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I like Kant's take on this. He argued (roughly, by memory) that giving to people begging on the street directly was a selfish act, as it's satisfying our own need to feel better about ourselves more than the needs of the homeless population, and would lead to an unfair distribution giving more money to those who are talented at evoking empathy rather than those that might need it the most. He argued that the unselfish thing to do would be to donate to the cause indirectly, responding not to the emotional response in the moment but to a rational consideration of the needs of the homeless population.
I think he has a point. That said, there's nothing wrong with being selfish every now and then, especially not if your selfishness gives someone a warm meal. And empathy is a healthy human reaction.
Your parents seem to have failed to grasp the challenges facing the homeless population. A better take would be "don't give that guy money, start donating regularly to a local charity instead and help make sure that help is given to all those who need it".
Oh, and also, rally for political change.
Kant had a point there, but I think he also fails to address the problem.
The existence of charitable organizations means that the government has failed that group of people. Charitable organizations are extremely inefficient and sometimes are prone to the exact problems he brings up with donating directly to individuals, or they may prioritize certain individuals with certain religious beliefs over others.
Charitable organizations need to be folded and replaced with government programs. We don't need to be paying CEOs salaries when we're just trying to help someone on the street.
The thing about "Don't do X, because we SHOULD do Y"
Is that nobody's doing Y, and we're nowhere close to getting there, so, until we are, we should support the X.
So then we should ignore Kant and give money to individuals because it's better than nothing
Sure - if your alternative is doing nothing. It's not like he's saying giving money to beggars is immoral, it's just amoral.
Amoral means not morally relevant. Something that is morally neutral is not amoral, it's morally neutral.
E.g it is morally neutral to pet a dog, it is amoral to like the colour blue.
Normally in moral philosophy one would avoid this confusion by classifying morally relevant actions/outcomes as "bad","neutral", or "good".
And Kant would, if I read him correctly, argue that giving money to a beggar is not a moral action - it's a selfish action, and not morally bad or good as such. It doesn't have to do with morality, it has to do with our need to feel better about ourselves. :)
Or what if we support anyone who can help in the way that they are able and feel comfortable helping?
Trying to help, helps, even if they aren't helping how you think they should.
That was the point of my comment.
I've been involved as a treasurer for a number of "medium" charities in Australia. Most recently one providing free legal services to the disadvantaged, and another running a refuge for homeless youth.
As an aside, bear in mind that I as a treasurer as well as the entire board are volunteers - well qualified and experienced professionals donating their time to ensure that the organisation is run efficiently and is maximising the benefit to the community.
Your comments really grind my gears. They're born of shallow social media type thinking. These falsehoods are commonly used as a "reason" why one ought not to donate to charities.
Certainly there are overpaid CEOs, but these are a minority. Recently the charity running the refuge got a new CEO. He had been a police superintendent. He took a pay cut of about two thirds in order to be our CEO. He said that he had spent most of his career locking people up, and wanted to spend the last part of his career changing kids trajectories before they got involved with the law.
Imagine saying that this organisation would be more efficient of it were subsumed by the government, so the CEO-equivalent could be paid 3x as much.
I read @bustrpoindextr as not criticizing the charities directly, but rather reflect that they represent a systematic failure of government structures. We shouldn't need homeless shelters or soup kitchens - there shouldn't be homelessness or hunger. Taxation and sensible public spending should render charity unnecessary.
Which is a nice thought - I wouldn't judge people for giving their money to political interest organizations promoting solidarity rather than directly to charities.
It's a fine balance between patching the flaws of the system and trying to replace it all together. In some extreme cases charity might make the system just bearable enough that it's not overthrown, which might occasionally do more harm than good in the long run.
A refuge isn't really a shelter for people who are "homeless".
How would a government provide temporary accommodation to a 12 year old who is at risk of abuse?
The need for this type of refuge isn't the product of a shitty housing market.
Note also, most of the funding comes from government agencies.
He should name the charity with which he speaks of, “United way”
The rest are mostly as you describe
The CEO equivalent doesn't exist in government. Your entire argument is pointless.
Do you realize how little a CEO does?
Do you realize how little the actual money donated to an organization trickles down to the cause?
Do you realize that there are multiple charities for the same thing, which just means more and more waste?
In fact in pretty much every instance of a modern government taking over a service, it becomes cheaper and more efficient. That's why many governments run utilities, and healthcare.
Look I'm not saying your service is useless, but I am saying it would be more efficient elsewhere.
On the contrary. Many charities benefit from volunteer work hours that simply would not be possible on a normal government contract. The efficiency of some charities simply cannot be matched by State institutions, as people don't want to volunteer working for the state.
Some volunteer positions could possibly be replaced with well-paying jobs to lower unemployment rates at the benefit of the economy, but people also get a sense of purpose from volunteering. The charitable economy ran by volunteering and donations is an incredible asset for any society, no matter how great the social security net is. And in my experience, a better security net is often correlated with more charity.
That's not to say shitty charities don't exist. But good luck financing all the activities of the Red Cross through a state budget, paying everyone for their work.
So first off, you can totally volunteer for government things. I mean, I can volunteer at my local government library for instance, there's nothing about a government contract that removes the ability to volunteer.
But I wouldn't need to have volunteers if the red cross and all competing charities were swallowed up into one thing.
There are a bunch of organizations that do the same or part of what the red cross does. That's a lot of wasted time of resources, that would be better spent lumped together as a collective unit.
Charity is simply one of the places you absolutely don't want competition/capitalism. You want oversight and efficiency, that's the government.
