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The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

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Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#51

Post by bhouston »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #46
reagency wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age-related disease is simply not an issue for the billions of young people suffering. The problems facing the wealthy elites are not the problems most people face.

> Age-related disease is simply not an issue for the billions of young people suffering. Cancer is closely related to the processes of aging, and aging research is highly likely to overlap with cancer prevention and treatment. (If only because the processes that cause cell aging and death are also the ones that prune potential cancer cells from the body.) So, aging research is also quite likely to help prevent childh…

There are +$5 billion invested in cancer research each year, this SENS charity has a budget of $4M a year. Basically $4M a year is not able to fund much at all.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#52

Post by JoshTriplett »

justinator wrote: post #16
waxymonkeyfrog wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe, this is Derek, the author of the piece linked above. I think you make a good point. When I first heard Will explain "earning to give," a part of me considered it off-putting and radical, but I've come to see it as an expansive view of doing good, because I think there are a lot of people who (a) wouldn't be good at charitable work or (b) would be good at charitable work but are better at - and enjoy! - other wor…

Here's a thought question: You are: a higher up at a very large company, whose process in some ways causes human suffering. Let's say the product, or byproduct causes cancer, and part of your job even, is to dispel the people who call your company out. Who it better for you to, (a Continue working the job, giving a very unreasonable amount of your salary to charity, which incidentally, attempts to research ways this…

a2) Continue working the job for now, donate a substantial fraction of your income to charity, climb the ladder as rapidly as possible, and work to change the company in a direction you consider preferable if you think it's salvageable. (While there's a small set of jobs that are nearly irredeemable, such as the folks in a tobacco company or free-to-play gaming company researching how to make their product more addictive, there's a much larger set of jobs with a balance of questionable activities, with potentially some amount of influence over those activities.)

Interesting thought exercise: suppose you woke up tomorrow with the position (and requisite skills and connections) of running a company most people would consider irredeemable, such as a tobacco company. Could you, within a reasonable number of years, turn them into a well-respected company that's a net positive influence on society (and not just by dismantling them and donating the results)? I'd bet I could, within 8-10 years. (A bit less for a company for which the plan doesn't involve a few components of scientific research and advancement.)

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#53

Post by marincounty »

I use the free preview at www.guidestar.org. I then download the 1040's that are available. I go over the balance sheet. I look at the BOD. I scrutinize every page in that download. I try to guesstimate how much funding goes to the founders, and administration.

I then look at who's making the most money, including expenses, at the nonprofit. I have found too many people use nonprofits to support a comfortable lifestyle, and the cause comes second to their comfort. I have found, in too many cases, one person(many times--a husband, and wife) makes a lot of money, and the nonprofit doesn't seem to do much! This works for smaller nonprofits.

As to the larger nonprofits--many make me sick. That money could go to other causes. Off the top of my head these are the large nonprofits that need a through forensic review before donating to: (1) Goodwill (2) Cars for kids (when I reviewed this organization, they had one home in the Sierra foothills for, I believe--12 children, and most of their money was spent on advertising.) (3) St. Jude (correct me if I'm mistaken, but I heard they have enough money to survive for the next 100 years, and that's accounting for inflation, and growth?)

I love nonprofits. I just want to make sure that cause gets the money, or expertise. I'm tired of the scams.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#54

Post by melling »

rayiner wrote: post #34
reasonattlm wrote: post #7

Clearly the SENS Research Foundation, as a 501c3 charity that gives you the 80/20 win for a good expectation value for your dollars to do the most good in speeding up progress towards ending age-related disease. If you want to do better than the SRF at assigning dollars to speeding up progress towards ending age-related disease, you're going to have to spend some years reading research and making connections. (I wish…

What indication is there that living longer would serve the greater good? People living longer = fewer births assuming stable population, and a greater percentage of life spent in older years. Even if you can make those older years healthy, you'll never be able to capture the uncomplicated wonder and joy of childhood and adolescence. You'd literally be trading a teenager's first crush for an 80-year old's third marri…

No one said that you have to be unproductive in your later years:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

I'm sure Knuth is full of joy writing his next book.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#55

Post by philipn »

merpnderp wrote: post #38
philipn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really common argument that people make, but I think it's missing some essential externalities. I've worked in the nonprofit space for ~7 years now, and this is the most common over-cocktails argument folks tend to make. First of all, and most importantly, most people do not give very much of their income away. And as you accumulate more money, your rate of giving tends to decrease. There are counter exampl…

How is turning boreal peat forests into palm oil plantations equal to capital extraction? Isn't it the exact opposite in that land of less value has been turned into land of more value? I think I'm missing something here.

