The common criticism of this hangs on how elastic the supply of donor dollars are. If you spend $1M to divert funds from another charity to yours, then the system overall is worse off.
This isn't a perfect model because donor dollars are not fixed, and all charities are not equivalent. reality lies somewhere in-between.
That said, it is all pretty irrelevant because there are lots of groups that evaluate charities on their overhead to benefit, so it is pretty easy to find one with low overhead if that is a concern.
Everyone wants to donate to program work, but never to operations.
Even grants that carve out for operations aren’t always realistic.
Major gifts is one of the best ways to get unrestricted donor funds.
You can get a lot of information from the 990 filing of an organization.
In other comments, I agree that in many non profit organizations there are people who might not last in for profit.
Most of those people however are working in roles that are $30,000 , maybe $40,000 a year and there wouldn’t be someone in for profit who would take that role, for that amount of pay.
Overwork and burnout in the field is very real.
Unrelated to that staffing, I would again go back to operational expenses - rent, electricity, payroll etc. Depending on the nonprofit, this may be a huge percentage… but if you have an organization that has a $250,000 a year revenue, two staff to accomplish what their mission is…. What actually goes to program work might be very little.
I just know that im not interested if I see a non-profit with 50% marketing expenses, 30% in other operational expenses, and passes through 20% to the beneficiaries (e.g. medical supplies, research grants, or whatever the stated purpose is).
I would call that high overhead.
This sounds extreme, but some large non-profits actually have numbers like this.
For what it's worth I also tend to avoid products that seem to spend a lot on advertising.
If you instead kept that $100 to spend on yourself, you would give the government $40 and you could spend $60.
In the case you give it to charity, the development/executive staff pays income taxes on that $90, so if their marginal rate is the same as yours (assuming they're highly paid), they pay $36 in taxes, have $54 to spend, and $10 goes to programming. If it goes to staff paid under $147K, they pay their (lower) marginal rate on it, but the full 15.3% amount for Social Security and Medicare is paid on those funds.
It seems like the government is only out ~$4 ($40 less from you; $36 more from someone else), with ~$10 available for programs.
(The largest loss is that you lost $60 of spending power in exchange for only $10 in programming while development staff got an extra $54 of spending power. You lose way more than the government loses.)
And here’s the weird philanthropic angle: as an NGO head you only get access to the government cash spigot if you can show “co-finance”, typically private, which will 3x a philanthropist’s funding and give them huge power in resource allocation.
Now that he's died, it might not be the same though
The Effective Altruism movement aims to direct money towards these activities with maximum impact. But to do this they actually need charities to collect data to measure their impact, which I guess may require some degree of professionalism.
Working with many non-profits, they're very careful to keep expenses below a certain percentage of their donations. Otherwise sites likes these cause them to lose donations.
Unfortunately this results in low salaries for employees which means the employees gain skills but can't afford to keep working there. The non-profit loses talent they helped build.
I know of some non-profits who have gotten around this by creating a 2nd non-profit where they receive donations just for business & administrative costs. Than use their 1st non-profit to say 100% of donations goes to our causes.
In reality, you should get to know your non-profits. Volunteer & help them out. Then you'll have a better understanding of how they use their money. Sometimes those high administrative costs result in a lot of value being achieved, even if the percentages don't look great.
Personally I'm a huge fan of a lot of community non-profits like local YMCA's if anyone is looking for a good place to start. I also tend to work with other small, local non-profits.
I think one ends up down a deep rabbit hole comparing different non-profits. In the end I think you need to find a mission you care about & a group that you believe does it well. I think the most important thing is that you are invested in the non-profit.
A local YMCA can provide very cheap after school child care & activities that keep kids safe, out of trouble, maybe a small meal & allows their parents to work. This can end up having very huge benefits directly & indirectly in the community.
GiveWell shows a lot of cost effective ways to distribute things like medicine & safety items. Plenty of awesome non-profits there.
I work with some small non-profits that pick & fund specific research at universities on childhood cancer.
I'm not sure how you compare different non-profits like that. Especially if you want to see the impact they have over N years, how that impact is spread or if some other larger issue needs to be addressed that's making a non-profits work pointless. GiveWell itself says it doesn't try to be a charity evaluator. They try to find a small number of really good donation opportunities for people.
There are an awful lot of rubbish charities but there are at least a few worthwhile ones so it’s not an excuse for not donating.
Surely you can see that "get the best person you can for $40k" has limitations as a hiring strategy.
I don't have anything against a non-profit CEO paying themselves well if they also pay their employees well. Many do not, with some unspoken culture of employees needing to accept meager compensation so that resources can be directed toward the core mission whose objectives are fluid and progress often difficult to measure.
A charity that just passes money straight through by sending envelopes full of cash to a war torn country is much worse than one that spends a ton of money on analyzing first what the most effective way to help is.
The lower down payed employees get the "you don't get much but you work for a charity" speech and get abused as much as the volunteers.
Let the CEO do it out of charity and take a 1$ salary and see if it all goes to hell. I very much doubt it.
No it’s not, the charity status is a massive burden and it’s about the stupidest thing you can do if you’re forming a corporation with the intent to make money.
> the most work is done by volunteers
No, that’s not true. Much of the work is done by the suppliers charities buy supplies from and employees of the charity. Doctors get paid in Doctors Without Borders.
> Let the CEO do it out of charity and take a 1$ salary and see if it all goes to hell. I very much doubt it.
This is just the standard ignorant “I don’t think CEOs do anything” view dressed up in a comment about charities.
High pay bringing high competence and passion seems a rather poor assumption.
And it is. Most free software projects never go anywhere. Those that do commonly have UI/UX that is far inferior to most consumer software produced for people willing to pay for it. The extreme right tail of open source software is great and most people who work on it are paid to do so. If you want reliability and quality paying for it works a lot better than hoping for people to do so uncompensated.
Is it unreasonable for a charity CEO to merely be paid a bit closer to the median for their kind of work?
Otherwise the FSFE when it's an option in Europe since their Public Money, Public Code campaign is great.
Have you ever seen a corporate marketing department?
Well, this is just not true.
Americans give 2.1% of GDP to charity [1] while the whole world gives just under 3% [2]. Also when you take a look at a comparison between countries [3] you can see that the US is far behind (percentage-wise, not rank-wise) countries like Netherlands (14%) or Switzerland (13.3%)
1. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...
2. https://www.privatebank.citibank.com/newcpb-media/media/docu...
3. https://www.axios.com/2019/11/30/most-charitable-countries-w...
Your US figure ([1]) doesn't say anything about value of time donated so I'd assume it is not included.
Finally, the metric where Netherlands and Switzerland come out on top in [3] is in size of philanthropic assets vs GDP. This is noteworthy for sure but is a an entirely different thing than amount of yearly donations.
