The Oatmeal has raised over $1.1M for a Nikola Tesla museum

Tesla was a citizen of the United States of America- in my book, that makes him as much American as myself, or anyone else.

It's enough money to put a bid in on the $1.6M property where Tesla had a lab, not even enough to build a proper museum on the property. So: keep giving!

You can never do enough to save everyone or serve everything. This is something you're going to have to understand. In fact, when people argue that, it seems like the source often isn't "you could have given that money to the poor/destitute" so much as it is "I don't like that you're doing [x] instead of [y]"; or, "I don't like that this money can be saved up for cause [x] and not for cause [y]". It's as selfish or more selfish than the use of funds for ones self.

What kind of car does a person that argues this drive? Is it new? Used? Does it have more horsepower than necessary for that person to live? Well, if it does, then perhaps you could have given the excess money you paid to save another child. How about your house? Too much space? Are you renting out that excess space to someone that can't afford it? Are you giving all of your income with the exception of the little you need to save for retirement and the little you need to survive to help starving kids in this country or the next? Well, you're wasting money and that money could have been spent to save another person or bring another person you've never met through college. You selfish. arrogant. bastard.

Give as much as you wish to help those in need. Save money to help your family in their time of need; but above all, don't tell other people what to do with the money they've rightfully earned or rightfully given to causes they, at that moment, felt were more important. If a person chooses to support something another person doesn't care for, that's that person's perrogative. if they choose to pamper themselves and buy nice cars or nice houses or furniture, or choose expensive hobbies that's entirely their choice.

[/rant. bring on the downvotes]

edit: that wasn't entirely directed at my parent post. I've heard these sorts of arguments before about "that money could have gone to new-big-important-cause or old-important-cause" and I'm quite annoyed at them. Should people give money to those in need? Sure. Do they have to give everything? Not my call, not my money. Do I have a right to say where money that isn't mine should go? Not even a little. When I don't give money to those in need, am I killing them? Most likely not. There are other things that have fallen together in the world that have made their life terrible. Do I feel sorry for them? Yes.

Oh, and another thing. You know how else to help others? By consuming and by giving them jobs, even on frivolous things. Yeah, I know it sounds weird; but, when you order food from a restaurant, your meal is helping to pay the cook's wages and the waitress's wages and the table cleaner's wages and the dish washer's wages and the greeter's wages. This museum? It'll have employees that might otherwise not have jobs. Now they can acquire income and will no longer need money from others, then they can help the impoverished as well.

So in your ideal world art and music and inspiration have no value because they don't directly save babies?

Did you post the same under all the Neil Armstrong eulogies?

Or perhaps we're all missing your sense of humor. I love dark humor but yours isn't very artful.

I am actually very critical of the materialism of modern culture and how we put our energies into building stupid shit like Pinterest and most of Facebook, or as Jeff Hammerbacher recently said, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… That sucks."

The irony, of course, is that Oatmeal's last fund raiser was for cancer research and wildlife conservation.

I truly doubt that the calculation is correct. Otoh, why not build a web site were you can save babies with a mouseclick. Just donate 1000$ and bing, you saved a baby?

The opportunity cost of liquidating wealthy countries is enormous. The United States as a source of aid is much more valuable over the long term if it keeps improving its culture, the same culture that was driven to create technology and resources in the first place.