Crosmando: Also, there's a vast amount of charities, and many of it isn't "Cure Cancer" or "Help Children", there's also a tonne of social-engineering "charity" (Bill Gates loves these) which are more about trying to
engineer social change rather than just the simple "help sick people" which is what charity at it's heart is.
Oh and I wouldn't be surprised if EA in the future gave charity dollars to political organizations advocating same-sex marriage or homosexual
advocacy groups masquerading as "charities".
Cormoran: How about you do something charitable instead of bitching about others doing it.
Crosmando: Because it's bullshit? I would have no problem paying a higher tax rate to help people in need. What I do have a problem with is self-righteous activists trying to force these issues onto the individual,
when it's a social problem.
If you think something is a "social problem", the best way to solve it is political campaigning. If you sympathize with the plight of disabled people
and think self-righteous activists shouldn't beg you personally to pay for Tiny Tim's cybernetic leg, you should donate (money, or time x expertise) to a political party (
because you're Australian) or a charity which will lobby a political party to allocate government funds to develop cybernetic limbs and distribute them to the disabled.
from the GOG charity thread:
What's wrong with you? First you whine about how those two charities are EBUL because they try to influence elections, then you say their work should be handled by the government. Guess what, they try to get those politicians elected who will - or at least more likely to, in case of Obama - address their concerns and actually make the government do their job.
I hate charity as a permanent system. It's inefficient and designed to be inefficient. Everything except opposing the government is best handled by the government. And by far the most success a charity can achieve is to drum up popular support, push through a bill and make whatever the fuck they're doing the government's job. For example: you want to do something to help homeless kids. You register a charity, ask for donations, call upon volunteers, buy and/or build housing for the kids, arrange their education, etc, show off those kids and how well they're doing to get more people all sniffly and teary-eyed, and eventually you push through a bill which provides community housing for the homeless and residential rights for children with landed parents. Then you see that it works, say "awesome, we fukken did it", and celebrate. Then (maybe) go look for another cause to support.
TL;DR:
NO effective charity is apolitical. Either your mission is to hand over your cause to the government and go out of "business" (food, education, housing, medical help, scientific research, animal protection), or it is to call out and oppose the government when it fucks up (see: anything concerned with human rights) - but you still want to get politicians who promise to not infringe human rights elected over those who say they will.