I think that philanthropic assets should correlate to donations, but you're right also here the numbers from this source cannot be compared to the numbers I mentioned before.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...
Best case scenario would be where no charity is needed, am I wrong?
On the other hand there is competition between nonprofits, plus they are often multinational.
I find it interesting that some of the most efficient government organizations (like World Food Programme) actually operate as charities (in the sense that everyone can donate to them).
I'm not sure what you're comparing here. Are you saying governments are more efficient because they are bigger? Are you saying they are more efficient because they've filled a need more completely?
The first is non-sense and the second is more a function of size and power than efficiency. Efficiency is about benefit per dollar, and governments are really really bad a that, typically making up for how bad they are by simply throwing more dollars at the problem.
That is, I can be 100% efficient with my donation to charity by just...giving $20 to a homeless person. Oh look, 100% of my donation went to someone in need. A charity can be 90% efficient by collecting and distributing donations citywide; it's more widespread, and donations are less centralized, but there's cost in paying people to actually do the legwork. A government is doing stuff nationwide, distributing unequally based on need (measured in a flawed way, yes, but still requiring measurement, since it's politically untenable to do simple things), and is less efficient still. But that's...to be expected.
You see the same thing in private sector; the larger a company is, the less efficiently it runs. Walmart is the largest private employer; no one is claiming it's a well oiled machine of efficiencies comparable to a lean startup. Necessarily; it's just like with technology, the more distributed the system is, the less efficient it is. Saying that governments are inefficient and just throw money at the problem is like saying distributed systems are inefficient and just throw compute at the problem. While true, it nevertheless is still the only way to solve many problems at that scale, and comparing the 'inefficiencies' of hardware of, say, Google, to the hardware for local search on my home PC, isn't particularly meaningful rhetoric.
Unlike the government, no one's forcing people to shop at walmart, and if they were loosing efficiency (charging higher due to Admin costs) people are more than welcome to move to any alternative that suits them best
All of this after leading with seeming disagreement. I'm a little lost.
Maybe I should clarify, especially if English isn't your first language, saying something "isn't comparable" doesn't mean you literally can't compare them, but that doing so is unhelpful and misleading.
Comparing government's and private charities' efficiency at delivering help is a perfectly rational comparison to make when deciding which things should or should not be delivered by the government. The government's efficiency is always a concern when talking about it taking on new responsibilities.
If government efficiency was moot, why not have them handle delivery/allocation of all basic goods? We know that's a bad idea because the experiment has been run, and private industry is better as producing and distributing food because.... efficiency.
Feels like an arbitrary distinction to what I said. "Efficiency" is an axis that doesn't make sense when the scale and scope are massively different, for all the reasons mentioned above.
>> We know that's a bad idea because the experiment has been run
So many issues with this. First, your claim is "Efficiency is about benefit per dollar, and governments are really really bad a(t) that"; you make a claim about all governments. Cherry picking data points is not helping that claim; you have to show that government is never, and can never, be more efficient than private industry. I'm pointing out why even trying to make the comparison at national scale is difficult. Second, where has this example occurred? Again, I think your choice of data points is telling.
Food is actually a super interesting example where, again, the scale of the operation doesn't really make for direct comparison. Grocery stores are obviously the way consumers get access to food, but their stock happens via multiple wholesale distributors, who themselves are middle men between multiple suppliers. That is, while Ralphs/Kroger/King Soupers/etc may be as near a nationwide grocery store in the US as I'm aware of, they're stocked by Sysco, US Foods, etc (who are carrying multiple, sometimes even competing, brands), as well as sometimes specific distributors for a large enough company (Coke may have their own, for instance), and who transport product between warehouses using separate longhaul trucking companies, etc etc. There is a LOT of inefficiency involved in that, a lot of middle men collecting along the way, and as we saw during the pandemic, a lot of places the supply chain can break down. And you're comparing it to...what? Russia during peak communism? The closest the US has had is when the government got involved during WWII with rationing, and that actually worked really well, given the shortages we had.
Let's try going the other way, and scaling government down. I too will cherry pick some data - municipal broadband. Oh, wow, now we have something way more efficient than 'the free market', even without tax subsidies, in every market it exists in; so much so that the only way private industry can compete is via legislation to prevent municipal broadband from expanding.
This is definitely not an ideological and dogmatic statement obscuring centuries of experience across hundreds of government systems, oh no-no-no. Government is bad at everything, get it?
> There are no examples in the history of the world of charity sufficiently providing for the needs of the poor at a national scale.
This is just false. Literally right now we have the case where food banks are filling in the gaps of the UK government at a national scale.
There are plenty of inefficiencies in businesses too. I don't understand how anyone who has ever worked for a small or medium-sized company can complain about government waste. Almost every job I've had has been just riddled with ludicrous inefficiencies.
> plus they operate like monopolies.
Every philanthropist has a monopoly on the use of their funds.
At least with tax-supported government programs, voters have representation on how those funds are used.
And there are lots of them, not operating all under one central control, so they are likely to help local needs, compete in other spaces, and spread the effects.
> At least with tax-supported government programs, voters have representation on how those funds are used.
And then those funds are mostly sent to a big few items taxpayers hear about and not so much to any other needs.
Voters also have representation on how charity funds are spent, since voters are the people making donations. If anything, this means your funds target what you want instead of what others want you to spend on.
So I think charity will always have a role, both financially and socially.
Funding for basic educational standards and a minimal social safety net is already a huge spending commitment for even the most successful governments, and it's not clear if "welfare" can expand beyond that.
Why would you say that? By that logic a charitable institution has no one with a stake in it's long-term success. It's only goal is preserving itself and capturing more resources from donors. There's nothing about governments which makes them inherently incapable of hiring motivated staff.
In my experience, government workers, be they school teachers, nurses, librarians, or community workers are often some of most highly motivated workers I have met.
> it's not clear if "welfare" can expand beyond that.
It is clear if you believe that such funding is available from philanthropic sources. It's just a question of who we wish to give control of those resources to.
Of course it has: pissed-off voters. Mismanaged government-funded institutions such as DMVs or social security systems are a regular troublemaker for politicians.
Perhaps the constant demonizing of public services by private interests, (who btw often rely on government contracts to function), and certain politicians bought by these interests could be a contributing factor in why not?
But let me hear about how private healthcare and broadband is killing it please.
(I have Comcast, so it's not like I've even got the "best", but I'd way rather deal with Comcast or Blue Cross than any government agency...)
Let me put it this way: Comcast is the only reason why a lot of the US doesn't have gigabit internet at cheap prices.
It's a vicious circle, but not an inevitable one. There are plenty of examples of well-functioning government departments, and in some countries there is no significant difference between the performance of publicly run institutions and their private counterparts (although there is of course plenty of variance within both of those groups).
Charity in the form of "one rich guy writes a check because he felt like it" is too dependent on the capricious whims and priorities of a handful of rich people.
