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Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

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Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#171

Post by User23 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > 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 p…

The fundamental problem with democracy is, to not put too fine a point on it, that most people are idiots who really have no business having a say in how a city should be run, let alone a continental scale empire. You may see that as an "attack," but it's an observable pattern that has held everywhere and always in human history. Even the provably fair ancient Athenian method of sortition produced catastrophically inept governments. Meanwhile modern "democracy" is a propagandic plutarchy that observably prioritizes the interests of the plutocrats so highly above those of the general population that the latter have, effectively, no say whatsoever.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#172

Post by mistrial9 »

Amusing to see some of the viewpoints today, dollar-talk about dollars.. as a person with an arts background, I can say that philantropy is obvious -- certain activities that people want to do, cannot be done without some kind of backing.. It is a matter of enabling activity that just could not happen otherwise. Some of the participants were vaguely aware that a "CEO" was being paid somewhere, but what was important was the programs. Who cares about the CEO. It is the other money counters that cared most, not participants. Similarly with "who is running this"/socal dominance.. the other dominance people cared.. so what? On the other hand, the amount of random friction, surprising attitude moments and personal instability with cat-herding dynamics, is notable. Surviving the year is a real concern.

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...

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#173

Post by lostcolony »

BobbyJo wrote: post #138
suture wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are very much wrong when talking about efficiencies. There are no examples in the history of the world of charity sufficiently providing for the needs of the poor at a national scale. There are lots of examples of government programs providing the basic needs of the poor at scale.

> There are lots of examples of government programs providing the basic needs of the poor at scale. 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 pe…

People love to say governments are inefficient, but I always find that an interesting claim. It invariably relies on comparing government to much smaller scale organizations (such as charity), which obviously isn't comparable.

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.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#174

Post by naravara »

gruez wrote: post #165
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > 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 p…

>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 [...] 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 d…

> but what's wrong with funding homeless shelters or schools?

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.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#175

Post by exdsq »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #126
exdsq wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s okay if altruism is inherently selfish and for a warm fuzzy feeling or social media points as long as the altruism takes place

This comes across as divorced from reality - this is not why most people donate

This comes from a lot of reflection on ‘selfish altruism’. You might think it’s divorced from reality but I’ve had to argue for altruism existing far too many times in England to not think about it more. It’s probably the cause of donating far more often than you think, just people rarely admit it.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#176

Post by naravara »

blairharper wrote: post #101
croon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be more interesting would be comparing it after including welfare/public education/healthcare/poverty rates etc. Best case scenario would be where no charity is needed, am I wrong?

Welfare should rightly fund "survival" and "levelling the playing field" resources, but charity can offer more than that - it can offer quality of life and a sense of community/belonging. It's nice to be around other people who are going through the same things, and people who support you. So I think charity will always have a role, both financially and socially.

Charity in the form of "the community is coming together to do something of common interest" sure.

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.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#177

Post by ryandrake »

gruez wrote: post #165
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > 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 p…

>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 [...] 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 d…

To me, the key downside of philanthropy is the "without democratic oversight" part. It's all fine when the billionaires are funding homeless shelters or schools: things everyone can agree are a public good. We are extremely lucky that guys like Bill Gates suddenly got a soft spot for fighting malaria after amassing their fortunes. But nothing exists to stop these billionaires from donating to causes against the public good.

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.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#178

Post by jimmaswell »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > 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 p…

I think you absolutely need a few billionaires to undemocratically shake things up on their own once in a while. Push forward a new vision on rockets, transportation, satellite communication, etc. Government organizations can be too prone to stagnate or languish in design by committee otherwise, see NASA not doing much new in a long time and any city taking forever to get through its own red tape to build anything.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#179

Post by nicoburns »

sokoloff wrote: post #169
Matl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this feedback process the explanation for why those previously underperforming and frequently complained about government departments have now been fixed? 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 he…

I think that's a lot of the issue: many people (including myself) are in fact happy with their private healthcare and broadband service. (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...)

Are you imagining a monolithic federal-level agency? Most municipal broadband schemes are run like small non-profit businesses that just happen to be publicly/community owned.

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.

Re: Much philanthropy is a routinized exchange between salaried bureaucrats

#180

Post by throwaway2048 »

itronitron wrote: post #158
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #131

Another only mildly disguised attack on democracy. > 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 p…

A good system needs to be resilient to people in power (the rule enforcers or sub-rule makers) not complying with the rules.

Governments aren't the only people in power in modern America, billionaire (philanthropist or otherwise) hold as much or more power than any politician.
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