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There is a reason PayPal shuts down most impromptu “charity” accounts as a matter of course. For every legitimate one there are dozens of people trying to scam money on the back of some tragedy.
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Yeah, I’m thinking of when these gofundme accounts start getting into the tens of thousands. I’m an affordable housing developer and we certainly can’t do anything without large amounts of money. Since housing supply is a major issue where I am, giving people money to rent an apartment isn’t going to solve the problem. We need concentrated funds to do it.
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Not exactly true, but there are a lot of posers out there.
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Yes, and the same logic applies to giving to charities vs. addressing the same needs though tax-funded state aid.
The economics of charity isn’t about maximising the good a single dollar can do; it is about maximising how good a single dollar can make the donor feel. You could give a dollar to someone who has a home but is $1 away from being evicted – which is great value in terms of homelessness – or you can give the dollar to some theatrically wretched toothless street hobo who will thank you with tears streaming down his face, which is great value in terms of feeling good about yourself.
To put it another way, capitalism accounts for the movement of money in terms of transactions, and with charity the transaction is that you pay money for the sensation of relieving other people’s suffering. But in practice, that requires the suffering; you don’t open your wallet until someone has already become homeless / gone bankrupt paying for chemotherapy / etc. When charity is administered on a case-by-case basis, as with GoFundMe, the suffering and the sympathetic backstory need to be on Book of Job levels just to cut through the noise, so you end up with spectacularly tragic cases being wildly overfunded, while “average” homeless people get even less of the action.
Relying on voluntary donations alone is the same as saying “first become a charity case, then we’ll talk”. It is the opposite of trying to reduce the need for charity. If you know you’re going to end up feeling obligated to pay, then obligate yourself to pay in the form of tax.
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This a thousand times.
The best charity is the kind that prevents a need for charity. The kind that prevents suffering in the first place.
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I doubt there will ever be a Guidestar for GoFundMe accounts.
Hm. No one has gofuckmerank registered. How to monetize it…
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In many cases giving to a charity IS better use of a dollar. A food bank, for instance, is buying food in bulk and is likely to have a non-profit account with a large scale vendor. That means, the $.89 you spend on a can-O-beans probably could have bought 2 or 3 cans if the charity had purchased it using their sources/vendors.
Now, that’s not to say there aren’t some charities who do money bad. when you look at something like cancer (which is always fun to do), you see so much money being given to a group like the Komen foundation take in funds and dedicate them solely to a single form of cancer, when there a multitude of cancers (some more likely to be fatal).
I guess what I’m getting at is, charities are good, but make sure you pick a good charity.
But the economics of anything is about making drastically oversimplified and essentially disproven assumptions about what motivates people to behave the way they do. If your primary motivation is to maximize your own utility then you don’t give money to charity at all, so it makes no sense for charities to cater to such people.
Can’t wait to buy the book…doh!
Crime does not pay!
At that level.
You actually make a pretty solid point. Thank you!
I don’t know, even the best of reputable charities have overhead, I like the direct peer to peer nature of fund raising (though Go Fund Me also takes it’s skim off the top.) I think direct, within your community, giving is best, where you know the people and can see the benefit. Gonna go through my camping supplies and find good quality things we no longer use to give to the homeless encampment in my neighborhood this weekend, for instance. (https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/11/14/warming-tents-go-up-at-site-of-long-standing-encampment-in-minneapolis)
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They should figure out some way to make money, selling ads, maybe, to audiences they’ve built by lying about invading caravans.
That fraud is lucrative and penalty-free.
Can we go without “hobo”, though? Even assholes deserve some measure of human dignity for this state.
No honor among thieves.
Affinity fraud for dumb, hateful racists will never be unprofitable. I wish there was a way for me to drain from these people and give to the ACLU.
No honor among [er] [ing] [etc] thieves.
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I will never understand the worship of everything military and the army in general by the americans at all. sorry, but really, I cant.
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