Considering purchasing power parity GDP would be even better.
> more if you count donations of time, physical labor and material
This whole charity idea is stupid if you're a country like the US, it's like kicking someone in the balls then giving them an aspirin for the pain and bragging about how generous you are.
I've submitted a few episodes to HN in the past (with little pick-up). The issue of donor-induced bias and misdirection is a frequent one.
Unfortunately, both the podcast and its host, Amy Costello, seem to have gone dark as of this past December. I've written the organisation, the NonProfit Quarterly, several times, and made inquiries elsewhere, but have received no word on what's going on.
The back-catalogue remains available and excellent however.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/tiny-spark/
Let's take econ 101 and revealed preferences. It is obvious that if you give 100 bucks to a charity you get utility worth more than that 100 bucks. Otherwise you would not do that. And there is zero difference on the mechanics there if you compare to buying a movie ticket. Watching the movie gives you more utility than what the ticket costs. So, from the point of view of the donor we can think charity nothing more, nothing less than entertainment, and the question is, why one type of entertainment is tax deductible while another is not?
If we compare these transactions not only from the donor's point of view, we notice a clear distinction in power balance between those. The movie ticket transaction is relatively power neutral. Both sides have roughly equal say in the contract, both are taking part of a balanced business transaction. Charity then, is far from being power neutral, the donor has all the power in their hands. Not exactly a reason for charity being the tax-subsidized transaction here.
But charity makes good things. Like... creating a job for a movie teather cashier is somehow not a good thing? Nope, not convincing either.
As said, I have a blind spot here. I find no serious reason why charity should be subsidized. Yes, it feels good and makes good, but so do normal business transactions. If you think that charity is somehow better way to organize social security for the poor than government-tax-mandated social security, think again. (hint: prisoners' dilemma) If you think that you would like to support poor voluntarily, but not by force, you do not understand (or want to understand) that that does not result to sufficient support for the poor.
The government is saying to the citizens, if you see a problem so pressing it motivates you to altruism, we'll trust that it was important enough that you don't need to pay taxes on that money.
I like it conceptually since central authorities tend to have lots of blind spots. Like a lot of white collar crime issues, enforcement of what rules there are is lacking.
Sounds like you failed econ 101.
If you only take the viewpoit of a sociopath, you will miss some crucial detail, like empathy, which is the reason people donate.
I donate because want to stave off ecosystem collapse, but you come across as the kind of person that would rather invest 2 billion in personal bunkers than 1 billion in ecosystem restoration, because the former is 'value' and the latter is 'entertainment'
In this case the donor gets his entertainment and good feelings and as a positive externality a child doesn't get malaria.
Graduate degrees, pollution, loud cars/motorcycles, ugly buildings, mountain climbing, alcohol, marijuana, fashion magazines. So many possibilities.
Mountain climbing results in dead people and large hospital expenses and mountain rescue teams rescuing people.
Most alcohol is drunk by alcoholics. Most marijuana is ingested by people who spend over three hours a day stoned. Both of those are bad and should be discouraged. Alcohol probably causes more economic damage than every illegal drug combined.
As you point out, there are externalities here of sorts. Government healthcare is often considered bad by libertarians as it seemingly gives the government the right to control people's lives (e.g. oblige they do exercise or not eat red meat or not have unprotected anal sex or whatever) in the name of reducing the costs on the healthcare system.
That said, if an opt-out was allowed to be used by the mountain climber or couch potato or go karter or bare backer that states the government has no obligation to help in the event of a bad outcome caused by their activities then the "externalility" disappears.
This is noteably NOT the case with the more classic examples of externalities such as pollution. Doesn't matter how many waivers the polluter signs, other people still get lung cancer.
When Bill Gates or some other billionaire allocates some portion of his wealth to his foundation, this is tax he doesn't need to pay and can write off. The foundation needs to appear to be doing good, but it can also develop his other financial interests.
I think it's better thought of as tax efficient part of public relations spend.
From the economic perspective, If someone gives $100 to charity, and a gets a $20 tax deduction, this is a net positive. Ostensibly, the point of government is to help people, and the point of charities are to help people. In reality, Half of that $20 tax would have gone to building bombs, so it is more like $10 vs $100.
From the moral perspective, charitable donations are set apart from other transactions because there is no quid-pro-quo, so more good is done. When you buy a movie ticket, a significant portion of that goes creating the product you receive (paying the movie studio, building the theatre, paying investors). With a charitable donation, the idea is that that more good is done because you are forgoing receiving any goods or services.
I find that a very odd statement to make. It is a statement that actually denies that people can act charitably at all. It comes across to me as a statement routed in a complete lack of empathy.
I'm not disagreeing with your overall point that actually less reliance on philanthropy and more tax funding of welfare and initiatives would be a benefit, just that I strongly disagree with how you get there, that all charity must be a utilitarian endeavour.
Let’s say that you give someone $100 so that they can feed their family. The good feeling you get, and the sense of justice, etc is worth $100 or more to you. Therefore, you got at least $100 utility out of it.
Maybe? That’s what I’m guessing the OP meant.
There isn't one. It's the same thing.
All choices can be traced back to a "selfish" reason. To deny that is to suggest that there is something other than our self that determines if we are a good person or not.
There isn't one. Its the same thing.
To deny that is to suggesy that theelre is something other than our self that determined is we had a good life.
But charity became its own distorted industry.
I think it'd be an interesting experiment to celebrate the highest tax payers the same way we celebrate those in the Forbes 500 with magazine covers and the way non-profits celebrate their biggest donors with gala dinners.
Celebrating tax contributions and rewarding the contributor (on an opt in basis) could be hugely beneficial for certain types of wealthy individuals. Often times wealthy people enjoy being on these lists as it helps their business, PR, etc. in addition to recognition.
I think it would lead to healthier discourse as the tax contributor would be effectively be saying - of all the philanthropic causes I could support, I am purposely choosing to give up that right and instead contribute it via taxes to my country because I believe in its people to vote intelligently and the elected politicians to act in the best interests of those people.
As an anecdote, I'd invite you to consider Silvio Berlusconi, which at various points in times was both the richest man and the top tax payer in Italy (and amongst the top in Europe), and a leading politician for 20 years.
He highlighted his tax contributions often, as an attempt to show that he was actually bringing a lot of value to the State, but still ran on a platform of "taxes are evil".
One can have a morally consistent world view that holds that voluntarily submitting oneself to the state's tax obligations to be a moral good, comparable to donating to the state, while relying on the state's apparatus of violence (the courts, police and prisons which compel compliance with state edicts) to tax the private income of people at large is an evil.
- the loudest of society villify the rich regardless of whether they are fairly paying taxes or not
- a subset of rich laud each other for coming up with the most creative tax evasion schemes
Some sort of publisher should hold up the most honest, most successful tax patriots and put them up on a magazine cover.
