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Comment by simpaticoder | Hacker News Reader

This is an institutional reflection of the individual tendency to talk about problems rather than solving them. Or, an important variant, where the urge to help those in need is expressed as directing them to "appropriate resources", which are also services that direct those seeking help to other appropriate resources, ad infinitum. The net result is a whole army of people who's expressed goal is to help people but who's effect is to send needy people into a loop of endless communication. We'd all be better off if they all quit and helped out at a soup kitchen, volunteered to visit with house-bound elderly, or something similarly physical and real. (This is in part driven by an individual need to "scale". We praise this desire to "change the world", but we pay no heed to the cost when ONLY world-changing action is praised.)

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As someone who's done a lot of volunteering at soup kitchens and such as well as things like public policy research, my take is exactly opposite.

Typical soup kitchen volunteering is pretty low impact. It's the first thing a lot of people think about when it comes to volunteering, and people like that they get to interact with the less fortunate. So they show up with their church group a few times, ladle some soup and that's about it. Running a soup kitchen is different and higher impact.

The things the UN is doing matter to millions of people. If you work with the UN food program, you're dealing with food by the truck load instead of by the spoonful.

Completely agree. The important corollary to that is that policy, in many cases, matters a lot more than boots on the ground (obviously good policy and manpower together are usually required).

I've volunteered with a prominent animal rescue charity for over 2 decades. While the work does require a lot of people, after you do it long enough you quickly realize bad policy is a giant contributor. For example, Texas is the only state in the US where it's illegal for shelter vets to do care on animals unless the animal is fully surrendered: https://www.humananimalsupportservices.org/blog/why-cant-vet... . So there are a lot of poor people who can't afford vet care, and then their only option is to surrender the animal at a shelter, where in many cases the animal may be euthanized. If your goal is to reduce the unnecessary killing of pets in shelters, fixing this policy is worth like thousands of volunteers.

I recently had an experience at a soup kitchen. It was my first time in an entirely new group and new place. Naturally I found that everybody only interacted with each other - the volunteers, not the people lining up for food. I realised it was more like a social gathering but there was a clear divide between the volunteers and the people getting the end product. In that sense I'm not really sure that soup kitchens do much besides allow a surplus time of the more fortunate to gather socially together for a pro-social benefit (hard to see if it's actually pro-social for those consuming the food).

> I'm not really sure that soup kitchens do much besides allow a surplus time of the more fortunate to gather socially together for a pro-social benefit

You say this like it is a bad thing, which confuses me

They’re arguing along the lines of “it’s not the /better/ thing I envisioned”, rather than a “this is good” baseline.

It must be said that as far as that goes, the UN is designed to be a place to talk about problems, to air grievances, and the idea of it as a universal problem-solver and half-assed world government isn't particularly a part of how it started. Unfortunately as we're seeing what the UN has become is a plodding bureaucracy that occasionally has good intentions, and rarely sees them through. Mostly the UN is a clearing house for NGO organization and directing aid, which isn't a terrible thing, although their history of corruption, abuse of locals, ineptitude, and so on doesn't inspire confidence.

There's also the reality that the UN suffers from being an open forum, it means that the Qaddafi's of the world get to air their... unique perspectives as well. The rise of China and the decline of Russia has also created a pretty grim dynamic, but IMO the worst of the present state of affairs is the travesty of having countries like Iran chairing the Human Right's Council!

All in all I don't think I have a better idea for a substitute, and any ideas I did have would probably just reflect my own beliefs and desires rather than some universal principle. All in all I feel like the state of the UN does at least mirror the state of the world pretty well though. The US is all over the place depending on administration, Western Europe just plods along, Russia is a butcher, China is extremely complex in both its internal and external dealings (I don't want to generalize and I'm no expert, obviously there's some problems there however), and the Middle Eastern countries like the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia use the limitless power of vast wealth to warp and twist everything they touch.

I’d argue that the ridiculous aspects are a feature. By having a bureaucratic process select Iran, you’re removing the editorial element.

> countries like Iran chairing the Human Right's Council!

I don't think this is bad because you want to influence these countries in particular and inclusion here has a domestic effect. It isn't meant for grandstanding on certain values.

You could pick the most social countries for such a position, but that is more like preaching to the choir.

> countries like Iran chairing the Human Right's Council

Council chair is a more or less ceremonial position, so it doesn't really matter all that much who's holding it. The irony of the chain being Iran is immense though.

> UN is designed to be a place to talk about problems

Uhm, my understanding is that the main UN purpose is to prevent WW3. It was thansformed from the League of Nations that was created after The World War, but obviously failed on its mission with the WW2.

Nope, the UN charter predictably was pretty concerned with war, but all the equality and progressivism is in there too. As the very first paragraph of the original 1945 UN charter reads:

"WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom"

Preventing WW3 usually starts by airing grievances so the collective body can talk about said problems and come to a peaceful, diplomatic solution.

I don't think that works anymore, UN can only issue "deep concerns" (c).

The real prevention starts when the collective body deploys troops (or authorize the deployment). The last such real deployment, authorized by UN, was for Iraq (Saddam Hussein), who really could start the WW3. But you know how it's portrayed now by authoritarians, so I doubt we will see any real action from UN anymore until the WW3 happens.

The UN is operating at a different scale doing something quite unique, and the reports don’t need to be widely-read to be important or influential. I ran kitchens at a series of homeless shelters for ten years and the difference between cooking/serving food, and actually procuring supplies and dealing with the supply chain - was the difference between something that took one hour and something that took nine months. It is much like this with the UN and other international trans-governmental organizations, they work with ridiculously complex systems and get real shit done, even if it’s not as visual as handing out a plate of food.

> endless communication

Having worked with WHO and ILO in Geneva... so much this. People have no idea - literally no idea - how mind-boggling the bureaucracy is inside the UN.

This is a dysfunctional org.

There are a lot of other contributing factors too. If a potential reader pre-assumes bias from the report, they may just choose not to invest the time. It's the same way bad faith political discussions play out with people making assumptions about the stance of a person voting the opposite way.

Having collaborated with UN it gave me the impression of a corporate.

There the tendency of dereponsibilising tasks and delegate the hard part to someone else, as you say "directing to appropriate resources".

That's a great way of phrasing it, thank you. People have confused talking about the thing with doing something about the thing. It's an endemic in the liberal mindset. It's nice to have good ideas, but it needs to be followed through with actions. Otherwise the words simply amount to empty gestures.

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