Never Give Money to Charity | Hacker News Reader

Never Give Money to Charity

torturechambersmalltalk.substack.com

19 pointsloudtdarrow26 comments

This might be the dumbest shit I’ve ever read. It’s just one logical fallacy extended into 750 words. “Never do extremely good thing x because sometimes it causes bad thing y to happen”

I read more as: "Don't donate to groups....unless, they know what they're really doing..." ...which as a former employee of a non-profit, could not agree more.

Seemed more specifically to be telling you to specifically be damn sure you have a grasp of what the second, third, fourth order effects of the charity you are doing because the path to hell is paved with good intentions. (I would call this a specific subset of making sure the group really knows what it is doing because the group can really know what it is doing but have that task they excel at be really bad for some secondary reason)

The article argues that charity can be counterproductive, but we don't have to give to random charities where no one is paying attention to whether they're making things better. Instead of "never give money to charity" what about "always check charity reviews first"? As the article does eventually get to, the reviews on https://givewell.org can help you avoid the kind of disasters they open with.

In my experience, charity reviews are great for telling you if a charity is outright fraudulent, but not great at evaluating effectiveness. The best thing to do is either become involved with a local charity and evaluate for yourself, or do something like givedirectly and understand that occasionally the money will be poorly spent.

Have you looked at GiveWell's reviews? They're really thorough and do try to evaluate effectiveness: https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf

The main issue with local charity is that wealth is distributed very unequally around the world, so if everyone primarily helps those around them then the poorest people get the least help.

It’s a fair argument but ultimately not one I subscribe to. Time and time again global charities become vehicles for corruption, exploitation, and power-seeking [0]. They become critical infrastructure replacing things that should be provided by democratic institutions. No one elected Bill Gates as head of global health and yet here we are allowing him to make life or death decisions for the entire earth because he owns all of the infrastructure[1]. The last thing I want is for the EA movement and orgs like givewell to be elevated into a similar position. While I believe they have good intentions, I don’t believe they listen to their beneficiaries or have an accurate view of the effects of their work, nor do I believe they are immune to corruption. For one thing, neither givewell nor the AMF give testimonials from their beneficiaries on their website.

I’m a big believer in trust and feedback loops in charitable giving and the tough truth is that that’s really tough to maintain in global orgs with complicated missions. There are certain orgs that do a great job at this. Givedirectly (one of givewell’s recommended charities) actually does a great job at this, partially because their mission is pretty simple. I can look at their recipient stories page[2] and know for sure my money goes to exactly what I expect.

[0] - https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56670162

[1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/global-covid-pandem...

[2] - https://www.givedirectly.org/covid-19/us/recipient-stories/

The writing style is too hyperbolic that it detracts from the argument it is trying to make. A certain amount of figurativeness is good to add dimension to an argument, but here it has been overdone.

The guy think he is funny and is basically projecting his own privileged status like mad and thinking the reader is like him.

As you say, 2 points in that terribly written article are valid around the damage that NGOs cause (destroying demand, not being sustainable) but it's mostly a gotcha at Susan and Tom, his fictional neighbours from his own clearly out of touch reality.

This shouldn't be in hackernews.

It's subpar at best.

Yep, for somebody who is claiming to look out for residents of the third world, they are pretty nasty.

> without a local industry, they're [Kenya] never taking their economy past the point where they stop asking tourists to get special vaccines before they visit.

You need vaccines because diseases thrive in different climates, and the vaccines from your home government only cover- duh- the ones in your local climate.

> If you want your donation to help, at least check sites like Charity Navigator and Give Well and make a smart donation instead of blindly venmoing the Red Cross to help them fight the war against "administrative fees."

Then the title of the post should really be: "Be careful of the charities you give your money to because many have negative externalities and haven't thought through the implication of their missions very well and also waste a lot on administrative bloat". But that title won't get clicks

Probably, charities which seek to alleviate poverty are just pissing in the ocean. They can have real impacts on people but not nearly the level of utility that the federal government can provide.

But there are non-profits that do things that government simply can't or won't do, like removing landmines[1] and helping refugees escape communist countries[2]. Sometimes problems (like North Korea) are too politically sensitive for any government to want to tackle, and so it comes down to NGOs to do anything about it.

[1] https://apopo.org

[2] https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/

I'd argue the [US] federal government has failed at all levels of utility based on the amount of funds it consumes.

The thing that let's people get away with this obnoxious attitude in television programs and real life is that those people are usually correct. This is a discount hit piece that's blatantly wrong.

The problem with the water program isn't that some pumps broke, it's that we need to build more: https://www.unicef.org/senegal/en/press-releases/africa-dras...

Your charities do actually think about these problems, and it's why they usually prefer your money and not your used stuff. It's also why charities do funny things like sell clothes or make villages have to also invest in the infrastructure.

I recommend the author give up writing and actually try to participate in a charity.

The clothing example is silly, because donating clothes is as much about recycling as it is about charity, and the glut of recycled clothes in Africa has more to do with the shipping revolution and fast fashion than it does with people thinking their old jeans will go to a starving African.

Not that familiar with the story, but isn't a hand pump likely equivalent or better than no clean water source?

Unless they removed something better, that sounds like a reasonable degradation of functionality, in that it still provides a clean water source.

This article is terrible but if you look at somewhere like Somalia that will experience famine on a cycle due to its regional weather patterns. Charities push the population of Somalia past the point of self reliance then act pikachu faced when the kids starve to death and the armies loosen their belts because it didn't rain.

Has anyone else noticed the rise in retail companies asking "Would you like to round up for XYZ charity"?

Am I pessimistic in thinking they're taking this money and donating it purely for free tax reduction?

Please explain to me how getting $1 and immediately donating it produces more than that $1 in tax reduction.

It isn't about reducing taxes, it's about getting some sort of altruistic branding/advertising at little to no cost.

It still actually costs the company money in customer throughput, signage, implementation, bookkeeping, etc...

I don't know - that's why I was asking if this was the case.

where do you get the claim $1 produces more than $1 in tax reduction? every company looks to lower their tax liabilities. if they make charitable donations, they can use that as a deduction towards that goal. so they can not do the donations and loose out on a deduction, or they can do it without affecting their profits from sales because customers are giving them extra for the purpose.

at the end of the day, if the charity is actually receiving the money that the company claims they are giving, does it really matter the ultimate reason for the company's decision to give the money?

The individual loses the tax deductions themselves.

yeah, those "round up" donations are not going to qualify for much of a deduction, but the company collecting the round up from all of the donations will add up. if an individual wants to donate up to $0.99 (assuming rounding to whole dollar not nearest $5 or something) it's just chump change on an individual level. not really sure why you're so upset about this

Did my comment come across as "upset"? I pointedly asked if I was being pessimistic.

No, they don't. If you give money to charity at checkout you can claim it on YOUR taxes. Period. No ifs ands or buts.

This is like SBF and co, right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com