It'd be important to have some separation of the recognition from the actual government (i.e. it should be a private publishing company) to avoid attempts to access government officials and to avoid it looking coerced.
It'd also be important to make it voluntary/opt-in as I'd imagine many would rather just be anonymous.
I might sound cynic, but personally I could only held up that belief, if I never open my eyes again and never open any newspaper anymore, or turn on the tv. Usually I read sentences like this in satire articles, but I think I understand the motivation behind it. Sometimes you have to give trust first, to make something work. I am just very sceptical in this case.
https://nautil.us/larry-david-and-the-game-theory-of-anonymo...
The opening call out is pretty great, too. Ever see the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry's big donation is upstaged by Ted's anonymous donation?
Visible philanthropy is not a simple system of rewards. It's much more interesting than that.
I think it'd still work - you'd just have to tweaked it a bit - could definitely have the list ordered with most patriotic "anonymous" tax contributors listed in order and then reward the first three non-anonymous highest tax contributors with the full 'bio'/backstory in the magazine spread.
If you want to throw money straight down the fucking drain, go for it. The federal budget is already not balanced. No matter what rich people donate extra, the money will be squandered exactly the same way it is today but you can’t even attach stipulations.
Statistically speaking, you money will just into the military.
I would much rather have the rich use their influence to push for good things the government doesn’t care about (hunger programs, drug rehab, housing, etc).
There are several causes I support; none of them are close to and just slightly more effective than giving that money to the government.
Tax is a side show here. The issue I found is when trying to find a good charity an overwhelming amount of the money is spent on "fund raising" and exactly what this article is talking about. I quit giving to charity besides the local food bank. Literally everything else seemed like a scam. The more the name of the charity pulls on the heart strings the better chance it is a scam too.
> Celebrating tax contributions and rewarding the contributor (on an opt in basis) could be hugely beneficial for certain types of wealthy individuals. Often times wealthy people enjoy being on these lists as it helps their business, PR, etc. in addition to recognition.
This is irrelevant. Rich people already rule the world. If they want better PR they can just buy it.
You can worship rich people all you want, but it would be for your own pleasure and wouldn't be relevant to the billionaires or whoever it is that we're talking about.
Imagine Organization A (i.e. non-profit organization) offers to accept your gift for $N and throws you a gala with you as the beneficiary.
Then imagine Organization B (i.e. the government) forcefully accepts your a gift for $N that you are willing to give regardless of the subtle implied threat of force because you are appreciative of what it does for you and your community but there is no recognition and parts of Organization B are bragging about how they are taking money from you/villifying you and actively being rewarded with promotions for doing so.
I'd imagine most would be more happy with Organization A.
And if one is firmly committed to a "soak the rich" outlook, you can just think of this as a way to massage their ego for free.
Most of the comments here are more aligned with the problems of "Cancer Inc" or "Red Cross" sorts of non-profits, where the mission is real but the massive insititution is decades old and owns a lot of property and equipment, and the executive branch really is in a different world, and people are hired to do boring jobs.
Lastly, it is famously true that huge, huge groups are non-profits, where a lot of money changes hands.. and those kinds of setups are closed to your questions, e.g. hospitals and big league sports. ok one more - the "royalty" of those like the Bishop Museum or the Playboy Golf Championship in the 1980s, which both devolved into giant, serious scams where people actually, eventually went to jail. have fun with your non-profits! others did...
The point of charitable deductions is to incentivize certain types of behavior (ie. charitable donations). On the other hand the SALT deduction is effectively the federal government subsidizing high-tax jurisdictions at the expense of low-tax jurisdictions. The first seems far more defensible and in line with the federal government's mission[1], than some sort of mechanism to pad the finances of certain states. This doesn't necessarily exclude redistribute policies by the federal government entirely, but doing it by tax rate is baffling no matter how you look at it.
[1] and no, this argument doesn't work for the SALT deduction because state/local taxes aren't optional
So not only do I need to pay more taxes for the US government to fund almost double my states pro rata aid to places like West Virginia and Mississippi, but I get to pay even higher taxes because my locality actually provides things like sound education.
You know what, I think we should exercise the people’s desire for small government and relocate military bases to the places that pay for them.
Wouldn't the most effective solution be to reduce the number of things the federal government does? Rich blue states make their choices and keep more of their revenue within state boundaries and residents of red states get to decide if they like their current choices lower (or no) federal subsidy.
Practically speaking (not politically speaking), that seems like a point the left and right should be able to agree on.
I’ve run into so many people in my time who’ve had to suffer in various ways because of senseless circumstances. One person lost their home due to a medical condition and the associated costs. Had it happened 6 months before his employee health plan changed, his family’s life would have taken a dramatically different path.
It is even worse if there is an ethnic difference in the mix (e.g. the Flemish vs. the Walloons in Belgium).
Also, I wonder whether New York / California liberals would really welcome soldiers among them and whether the military could recruit enough people there. Amazon got kicked out from New York for being too capitalist.
It definitely seems to me that the coastal elite wants a strong military to protect their trade empire, but preferrably located far away and with someone else's kids doing the dangerous parts of the job.
Which your area benefits from....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/after-generations-of...
That’s a problem that seems to Mostly being addressed by nonprofits very slowly, and not the government …
Addressed in my original comment (although it was edited in a few minutes after initial posting so I'll let it slide):
>This doesn't necessarily exclude redistribute policies by the federal government entirely, but doing it by tax rate is baffling no matter how you look at it.
Do you know what military bases do? They aren’t there to protect just a local region.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-towns-face-economic-hit-should-... -- "German towns face economic hit should US troops go"
Much of the military is used by politicians as an economic tool for certain regions, independent of their fighting value.
So, you certainly have a mostly local economic impact of military bases.
https://www.areadevelopment.com/siteSelection/june09/militar...
https://www.tpr.org/military-veterans-issues/2020-06-22/texa...
OPs flippant comment reminds me of the equally un-serious suggestion I read somewhere, some time ago, that people should pay for their jobs so that it can be made visible how valuable they think a job is.
Taxes are one of the main ways the government tries to influence behavior (eg. sin taxes, green energy incentives). What do you suggest should take their place? Or do you think that government shouldn't be in the business of influencing behavior entirely?
It seems unreasonable for employers to not be able to deduct that amount and for the government to somehow pay them a fraction of what it costs to employ people.
* - I suspect it’s the largest overall, but didn’t have time to do the research to satisfy myself that it’s the single largest, but it’s clearly one of the largest.
To be fair it's not wages that are benefited specifically here, it's business expenses in general. If anything, wages are treated worse than other expenses (eg. buying a printer), because they're subject to payroll taxes. As for why expenses are deductible in the first place, that's done for a good reason as well. If you don't do that, you end up taxing x% for each step in the value chain, which would give huge tax benefits to conglomerates (which own the entire value chain) compared to small businesses.
