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Being a Skeptic and a frugal person who also cares about their fellow[wo]man in need, compels me to share my thoughts on charities (for what it's worth)...
"Giving of ourselves is the most important thing we can do in our lives" Perhaps a more efficient way of looking at giving ~ By having your time/money set aside for local micro causes as they arise (someone needs immediate assistance when their home burns down, someone can't meet medical costs or loses their employment/livelihood, the homeless, etc), you can help someone on your own - be it help for your own family, a friend, a neighbor, or a stranger - directly and right now in their time of need where a donation of your time/money may help someone face to face. You'll know how the dollars are being used, you'll know who is being helped, and by being personally involved you can solve an immediate problem. There are no overhead costs (as in major charities where a lot of the monies go to admin cost, operating costs, CEO pay, overpaid management, marketing, buildings, even FRAUD). Remember‌charities are businesses and they have agendas and have causes that are unclear at best. I reckon what I'm sharing is - if you want to put your wallet where your heart is in order to help alleviate suffering, don't let your emotions get the better of you and blindly donate. Sometimes the way we choose to dole out our funds betrays our true motives. Know thyself. We may be more interested in feeling good than doing good. In my intimate experience having been on the "inside" of organized charity (both secular and church charities), I have been trying to craft a definitive argument that defines most as the crooks I believe they are. It is my opinion that they stand in the way and block the democratic path to providing for society's needs as a whole ahead of private gain. Charities are gatekeeper middlemen who take their cut at the greater expense of the cause. They serve the capitalist, private profit class. The modern organized charity business has become another exploitive trick of trickledown economics in this country, and in my opinion, what the people need is not charity. What is good for the riffraff, and what they would want if they knew it, is JUSTICE - not charity. In a just, that is to say, a democratic society, charity is - would be, superfluous. Yes, as for the list of charities to choose from, I admit (excuse my cynicism) that they are all upright, honorable, respectable, even admirable - as capitalist enterprises, where the best con artists are those who rake in the most profits. [In my experience - United Way] And remember‌charities often target symptoms, not causes. The collective action of a government addressing the underlying causes of social problems supported by our uniform taxation can bring social justice by directing our actions at the root causes of social problems. As citizens, our active and direct influence on our local and national gov't is extremely important to reform our entitlement system towards a better management of truly needed services that we would like to see implemented and wisely distributed among all for the common good. Let's get involved. Solidarity for Change/Reform - Justice - Education I can hope, right? Oh well‌baby steps [or implosion/revolution?].
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Good excerpts from http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/10-reasons-why-i-would-never-donate-to-amajor-charity-or-how-to-be-a-superhero-part-2/ --Smart Allocators of Capital are on the case. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are a 1000x better than I am at researching charitable cases, allocating their capital, investing correctly the leftover funds, etc. My $100 (or $1000, or $10,000, whatever) is not going to make a dent in their $100 billion. Let them handle the big problems. With the local micro-charity idea, I personally can make a great difference to people who Bill Gates will never even hear about. There are better ways to cure cancer. First off, it seems like I’m picking on the American Cancer Society. But this is the number one killer in the United States and one of the biggest killers out there so I might as well focus on it a little bit. And it's not just cancer. What I’m about to say applies to Alzheimers, Heart Disease, Cancer, and every major disease. Companies cure cancer. Scientists with new ideas of drugs team up with businessmen, start little companies, get approximately $200mm to $1bb in funding, then develop their drugs, put the drugs through a bunch of different phrases through the FDA, and then finally if the drugs are good, they get bought by a bigger company who is better at selling the drug. That’s how cancer gets cured. That’s how every disease in the world finds a cure now. So the best way to cure a major disease at least is to put money into a biotech mutual fund which funds small biotech companies. These companies are at the frontier of major biotech research. The other thing is to lobby the government to reduce the FDA’s stringent standards on drugs. A drug costs up to $200 million or more to get through the FDA. The only way companies can recoup that cost is by charging enormous amounts for drugs. This is part of the reason why healthcare and insurance are so expensive. Drugs for prostate cancer, for instance, cost up to $93,000 a month because the billion or so it cost to get through the Federal Drug Administration.] A couple of articles on the ethics of charitable giving… very interesting to consider and shows how philanthropy ~
http://pacscenter.stanford.edu/sites/all/files/Against%20Philanthropy.pdf http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/against_1.shtml http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/10-reasons-why-i-would-never-donate-to-a-major-charity-orhow-to-be-a-superhero-part-2/ QUOTES
“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.” Eduardo Galeano "Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it is an act of justice." Nelson Mandela "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity." Ralph Nader "We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice. His generous impulse freezes within him if his power is challenged
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or his generosities are accepted without suitable humility." Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932 “Essential services ought to be provided to our fellow-citizens by government [taxation/wise implementation], not by philanthropic organizations.� Neil Levy "It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality... This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Nothing is finer than the open hand and the generous heart that's prompt free and unselfish giving. But modern social science knows, also, that ill directed charity is often directly responsible for encouragement of pauperism and mendicancy. The best service we can do for the needy and the unfortunate is to help them in such manner that their self respect, their ability to help themselves, shall not be injured but augmented. Nobody is necessarily out merely because he is down. But, being down, nobody gets up again without honest effort of his own. The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself." From President Coolidge's telephone remarks to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City, Oct. 26, 1924.