I received a request from some social media internet company that wanted to do some kind of "affiliate" thing with my blog. I always entertain these offers because sometimes they actually pay money instead of "exchange traffic" or "help optimize my SEO." So I said, "sure yeah, what do you got?"
"Well, we work with non-profits" and then he lost me there because no matter what he said after that would be irrelevant and let me explain why.
Non-profits DO NOT SOLVE PROBLEMS.
They don't.
They just don't.
I've asked before for people to provide me a list of social ills non-profits have solved and am still waiting for one. Haiti is still a shithole, Africa is still a shithole, Chicago is still a shithole. racism is still abound, 1 in 5 children are starving in America..matter of fact, if you ask any of these non-profit types they're saying the situation has GOTTEN WORSE and they need EVEN MORE money.
My question is "What happened to the $4-$8 TRILLION we gave you over the past 40 years?????"
Naturally, in the private sector if you handed out trillions of dollars to solve problems and NONE of them were solved, whoever was in charge would be fired. But ahhhhh, there's the problem.
You're thinking logically again.
You see, charity, non-profit and social spend is NOT to solve the said ills of society. It is FIRST AND FOREMOST for the workers in those industries. There is no limit to the MILLIONS of spoiled brat suburbanite high school graduates who go to some third world nation to "help" which is liberalese for "free trip and ego-masturbation hiding the fact I'm a lazy 18 year old who doesn't want to work hard or study math." And they really never grow up, but instead aspire to start their own charities and non-profits (just look at the heads of any non-profit and see if they're engineers, doctors or any real contributors of society, or are instead liberal arts majors hailing from rich families). This results in an entire industry (and a significant part of government) that is nothing more than adult children syphoning money off of charitable people and taxpayers so they can play "incompetent do-gooder" and avoid a real job.
But what pushes the non-profit world from "naive and lazy" to "full blown evil" is where they realize that if they ever were to solve the problem, then they'd be out of a job and have to find real work. This results in one of two things. Either they NEVER solve the problem, constantly begging for more money (the public schools is a perfect example of this) OR they create whole new problems (once the Keystone pipeline was kaboshed, all those environmentalists went on to protest fracking). In other words these people USE AND ABUSE the actually disadvantaged people they're claiming to help and is ultimately why 32 cents on the dollar is actually received by welfare recipients, "Live AID" made some musicians rich while Africans still suffered, and black kids in Chicago suffer a lousy education while the true Uncle Tom eats sushi in the White House.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - I have more respect for the welfareist of the welfare bums because at least they're honest. They just want a free buck and I can at least understand that on a human psychology level. But the scum that populate the non-profit world are a zillion times worse in that they not only want to parasite off of the rest of society, but DARE to claim their actions are noble and DARE to act superior, smug, and altruistic about it.
I "served" 3 years in the Peace Corps about 12 years ago in a more altruistic phase of my life. I had a great adventure and did and saw a lot of interesting things but the reality is I did very little useful work And I went in as an older volunteer with an engineering degree and lots of experience. Everything here you wrote here is spot on. The overwhelming majority of Peace Corps volunteers do absolutely no useful work in their service, and that is is no exaggeration. Their vacations (as we use to call our service) is also at great taxpayer expense due to travel expenses, training, security, medical, offices etc. Comes to around $30,000 per year per volunteer. You will never hear much of this from ex-volunteers, who usually talk about how wonderful they are. But it is the absolute truth and everybody in Peace Corps knows it.
ReplyDelete"I've asked before for people to provide me a list of social ills non-profits have solved and am still waiting for one."
ReplyDeleteThe March of Dimes was founded to combat polio. The creation of the Salk polio vaccine was funded 100% by the March of Dimes. I'd call that one a win.
That is a pretty common attitude with these folks.
ReplyDeleteThey only care because caring makes them look good, and gives them a chance to have the same perceived prestige of a productive, lucrative career path without all of that dirty productivity and lucre.
Every society this side of heaven has to put up with some level of parasite infestation. It is unavoidable. However, a healthy society can deal with it as long as the host population greatly outnumber the parasite population. In addition, a healthy society have various tools at their disposal to help keep the infestation in-check. The most powerful of these tools was shaming, as the parasite did not want to be known as such to his peers.
ReplyDeleteThe problem we have now is twofold: Firstly, the parasite population has grown so large as a percentage of the total population that the host is in grave danger of being overwhelmed. The second problem is that the shaming tool is now largely ineffective. What most of the current day parasites don't realize is that when the host dies or gets gravely ill, the parasites die. And by parasites I don't just mean welfare queens and elective single mothers. I mean corporate & crony welfare, 75% of government workers, a similar percentage of academia, and of course, large swaths of the Boomer population.
The March of Dimes has mutated into an organization chasing childhood ills for cash.
ReplyDeleteAfter the root cause of Muscular Dystrophy was figured out ( Folic Acid deprivation during pregnancy ), with little help from them, they simply went on with their vulturing.
Reminds me of the March of Dimes. Once they defeated polio, they had to think of something else for the organization to fight against and settled on premature births. They led a successful campaign to prevent doctors from delivering babies more than a week ahead of their due dates, but this led to an increase in stillbirths so now there's a growing campaign to fight the rise in stillborn babies.
ReplyDeleteProfessionals work for money Whether MDs, lawyers, pro ball players, university lecturers, whatever, we all work for money.