Furthermore, there are lot of costs which you arguably can't avoid: food, medical, housing etc. Should you be able to deduct those off of your federal taxes as well since you can't really dispose of that income freely?
If you take that attitude then that invalidates the original argument - in that case, surely it's just as reasonable for the federal government to incentivise local mutual support cooperatives (which is what high-tax jurisdictions ultimately are) as it is to incentivise 503cs.
> Furthermore, there are lot of costs which you arguably can't avoid: food, medical, housing etc. Should you be able to deduct those off of your federal taxes as well since you can't really dispose of that income freely?
Yes, absoutely! The fact that you can't do that unless you structure yourself as a business is one of the great injustices that leads to the rich paying a much lower real tax rate than the poor.
Enough theft from my pocket. I'll fund my fellow man. But to fund a man who calls himself my enemy and removes my freedom: it takes a Big Government fanatic to require that.
Those giving up their money are in the best position to ensure it is used towards the ends they want. I think direct oversight is a positive attribute and useful in ensuring the altruistic goals are effectively met.
I also oppose local tax deductions despite standing to benefit greatly.
I am perfectly content with private actors deciding how best to use their own money for philanthropic purposes. It leads to a more diverse set of approaches. If there are people that believe in one thing and others that believe the opposite they should both be allowed to fund what they think is right without a democratic majority stifling minority points of view.
I do not have a point of view on whether it is worthy of a tax break.
Not so much benevolent as accountable. The government, for all its faults, has a huge edifice of checks and balances, and while the gears grind slowly they do limit how far astray things can go. A private 503c is a real wild west in comparison.
If the government doesn't do a single thing I like, more than half my income still goes to taxes each year to fund the government (income, property, sales, etc.), and there is nothing I can realistically do to change that.
Which one is accountable?
It also assumes that government policies support the whole community, which I don't think is true either. It is pretty common for policies to harm one group in the community and benefit a different group in the community.
I think accountable means that when I give someone money, they should use my money for what I want, and you think accountable means that when I give someone money, they should use my money for what you want.
Remind me. Who was fired for Waco? Who at the CDC was fired for stopping the Seattle Flu Study from testing for COVID, or for banning commercial labs from testing for it while their own lab reported all samples as positive because of contamination?
Can you back that up? I know people who were in poverty and very much support many of those programs as lifesavers. It's wealthier people, who have no experience of them, who I see disparaging them.
Also, the criticism is cliche - I haven't seen much evidence of it. While nothing is perfect, the civil service in most advanced countries, including the US, are not patronage jobs; they are protected from such hiring and firing corruption. I know civil servants and they did not get the job through patronage and take their public service and professionalism very seriously. It's very easy to smear all those people in a few words.
That doesn't really address the issue though, does it? Food stamps are better than nothing, but they do not in fact allow recipients to spend the assistance as they see fit.
It's fine to be in favor of social engineering programs, but it's not consistent to then complain that philanthropists' charity comes with strings attached. The government's charity does as well.
I don't know what you mean: This doesn't seem to fit the common definition of social engineering, or we could call stop lights and tax forms social engineering; so I can't say I'm in favor, against, etc. And 'strings attached' is much too vague, as everything has strings attached (e.g., legal requirements); the question is the degree and who the strings serve.
> we could call ... tax forms social engineering
Tax forms are obviously social engineering. The government incentivizes (having kids, having a mortgage, saving for retirement, charitable giving) and disincentivizes all kinds of things via the tax code.
That's somewhat true as a description of the average government programme, but it's far more true as a description of the average 503c.
How does this argument work for other deductions that also allow you to "fund personal causes"? For instance, the IRS allows you to deduct interest paid on student loans. I can get student loans to study anything I want, and doing so is arguably used to to advance my "personal agenda" (eg. getting a phd in economics so I can work in a thinktank). Should I be worried that the action was a "reflection of their personal politics" and therefore not get a tax break for it?
Feel free to repeat this argument for other deductions that the IRS offers: https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions-for-individuals
Source? Most fundraising events have a deductible and non-deductible portion of the ticket price because the IRS does not look fondly on such practices.
Like the complaints at Liga Chilena Contra la Epilepsia, they just have a Sugerencias y Reclamos book, which you can read (though they told me it is not for me to read). You can see for instance that they addressed one complaint they got a lot, which was the lack of cashiers, so in fact with their remodel five years ago they changed it completely so they now have up to 8 cashiers at a time, and short wait times. My favorite Chilean pharmacy, I'll repeat here the comment I left for that charity: "Un siete!"
They are wealthy people who have no experience or knowledge of what people without wealth need.
In the US, when you add federal, state, and local revenue, about $8.3 trillion dollars are collected in taxes and fees. The GDP of the US is $20 trillion, so 40% of every dollar produced goes to the government.
This is about $25,000 of tax per person, or $32,000 if you only count adults.
My personal thought is that the main difference between the US and countries with generous public institutions is not the amount of tax revenue collected, but the percent of that revenue effectively spent on said institutions.
With defense spending, pet projects, and incompetence, it is hard to make a case that they are on parity.
I get to avoid capital gains on the donation of appreciated assets on top of that.
For whom is the benefit only 20%?
the salt is called via a $
different political things, but the salt cap was a punitive thing purely for you to have resentment about where you live, it’s interesting that instead you got resentment for non profits
republicans want you to have resentment at high tax states run by democrats, so that you consider regime change in that state
Charitable foundations should have a finite number of years to do their work.
The Prohibition Party is still around because of a trust that funds them indefinitely.
But nobody cares about the Prohibition Party.
Some ecclesiastical organizations have this sort of perpetual funding. Sometimes via taxes, and sometimes investments.
But it doesn’t make the organizations insanely powerful. The Catholic Church in Germany is hardly a political player.
Trinity Church in New York has a billion dollar endowment. They’re not big players in the US religious landscape.
Real power requires more than money.
It seems what it does is ensures some person 150 years from now will have a cushy job with little power or responsibility, but lots of cash.
and why do you get to claim such an aspect is "ugly"?
If society, as a whole (or majority) decides such an aspect is ugly, then they can put a law in to outlaw it.
The problem isn't at this level of non-profit orgs - the problem is at the civil participation. most people don't participate (not even vote). So those who do get more say, by relative participation rates.
It is good in theory, but does it work in practice though? For example, majority of the country supports $15 minimum wage, access to abortion, maternity leave etc. Doesn't mean any of this is happening. There are so many "think tanks" and non-profits whose sole job is to advocate shitty ideas of their ultra rich patrons. A small minority with huge resources can consistently do stuff that the rest of us can only dream of.
Even if civil participation is good, a well funded foundation can twist and turn the narrative to their advantage and confuse the voters.
