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Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

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Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#91

Post by pjc50 »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #39
maerF0x0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long played around with the thought of what would happen if someone started something like the universal-fund you mentioned, but had it snowball like a sovereign fund? (ie, instead of spending the in flow, invest it and only spend the profits from the investments, for example) ... Particularly for basic needs like housing,food,clothes... Like what if instead of giving a charity $100 we created 41c per month? of…

Plenty of those have existed, but in the end they always get stolen and given to the dogs trust. There’s nothing people hate more than lasting charitable foundations. They take them to court so that they can crack them open and wank away the entire fund in 6 months. There was one which was supposed to pay off the entire national debt. They cracked and spaffed it. Another was supposed to end piracy. Cracked and spaffe…

This sounds like a strange set of examples that may have been scams from the start. Can you name them?

The UK is full of long lasting charitable foundations. Many attached to schools and universities, but the highest profile example is probably the National Trust and its collection of historic buildings.

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#93

Post by toyg »

pjc50 wrote: post #91
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of those have existed, but in the end they always get stolen and given to the dogs trust. There’s nothing people hate more than lasting charitable foundations. They take them to court so that they can crack them open and wank away the entire fund in 6 months. There was one which was supposed to pay off the entire national debt. They cracked and spaffed it. Another was supposed to end piracy. Cracked and spaffe…

This sounds like a strange set of examples that may have been scams from the start. Can you name them? The UK is full of long lasting charitable foundations. Many attached to schools and universities, but the highest profile example is probably the National Trust and its collection of historic buildings.

A lot of those charities are precisely in the process of being "cracked open", or have been captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom. The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible.

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#94

Post by staubfinger »

Love how watsi helped not only others but also also you; to grow as a person. Hope this will both never stop :)

Curious Question about Money and Logistics: If people from all over the world donate, how do you guys funnel/move the money to the places where they need to be? I can think of bank wire transfers, but i doubt that's the way you do it - so curious as to how its being done. Also: are fancy new cryptocurrencies of any use in transferring funds? could you see them ever be?

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#95

Post by rsynnott »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #33
kalvin wrote: post #21

Thank YOU Chase :) (I work at Watsi) If you'd like to see an example of what Watsi's about, check out Philip's profile: https://watsi.org/profile/2286cb03a5bd-philip Also, fun fact: 619 of our current "Universal Fund" monthly donors first made a donation 10 or more years ago, and I'm pretty sure many of those were/are Hacker News readers. If you're interested, see https://watsi.org/universal-fund

I've long played around with the thought of what would happen if someone started something like the universal-fund you mentioned, but had it snowball like a sovereign fund? (ie, instead of spending the in flow, invest it and only spend the profits from the investments, for example) ... Particularly for basic needs like housing,food,clothes... Like what if instead of giving a charity $100 we created 41c per month? of…

Some nonprofits do run largely off endowments.

One big issue is that it's a PR problem; most people don't really understand it. They'll look at the non-profit and say "why does that need to raise money, it's rich". You saw this a lot with Harvard in Trump's recent funding war with it, say.

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#96

Post by embedding-shape »

toyg wrote: post #93
pjc50 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a strange set of examples that may have been scams from the start. Can you name them? The UK is full of long lasting charitable foundations. Many attached to schools and universities, but the highest profile example is probably the National Trust and its collection of historic buildings.

A lot of those charities are precisely in the process of being "cracked open", or have been captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom. The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible.

> The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible.

Sounds like the solution is to stop trying to make something like that work in an environment (country) which sounds setup to prevent those sort of efforts. There are lots of countries out there, some are surely a better fit.

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#97

Post by vessenes »

corford wrote: post #88
vessenes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally! What you’ll hear from DAF folks is “we have to sell everything we get in when we get it” -> not true, managed by disclosures “Our job is managing volatility of the donated assets, so getting volatile assets would be bad for the fund, or possibly not allowed” -> not true, managed by disclosures “DAFs are disliked because of asset stuffing, and on the down” -> true as to the first part. On and off legislative…

I wonder if some sort of partnership with https://forgeglobal.com/ could potentially help for syndicating to secondary buyers?

Nice idea! I didn't know about them, but yes, exactly

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#98

Post by pjc50 »

toyg wrote: post #93
pjc50 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a strange set of examples that may have been scams from the start. Can you name them? The UK is full of long lasting charitable foundations. Many attached to schools and universities, but the highest profile example is probably the National Trust and its collection of historic buildings.

A lot of those charities are precisely in the process of being "cracked open", or have been captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom. The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible.

> captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom

Isn't that intrinsic to what a charity is? They don't have customers, they're not trusts set up on behalf of someone else specific, they're a tax exemption with an ideological mission.

(still short on named examples in this subthread)

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#99

Post by pjc50 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #96
toyg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of those charities are precisely in the process of being "cracked open", or have been captured by small groups who manage them as their personal fiefdom. The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible.

> The level of everyday corruption in this country is incredible. Sounds like the solution is to stop trying to make something like that work in an environment (country) which sounds setup to prevent those sort of efforts. There are lots of countries out there, some are surely a better fit.

It's pretty hard to move the National Trust for England preserving England's historic buildings to a different country. Sometimes things are local.

Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

#100

Post by whizzter »

ag8 wrote: post #34
danparsonson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be fun at parties ;-)

Lol, I just care a lot about saving as many lives as I can; the most effective charities I've been able to find good evidence on save one life for $6–8k. If Watsi had a credible claim at being able to save lives 10x cheaper I would redirect my entire donation budget to them! That said, once again, Watsi is great. I really appreciate all the hard work they've put into making this happen—this is orders of magnitude mor…

There was a link posted here that showed some hernia surgery in Malawi costing 400$ , some others listed via links at 160$ to 1000$.

I honestly have no idea about healthcare costs in countries like that, but assuming the main cost is a surgeon, the reported median salary for surgeons in Sweden is between 110-150k usd yearly. Assuming 200 working days a year and available for something like 4 surgeries a day on average that goes to about 137 usd per surgery. Adjust for Malawi being a far cheaper country but addition of more staff and a cost of 400$ for a relatively minor surgery doesn't seem too far fetched if there isn't middlemen taking a cut (actually googling it seems like middlemen can take a fairly large cut even with those costs).

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