[FRIAM] Fundraiser by Christina Z. : Ohoris Staff Relief Fund

[uǝlƃ ☣]

8^) Sorry. I didn't intend to accuse anyone of purposefully manipulation. That's why I mentioned the Telephone Game. It doesn't matter what we intend, the message will get perverted. ("The only problem with communication is the illusion that it exists." -- somebody somewhere I'm too lazy to look up.)

For me, it's "Do what thou wilt". If you want to spend hours scouring 990's and build expert systems or constraint optimizers to tell you which charity to give to, that's fantastic. But don't, at the end of the day, pomp around town spouting how your money's more effective than others. (This is said not to anyone here, but to the EA people.) If you want to toss $100 bills out the window at homeless people, that's fantastic. I choose to donate to nonprofits I care about (like for Debian or psychedelic research). And I have friends who volunteer for the red cross. So I like to toss some money that way. To my mind, any overhead (even if it's 90%) they use off my donation to pay the staff or raise other funds is their business. I try not to micromanage. Similarly, if the homeless guy takes my $5 and buys some Strawberry Hill, more power to him. It was a gift and he can use it as he pleases.

The "how are you going to spend this if I give it to you" sounds a lot like "Get off my lawn!"


On 4/22/20 2:43 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> glen -
> 
> I definitely didn't intend to *invert* your intention... I *did*
> understand (roughly) that it is arrogant to believe that *I* can
> engineer a better altruism than say Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity or
> the Social Welfare apparatus of my city/state/national/UN efforts.    
> But I think your arguments *also* allow (support) my feeling that I
> *want* to make sure that the people who have given good service to me
> (and to whom I have been mostly generous with my tips in the past)
> survive this mess and are available and motivated (or not) to return to
> that service.   
> 
> Giving good tips, paying what may feel like inflated prices to local
> farmers and artisans, etc. feels like I'm being part of the
> emergent/evolved system...   Back when many were part of a local
> religious congregation, there was the idea of a "tithe" or sharing
> 1/10th of one's productive efforts with one's peers, using their
> church's (synagog/stupa/whatever) leader/admnistration to help them by
> distributing it.   Of course these were always (mostly) Franchises that
> gathered up a "tithe" of those tithes to fund the larger
> administration/hierarchy (I've seen the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake
> and the Vatican... as well as the extravagant architecture of Washington
> DC), and some might resent that and would rather just "give their
> neighbor a hand during planting, harvest, barn-raising time) or not.
> 
> I'm (for the most part) rooting the House Dems who are working hard
> (best I can tell) to get whatever money they manage to get printed at
> this moment to "the little guy" whether it is through the direct
> payments already halfway in/through the mail or to small businesses who
> will do their (we hope) damnedest to  do right by their employees...
> keep them on payroll long enough to *maybe* pull out of whatever
> nosedive their industry is in.
> 
> I acknowledge that this surely means higher taxes for me in the (near
> and indefinite) future.   My income/savings is pretty modest by
> professional  standards but best I can tell notably above many in
> service and living (much less minimum) wage workers, and I'm willing to
> *share* some of their pain.   I don't know how much, or in what mode, 
> but this kind of event makes *me* feel "yet more generous" than
> otherwise... 
> 
> Untangle me in this one if you might?  I really didn't want to impugne
> your guidance in these matters.
> 

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