That majority is not evenly distributed across the country. In areas where those people do form a majority, they do enact laws supporting those things. In areas where there is not a majority supporting those things, they don't.
That 99% compounds though. Sure, maybe you find someone pretty like-minded. 50 years from now, are they going to be able to find someone 50 years younger than them but just as like-minded? And their replacement 50 years on? Realistically you couldn't maintain any objective that was too far out of line with the general culture.
And the bylaws can force this too
Yeah, and I'm sure those research centers will be completely unbiased and unafraid to bite the hand that feeds them...
To me, that means an elected body that decides through representation what is the best use of funds. It does so with no direct oversight, or “unacceptable paternalism”.
Sounds an awful lot like a government, doesn’t it? How does a government raise funds? Through taxes (simplified view for the sake of argument. Ignore printing money and selling treasury bonds for a moment).
But this is how we function already. So in lieu of philanthropy, can we create a new class of voluntary tax? Or raise taxes on high income? Considering that philanthropy is a purely voluntary act - I think forcing anyone is against that spirit and a voluntary tax, or volunteering funding of govt projects could be the solution.
Having said that, I fail to see how this will not also get politicized and lead to greater influence for the donors.
I’m not sure if there’s a way to accomplish that while still keeping things voluntary, in the spirit of philanthropy.
The number of people that actively donate to the government is quite small while the number that advocate for higher tax rate on others is quite High.
Meanwhile, the state of California just celebrated a record tax year collecting a hundred billion dollars (30%) over the budget, and is struggling to find programs to squander it on.
So? It's reasonable to advocate higher taxes for all while not harming oneself for much more limited public benefit in the meantime. This often gets trotted out as a "gotcha", but it's not.
(e.g. I can save a life with a dollar donation today, but wont do it until you agree to do it too so we can save 2 lives with 2 dollars)
In my mind, either you don't actually want to pay, or you don't actually think your donation will bring about public benefit you claim.
Second, I almost never see advocacy for higher taxes for all (including themselves). IMHO it is nearly always a call for higher taxes for some sub-group (usually others), and usually applied in a progressive manner.
If taxes go up, I receive X harm (lost dollars) and X + [huge number] of dollars go to the government.
If I give X dollars to the government, I receive exactly the same harm, but the benefit to the government is just X.
Identical harm to me either way, but one situation provides far more funding.
Further, voluntary contributions in a competitive society disadvantage the donor vs. everyone who chooses not to donate. Taxes (assuming fair application) remove this factor.
> Second, I almost never see advocacy for higher taxes for all (including themselves). IMHO it is nearly always a call for higher taxes for some sub-group (usually others), and usually applied in a progressive manner.
Progressive taxes are applied to all equally (accounting tricks and such aside—the intention is equal application).
My first dollar of reported income is taxed the same rate as anyone else's from the same sort of source.
So's my millionth dollar—I just don't happen to have that many dollars of annual income, so there's nothing to tax at that rate. Same as how a person with no income at all doesn't pay tax on that first dollar, since they don't have it to begin with.
Also, there are quite a few rich folks around who've consistently advocated for higher taxes on the rich. Buffett's well-known for that stance, but is far from the only one.
Im genuinely interested in understanding your first position because I still don't get it.
I would understand advocating for a universal tax increase + huge benefit while donating in the mean time, just not why it isn't worth it to you today.
If you think (X harm)(number of taxpayers) to save (Y lives)(number of taxpayers) is worth it, shouldn't that hold just as true for your personal case of X(1) and Y(1)?
I get that advocating that it would be better if everyone were to do it, just not that it is not worth it individually as well.
The harm you suffer is the same either way, and the benefit you provide to society is the same.
Is there more to it than the competitive disadvantage? Is the competitive disadvantage so great that is not worth giving any any amount to a Noble cause, even $1?
Re 2)....
>Progressive taxes are applied to all equally (accounting tricks and such aside—the intention is equal application).
This is a separate question which I doubt we will be able to see eye to eye on.
It reminds me of the famous Anatole France quote: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
A law can be applied universally, but still target specific individuals. A law taxing the top 1% can be applied universally but obviously only harms the 1% and not the 99%.
That is not to say that a tax on the 1% isn't a bad idea, but I do feel it is disingenuous for the 99% to say that we too are equally subject to the law, as if they are equally harmed.
A more honest description would be "we want to harm the 1%, because we think that the majority would stand to benefit"
There are a lot of reasons it can be reasonable to advocate higher taxes while not donating money to the government. Aside from what I already covered, it might be that a donation isn't reliable or predictable as ordinary tax income, so a donation in fact may not provide as much value per dollar as tax increases. You can't plan a budget around voluntary donations amounting to 0.1% of your total intake for the year, which weren't expected in the first place and may not show up next year. Consider the difference between winning $1200 on a scratcher ticket, versus $100/m increased income indefinitely. You may win $1200 again next year, but you might not, while a guaranteed $100/m is something you can count on and factor into your budget. Or the donor may perceive their peers to be free riding on the benefits their money provides (in the form of a more-stable society, et c.) if they simply donate the cash, so prefer taxation to donation. Or they may believe the reduction in power of the rich to influence society is part of the benefit of taxing the rich more, in the first place, in which case voluntarily reducing their own power is hardly a solution, and may even be counter-productive if that money could have funded advocacy for raising taxes on the rich, instead (or any of several similar reasons one, including a rich "one", may have to advocate for changes to the tax code that happen to increase one's own taxes, that aren't strictly related to increasing the government's budget).
At a level lower than the rich, it may be easier to follow: it can be consistent for me to believe that we should all pay more taxes to increase the budget for our school district, while not donating the difference myself, because I believe I need that money to cover deficiencies in their services until such time as a tax increase passes. Or, to take the harm angle again, consider the effect one person donating $500/m to schools has. $500/m is a lot of money for an individual (well, maybe not on HN, but for most folks it is). It hurts quite a bit to give that away. However, it does almost nothing for the district's budget, especially if they can't count on you continuing to donate it. Now, $500/household (I'm using simple figures to keep this clear, of course it never works like this exactly) in the whole district? By law, not just relying on people's whims? Now the schools can really do something with it (or waste it, but if you think they're just gonna waste it, you're also not gonna donate the money, so that's outside the scope of this).
As for 2: yeah, I was equivocating a bit :-) Still, in a world where marginal-utility sure appears to be a real thing as far as how people experience money, one person's one-millionth dollar really isn't the same thing as their first dollar, and it doesn't make much sense to treat dollars $1 and $1,000,000 the same just because some people don't have that millionth dollar in the first place.
Ultimately, one's view on progressive taxation will come down to what one believes fairness is, which is... harder to nail down than one might think, and reasonable people can disagree.
I think there are some cases where this is certainly the case.