Sorry, I meant to say peat swamps, not boreal forests.

Regarding peat swamps, they are less valuable in that the land isn't being farmed. Transformation of "unvaluable and useless" peat swamps to productive oil palm plantations often, but not always, involves altering the water table of the forest, which causes a massive increase in CO2 (peat is an incredible carbon sink) as well as widespread fires.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/peat-and-repeat-re...

http://www.dw.de/peat-forests-pose-major-climate-threat/a-52...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_haze

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#56

Post by JoshTriplett »

mikekchar wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What indication is there that living longer would serve the greater good? People living longer = fewer births assuming stable population, and a greater percentage of life spent in older years. Even if you can make those older years healthy, you'll never be able to capture the uncomplicated wonder and joy of childhood and adolescence. You'd literally be trading a teenager's first crush for an 80-year old's third marri…

I'm just going to have to guess that you aren't very old. I'm only 47, but I have to tell you that at least for me life just keeps getting better every year. I wouldn't trade this year for another year of my teens. I wouldn't trade this year for 10 more years in my teens. Gradually losing health is unfortunate. I have to watch what I eat and be careful with my lifestyle due to chronic illness. My vision has degraded…

This. I enjoyed my childhood, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but adulthood is so much more fun in a hundred different ways. If yours isn't, consider what it would take to fix that.

(If possible. I realize that isn't an option for everyone, and some people are working as hard as they can just to reach a secure position in life where they don't have to worry about basic needs. But this applies for those groups as well: if you had a thousand extra years to work with, as a start, you'd have a lot more time to enjoy the secure lifestyle you've worked so hard for, not just to pass that more secure position on to your children.)

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#57

Post by JoshTriplett »

bhouston wrote: post #51
JoshTriplett wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Age-related disease is simply not an issue for the billions of young people suffering. Cancer is closely related to the processes of aging, and aging research is highly likely to overlap with cancer prevention and treatment. (If only because the processes that cause cell aging and death are also the ones that prune potential cancer cells from the body.) So, aging research is also quite likely to help prevent childh…

There are +$5 billion invested in cancer research each year, this SENS charity has a budget of $4M a year. Basically $4M a year is not able to fund much at all.

I'm currently working on fixing that, both personally and via fundraising.

Cancer gets more attention because it's the thing written down under "cause of death" next to a loved one's name. But that's a proximate cause; the underlying cause is usually "aging".

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#58

Post by snowai »

theycallhimtom wrote: post #47
noname123 wrote: post #30

Can't believe, no one has posted this yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiveWell "GiveWell is an American non-profit charity evaluator and effective altruism-focused organization.[5][6] Unlike any other charity evaluators, GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization's budget that is spent on ov…

I'm guessing no one posted it because there was a whole section in the original article on GiveWell.

Also http://www.agorafund.org Allows you to give to basket of charities selected based on principles from effective altruism.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#59

Post by Fishkins »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #41
duopixel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity grunt work brings forward compassion, acceptance, frugality and other qualities that wouldn't arise from working in finance. If you don't see the problem up close you won't want to donate 90% of your income. Furthermore, smart people with the conviction to solve the problem and the guts to get their hands dirty eventually accomplish great things. Norman Borlaug comes to mind.

Its pretty clear that a person who would dedicate their young years to charity work, already have those qualities. I'm thinking she might have retains some fragments of that, as she worked at her real skills and donated significantly.

I agree she would she would retain some fragments of that, but she still could be substantially changed. See vacri's sibling (cousin?) post for an anecdote.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#60

Post by JesperRavn »

For every dollar you earn, around 35% will be taken by the government and used for things most of which could be classified as "charitable". Just because you don't get a choice about taxation, doesn't mean that the choice to earn more money it isn't an effective form of altruism. And just because the government budget is huge, doesn't mean there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence in the long run between how much the government taxes, and how much it can spend. (EDIT: and for actual charity, I go with Malaria. Dying sucks).
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