Sorry mate you're kind of embarrassing yourself a little bit here.
Of course the CEO equivalent exists in government. It's just a management position. Equivalent services will need equivalent management.
I've sat on hiring committees for CEO's. Refining their job descriptions and interviewing candidates. I know exactly what CEO's of non-profits and charities do. I suspect that you do not.
Perhaps you didn't read my comment. I've been a treasurer for a number of medium size charities. I know exactly how much money is needed to support the charities objectives.
In recent years grant funding for charities has been extraordinarily difficult to obtain. Often it's not indexed. Where grant funding is not indexed for a number of years, it becomes impossible to maintain the same services because wages and other costs are always getting more expensive. I've had to have that very difficult conversation with social workers - that their hours need to be reduced and as a result their client numbers will be cut. It's a ridiculous absurdity to suggest that volunteers like myself would be taking those measures without first seeking to maximise the efficiency of the entire organisation.
For example?
You're talking about public vs private institutions. That just doesn't make any sense applied to charities because they're already public institutions.
Sorry mate, this is just an absurd thought bubble borne of naivety. Get involved in a charity and you'll understand why it exists. Until then maybe just start with the assumption that the people who are involved have a better understanding of it's context and it's objectives and how best to serve those objectives than you do. It's incredible arrogant to suppose that entire organisations ought not to exist because the people involved just haven't realised how inefficient they are. Seriously, pull your head out of your ass.
A CEO is not a manager. You're already embarrassing yourself here 😉
I did read your comment, but I kinda assumed you either were lying or getting really defensive. There's a lot of waste that wouldn't exist if they were consolidated into the government.
Yeah sure, since it's already been brought to. The red cross does blood donations, but they're only 35% of America's non profit blood donations, there's also America's blood centers and vitalent and more! So much overhead! If they were all one organization, you could eliminate much of the overhead and more effectively coordinate the blood donations.
Sorry mate, but you've got your head up your ass and you're getting defensive.
I have been involved in both charities and government.
Goodness me. One of us is certainly getting defensive. There's not much point continuing this. Feel free to have the last word while continuing to assume anyone with a better understanding than you is a liar.
I mean you attacked me because you didn't like a logical, obvious, critique of something. Which again, I never said it was bad, I just said it could be improved. And you said things that I just repeated back at you, and now you can't handle your own words?
Goodness me indeed.
I'm not sure this is a valid critique of Kant - he invites us to step back and consider how we would address the problems more rationally and in ways that could be universal rules, rather than merely as an emotional response. We might very well conclude from this reflection that we should organize politically and deal with systematic injustice rather than donating to the local soup kitchen.
Personally I think there's room for both - in an ideal world the public should guarantee a baseline, but there might still be room for charities. The soup kitchen might not only help the people it serves food to - it might also give a sense of purpose to those volunteering for it.
I'm not saying the soup kitchen shouldn't exist. It's absolutely necessary, it should just be part of the guaranteed baseline, provided by the government.
Yes, I think I got your point - the soup kitchen should be financed by taxes rather than volunteer contributions by charitable souls. And I of course completely agree.
Even then, there might be room for a charity providing a social space for those with fewer means or who find themselves in a rough spot in life. I think no matter how well the state is doing in guaranteeing for people's needs, there'll be some room for civil society to make a contribution; if nothing else because the sense of purpose it can give the helpers is in its own right a goal worth pursuing.
I think ideally the point of charity organizations should be a stop gap measure that identifies issues the government needs to address, and then temporarily addresses them.
How that works in practice 🤷♂️
You trust the government enough to properly provide for those most in need, but the government has pushed the work onto the very charities that you are arguing against. The government leaks tens of billions annually on preserving the needs of the richest members of our society, a quarter of which could have made a massive impact on world hunger.
I don’t think the government or private organizations generally have anyone’s best interest in mind when they do what they do, besides those who have the most influence.
Source on charities being extremely inefficient?
I mean, you can look anywhere, whether it's upwards of 70% of medical donations not being used: https://academic.oup.com/inthealth/article/11/5/379/5420717?login=false#151492984
Also you can dive into the problems with definitions of "the cause" https://hbr.org/2009/06/beware-of-highly-efficient-cha
A charity can loosely define what counts as their cause which means they can tell you that 95 cents on the dollar go to the cause, even if it's only 20 cents.
Moreover it's really suspect that the rich keep getting richer even in the "nonprofit" sector: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/24/15377056/big-charities-best-charities-evaluation-nonprofit
Furthermore, even from an innocent standing. When you have multiple charities working on the same thing, that's crazy inefficient.
Let's talk about the Red Cross, great organization. One of the things they do is blood donations. They're responsible for about 35% of the blood donations in the US, the rest come from other non profits.
That means there's competition among the non profit blood donation organizations to provide blood for emergencies. Whether they want to compete or not, they have to.
Just from a blanket statement, if you moved all of those blood donations under a single entity, you remove a lot of inefficiencies.
You don't need to advertise for multiple organizations, you don't need to coordinate with all those different organizations during a crisis, you don't have the same overhead for the same problems across multiple organizations. It's just by design, inefficient. It's not their fault.
Government programs are literally no better when it comes to administrative costs. In fact way worse in the vast majority of cases.
CEO's are only a thing with very large charities on the order of the Red Cross, (or rich people money laundering charities). Your local shelter or food bank isn't going to be having a high overhead, in fact it's going to be much lower than the government agencies because of almost entirely free volunteer work. The point where the government is more efficient is due to the fact that welfare fraud is a crime, so people are naturally less inclined to lie to receive benefits.