The topic at large is a bit of a sore spot for me because I think many people use aspirations to collective action as excuse not to take personal action. There are also tons of problems where immediate action can be taken on on the individual or local level, and instances where individual or local action is far more effective than top down solutions!
There is a class of people that would essentially see a starving child, want to help, but do nothing while waiting for 350 million people to (maybe) come to consensus on some federal solution. It is some sort of learned helplessness where people are scared to take personal action. I think the free rider concern also plays a part, but don't particularly respect it. It is like saying I'm going to let the child in front of my house starve until my neighbor agrees to feed the child in front of their house too. Sometimes people should do the good thing because it is good and lead by example, and especially so when the valid situations you raised do not apply.
...And much isn't...
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-w...
Clement Attlee, 1920
We do more than try, we provide critical services to huge numbers of people. Nothing will ever be perfect, but if the standard is 100% or failure, then no point in getting out of bed in the morning.
But im not sure how that would negatively affect budgeting
english is beautiful
The issue is they pay their executives $$$$$ while insisting low level employees take much less than they'd make as government employees while feeling entitled to shape someone's career for the rest of their LIFE if they leave the organization on bad terms.
Someone told me "no one gets fired on K street". I did. I moved in with my parents, learned to code, and signed a lease in line with my budget on an apartment in my home county, where yet another nonprofit profited from my knowledge while abusing me.
Ex: look at page 7 here:
https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CDT-2015-990-FINA...
Then look here:
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
The entitlement of these entities is astounding.
You can only repeat the same confidence tricks so many times before men with guns come into your house like it's Belfast in the 80s or you have civil unrest on an unprecedented scale.
I've interviewed places that went on to full on unionize, then applied again after the unionization thinking I could discard my previous extremely disrespectful experiences that were hand waved away, only to have people conduct the process like I'm trying to order a vodka mate at Waterfall[6].
(As in conducting the interview with dripping sarcasm and a tone like they're going to try to put a cigarette out on me, which is not something I want done, though thanks for the hole in my best black t-shirt because I decided to go to the club they didn't write about in LA Times or whatever.)
I'm gonna swing back to a research project I'm working on in a moment, but it says everything about thew state of nonprofits all the world over that when back before the 2020 election, I asked my bank for a safe deposit box and a funeral home for a pointer on someone who can draw up a will that it felt like the entire planet lost their minds. (They didn't help with either, since I'm not a boomer, and so I closed my account. Enjoy the bank run and stock crash, you rude little woman!)
The insurrection was illegal, and murder is bad, but unfortunately I think it took events like that, or the power failure in Texas[2] or the condo collapse in Florida[3] are what it took to teach folks that pairing no income tax at the state level with hatred of "feds" and sales tax will end with you sitting alone in your McMansion or condo, wondering if it will collapse in on you due to an extreme weather event, or a nuclear strike conducted by a rouge state you insisted via your purposefully terrible voting be handled with kid gloves[4][5].
At the end of the day, the world we are seeing on the news today is the one that folks from generations prior to mine (including GenX) very violently insisted on.
I'm on the autistic spectrum -- I know people sometimes say one thing and mean another, so all I can do is try to put enough information out there that people can try to make good decisions under uncertainty.
(I wrote the above while pounding espresso that I put on my Capital One[8] card, since based on my interactions with their employees I don't think they care if I pay my bill, and there's no cash in MY wallet.)
[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-funded-think-tank-fires-google-cr... [2] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/17/968577281/what-went-wrong-wit... [3] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/26/1031245430/surfside-condo-col... [4] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/21/1100547908/russia-ends-natura... [5] https://www.npr.org/2022/01/15/1072385995/north-korea-is-tes... [6] http://water-gate.de/de/contact/location/location.html [7] I changed my SSID, you're not as smart as you think :-) [8] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/woman-accused-of...
First, the more appropriate comparison would be the Senior Executive Service (SES) pay scale which tops out at $226,300.
Additionally, a non-profit executive takes retirement out of their earnings of $400K, while the government employee's retirement is guaranteed and does not come out of their $226K.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
>First, the two pay scales you posted are not a complete picture. The CEO in the non-profit makes $397,684, while the top GS15 step 10 makes $176,300. First, the more appropriate comparison would be the Senior Executive Service (SES) pay scale which tops out at $226,300. Additionally, a non-profit executive takes retirement out of their earnings of $400K, while the government employee's retirement is guaranteed and does not come out of their $226K.
You're correct my reply was not completely accurate with regard to numbers, so thanks for that.
But, to be clear the issue is the CEO justified folks payrates (mostly attorneys recently out of law school from across the T14) based on what a JD would make on the GS scale[0], while conversely the executives, as you can see from the data, made more.
This was also a smaller nonprofit, I've met folks with similar salaries but much larger teams or orgs.
Meanwhile, here it is clearly stated that someone with "3 years of graduate-level education leading to a Ph.D. degree or Ph.D. degree or equivalent doctoral degree" should make GS-11 (not clear on what step):
https://www.generalschedule.org/articles/general-schedule-ed...
Also, to be CRYSTAL clear:
I also did not CHOOSE nonprofits.
It was my perception they refused to hire me because if things like very openly stating I would not be applying to the NSA because I was worried I'd be asked to engage in illegal activities, based on my readings on cases like Jewel v. NSA[2].
When I was charting career paths I also (verbally) expressed concern about scholarship for service -- that a president might institute a government shutdown or otherwise interfere with folks ability to fulfill the requirements, causing them to be forced to pay the loans bqack, which IIRC happened during the Trump administration:
https://www.cyberscoop.com/government-shutdown-cybersecurity...
(In fact, one the last decent contact I had in the federal government stopped speaking to me when I tried to clarify whay became of that fiasco, it's not in any publicly available news source I could find)
So from my perspective, by the time I was at Center for Democracy & Technology, we were in a "fall of the USSR" situation. I had to repeatedly tell people "this isn't high school" as I was stymied despite having more intelligence capabilities than some small countries.
That meant that absent a VERY compelling reason, if there is never a context where someone opposes me when I've done nothing my entire life but work as what only fairly recently has been termed a "public interest technologist", it makes me question people's integrity, especially paired with things like words and phrases from private conversations making their way into CDT whitepapers after my departure and after the new CEO refused to even interview me.
It is completely unacceptable that across two different leaders this pattern of gatekeeping access to employment has continued.
I emailed the dean at Georgetown, William Treanor, about the above mentioned plagiarism issue, but didn't get a substantive reply.
I am not a lawyer, but speaking as someone who has not crossed an international border since the Obama administration, it's my understanding espionage is a capital offense... so on a long enough timeline if I cannot understand why people are making hiring decisions, paired with rampant illegal behavior, paired with refusals to connect me with work or compensate me for past harms, then all I can do is openly muse what motivates folks as I read and respond to publicly available information.