ReplyDeletePeople who work for free are called "amateurs." In most fields they are not as good as the pros.
Think about it.
Goodwill Industries is a good non-profit. They give people jobs, not handouts. Plus, the shopping is tax-free!
ReplyDeleteBoy Scouts is another good one. I got into hiking and learned how to shoot guns in Scouts.
The Boy Scouts is turning into another feminised Social Justice Warrior movement, the last I heard. They're teaching Scrapbooking at meetings now.--SCRAPBOOKING!
ReplyDeleteI've read that in Cambodia a whole industry has sprung up of parents renting out their kids to 'orphanages'. Hardly different than summer camp for the kids but don't tell that to the 'save the world' narcissists weeping tears of righteousness as they play kickball.
ReplyDeleteThen the hard sell from the 'orphanage' owner;
"You really want to save us then donate. We don't need your kickball or bedtime story skills. We need cash!" The cash is handed over, maybe after the 23 year old savior makes a facebook plea complete with melodramatic photos. Cash is handed over, the savior heads back home aglow with a lifetime supply of righteousness and the fake orphanage owners get new tires for the Mercedes, really. The fat little kickballer/orphans return home to mom and dad in the fall with visions of braless heroes Brooke, Kaila and Hailey hastening them on towards puberty. Everyone wins!
@Grizzly - thanks for pointing out that there are a few good non-profits. They tend to be those with a specific mission to improve the lot of a certain group of people and that have very low administrative expense ratios. Most of the major "cure this" or "raise awareness for that" are totally bogus and are almost exclusively to give jobs to the otherwise unemployable. Also, the compensation packages of the top brass will make you choke.
ReplyDeleteTwo of my personal favorites are Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Expense ratios are very low and their missions inspire many real volunteers.
How many non-profits are fraudulent?
ReplyDeleteMoD = Polio Vaccine? WTF? Let me introduce you to Thomas Francis, Jr., who I had the great fortune to meet. His work and support led to Salk's breakthroughs, and his lab work was supported by the University of Michigan starting in '41 - no MoD involved.
ReplyDeleteOrwell would be proud...
Hey Cap-- do you draw a distinction between solving a problem, and meeting a (real, non-created) need? If so, there are many non-profits working to meet that need, and yes, some of them do have engineers or doctors at the helm. Two examples are Doctors Without Borders, which works to deliver very necessary vaccines and medical care to the poorest people in developing countries; and Engineers Without Borders, which works with the same groups to deliver things like clean water and sanitation. Several scientific research institutes, such as Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Institute for Systems Biology (the crunchier side of bioscience; lots of math, data, and molecular interactions) are both non-profits. I believe Children's National Medical Center in DC, and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital are also non-profits. The American Red Cross, yeah, they've had some funding scandals, but they're also helping to keep our blood supply robust and to provide emergency assistance to people in natural-disaster situations.
ReplyDeleteYou have to be careful - even with these "good" organizations. Giving people something for free induces sloth and lethargy and reduces problem saving skills and innovation among the people that are being helped - this can make them worse off in the future. Why try to farm or get new clothes for the family when some organization will provide for you - while you hang out and do the third world equivalent of watching Judge Judy all day.
DeleteAlso many of these groups provide technological solutions that can not be sustained. A water purifier can be serviced in the USA - is there someone with the skill and knowhow in the third world country?
It would probably be better to find someocal entrepreneur who would be willing to market and sell safer water.
Another big point is that many non-profits are not charities, they don’t get their money via people voluntarily giving their money but from the taxpayer. They are just government contractors who hide behind the non-profit and charity name.
ReplyDeleteFor example almost all the refuges that are brought to the US are handled by “non-profit charities” but they get more then 90% of their money from the Federal taxpayer and much of the rest from State and Local taxpayers. And the people who run them make a nice 6 figure income plus benefits for their “charity” work.
I think a lot of commenters already mentioned what I planned to write. There is a lot of great non profit that do really solve problems. Depending on the problems. And some of these problems are the kind of 'you wont notice it if we do our job right. until we don't...'
ReplyDeleteI do read a lot about certain 'non profit' before committing to them.
Charity Navigator is a good source to see if they focus on the problem or the money more.
and of course, not all "charity" ask for money!
ReplyDeleteI donated my CPU power for World Community Grid. And they do solve the main problem - provide computing power to public researcher!
I recommend the documentary Pink Ribbon, Inc. (2011). If some lemming starts proselytizing how charities do good in the world, point them in the direction of this doco.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Ribbons,_Inc.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2035599/
The March of Dimes is one of the few non-profits that actually accomplished their objective. The funded the development of the Polio vaccine. However, they have devolved into a bureaucracy in the sense that they come up with new missions once the previous one is accomplished. Nevertheless, they do deserve credit for actually accomplishing their purpose.
ReplyDeletemarque2 - I grew up in a region of Canada that has both the best engineering school in the country and a sizable Mennonite population. When the engineering department was asked to design a wellhead pump for third-world development aid that was hand-powered, easy to build, cheap and trivial to maintain with third-world tools - they drove down the road and had a chat with my great-uncle. The pumps so deployed are the Mennonite hand-powered design implemented in longer-lasting metals that can be easily repaired or even duplicated given the local resources. And in a pinch, it can be made out of wood and hand-smithed metal.
ReplyDeleteSo given that somebody actually thinks to make maintenance a condition of the design, it does happen.