For context, I currently reside in the City of Pittsburgh.
I am tired of writing out long paragraphs like the above.
The last time I put this much energy into a post on the internet, a crowd formed outside the Mayor's house, and we got a new one. Then the Boy Scouts went bankrupt, and Mike Doyle (the cult adjacent[1] congressman) decided not to run for another term.
In closing, I feel that I was underpaid, illegally fired, then subjected to electronic and physical attacks by members of so called civil society.
I encourage anyone who desires to, to read the above and reply.
I'm happy to have a discussion.
I will do my best to be honest and accurate, but it may "trigger" some folks who aren't used to having hard questions asked in a public forum.
Have a nice evening, and thanks again for those numbers, sincerely.
[0] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/13/frat-house-for... [2] https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/jewel/jewel.complaint.pdf
> If you’re used to thinking that our democratic system is in bad shape, that can sound jarring. But she’s working in the tradition of what philosophers call “ideal theory”; the aim is to sketch out what a good system would be, assuming that everyone fully complied with its rules.
I'm used to thinking that democracy is in poor shape because rich and powerful people prevent it from spreading further.
Which seems appropriate for this topic. But instead of diving into that, this author seems to take as a fairly key element of their argument that people getting stupid rich and then doing government type stuff without democratic oversight is good because the obvious alternative, democratic governance is fundamentally broken.
I'll check out the book by Emma Saunders-Hastings, “Private Virtues, Public Vices: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality” as its arguments sound pretty sensible.
"The people", as a collective entity, is extremely dumb, so I think that the faster the communication advances, the worse democracy has become.
I mean if you think the people as a collective entiry are extremely dumb, why would you want any form of democracy or even society at all? Also, I have bad news for you but reallisticly speaking unless you are the unlikely strong outlier the average person is you (and me).
For a start, once the legislation hits reality and needs to be interpreted who decides how it was intended to be implemented? Who chooses which tradeoff should be made when measures conflict with each other? we had problems like this with Brexit in spades. We still have in the from of the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic, our leaving the EU free trade zone creates direct conflict with out obligations under the Good Friday agreement. Fortunately we have a government lead by a Brexiteer so I'm sure he'll have all that sorted out in no time.
In 2014 the Swiss passed an initiative to introduce quotas on immigration from the EU, in direct conflict with a treaty between Switzerland and the EU on free movement. It was never implemented.
None of these are the end of the world, but they are problems with the model that need to be taken into account and that direct democracy advocates need to address.
From the United States National Endowment of the Humanities [0]: "In America, [Tocqueville] saw and praised a people who enjoyed an unprecedented equality of conditions and political and civil liberty without endangering order or prosperity. But he also saw and criticized the way white majorities supported the institution of slavery and the unjust treatment of free blacks and Native Americans. In fact, the greatest danger Americans faced was inherent in their treatment of unpopular minorities."
"The power of the democratic majority arises from the fact that every individual is assumed to be competent to guide his own life and is politically the equal of every other individual. In this situation, the greatest legitimate power will always be with the majority."
A lack of "intermediary institutions, [makes a country have] “no lasting obstacles” in the way of the opinions, prejudices, interests, and momentary passions of the majority and tends towards an unthinking despotism over unpopular minorities."
[0] https://edsitement.neh.gov/closer-readings/alexis-de-tocquev...
Yes, but what if we freed the hostages and then they all went out and kidnapped someone? Then we (we being the previous kidnappers) would be no better off! Probably best not to rush into this new fangled democracy thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in...
He's literally and openly writing a book on how with his guidance a democracy can run a society as 'well' as an aristocracy does.
Switzerland has the population of NYC, the city, not the metro area... and attracts the crème de la crème of a continent made of 740m people.
By the same token we should all swear by autocracy given how well are Singapore, UAE, Macao and Monaco faring.
Switzerland has a native population with the traditional flaws and usual repartition of a normal population. Your rebuke is the usual one. People like to pretend direct democracy wouldn’t work for their usual pet peeve which generally boils down to them thinking they are much better than their neighbours and when you point to them that their argument is completely disproved by the fact that it already works in an actual rich country they just declare it doesn’t count out of intellectual laziness.
Also yes autocracy can work if you are fine with its main flaws: unequal treatment of the population. China is a better exemple than the countries you suggested looking at.
In contrast, a pure democracy would be open questions and elections to any adult who is a citizen, without algorithms and corporate motivation interceding. This would theoretically benefit the aggregate voter: the citizens who vote.
In theory. In practice is this what we're actually seeing?
In Canada at least, I don't think political parties are being held accountable for the promises they make during election campaigns. There is a huge tendency to promise the moon and deliver the status quo.
In direct democracy there's the illusion of zero compromise, you can end up with whatever wacky or amazing combination of initiatives you like, but in reality compromises still have to be made and priorities are going to conflict with each other. Somebody still need to implement all of that.
I just think it makes sense that the person (or party) doing the implementation and deciding on the compromises should be the person who made the commitment.
Which part is bad? The "government type stuff" or the "without democratic oversight"? I agree that billionaires fielding their own armies/police forces would be pretty bad, but what's wrong with funding homeless shelters or schools? If I decide to volunteer at a soup kitchen, am I also "doing government type stuff without democratic oversight"?
You don't get to be fabulously wealthy without some of the second order effects of your wealth accumulation being unsavory. Generally speaking, these people will do things like run out competition, foster massive economic inequality, and perpetuate labor abuses to pad their bottom line and then buy the indulgences by doing a cosmetically "good" bit of philanthropy. But they probably could have done more good by doing their day job in a less exploitative way.
That's what I took away from OP.
That's the problem. The public should define what "public good" means, not rich people. As inefficient as taxes/government is, at least the voters are theoretically in the driver's seat, and get to at least indirectly define public good through elected representatives. With philanthropy, we're simply letting a single wealthy demographic decide "this is public good, trust me bro", and the public can't vote out rich people if they disagree.
We have said through our Democratic process that these are good things.
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
That is a different beast entirely.
I don't think that you can make a coherent argument that a law operating as intended is considered a loophole.
...that such organization replace the government in doing such services and they obviously run without democratic oversight
> If I decide to volunteer at a soup kitchen, am I also "doing government type stuff without democratic oversight"?
Do you have the power to control how millions are spent? To direct thousands of employees?
No - then it's the opposite of undemocratic. It's actually very good for society.
Erik Prince: founder of Blackwater, private mercenary army.
Betsy Devos: former education secretary and champion of charter schools
Both children of Edgar and Elsa Prince, Erik runs their charity:
The former is a consequence of the latter. At least in modern times. Also don't forget that our notional foundations for democracy are rooted in a slave-society. I don't know how that's 'fair' unless you disregard the slaves.
And of course most people have no business in running a government: most people have no experience governing! Most people are subjects in mini-dictatorships (employees of employers).