Something on whether charity perpetuates systemic inequality or fails to change the broken system? There might be a range of leftist/social justice critiques worth addressing.
Maybe related is that when we talk about charity we are implicitly talking about aid, but there are also charities that could advocate for policy interventions etc. So something to separate aid from other kinds of charity work could be useful, although I don’t know if that’s a question so much as a clarification.
Yeah, we’re going to separate these into categories that help separate that and try to clarify in the response to the questions that not all charities are doing direct aid. We had a conversation about this in a discussion the other day that something like the overhead myth is more understandable if you’re thinking about giving people stuff (e.g. donating food).
Absolutely, I hear this all the time. Here’s some anecdotal advice:
In particular, there’s a strong thread in my circles that privileged people need to give up their power (for example, this was recently posted in the math Discord server at my left-leaning university), and philanthropy allows privileged people to hold onto power while feeling good about themselves. Social justice folks and EAs agree that everyone is complicit in injustice, and we should each take life-changing steps to help. The difference is that EAs claim that throwing away one’s power isn’t a good way to help. EAs could appeal to social justice folks by arguing that donating money is a great way to share the benefits of one’s privilege; GiveDirectly is particularly appealing here. Finally, I’ve heard good things about mutual aid societies; perhaps you could compare and contrast mutual aid societies and effective charities.
Something on whether charity perpetuates systemic inequality or fails to change the broken system? There might be a range of leftist/social justice critiques worth addressing.
Maybe related is that when we talk about charity we are implicitly talking about aid, but there are also charities that could advocate for policy interventions etc. So something to separate aid from other kinds of charity work could be useful, although I don’t know if that’s a question so much as a clarification.
Yeah, we’re going to separate these into categories that help separate that and try to clarify in the response to the questions that not all charities are doing direct aid. We had a conversation about this in a discussion the other day that something like the overhead myth is more understandable if you’re thinking about giving people stuff (e.g. donating food).
Absolutely, I hear this all the time. Here’s some anecdotal advice:
In particular, there’s a strong thread in my circles that privileged people need to give up their power (for example, this was recently posted in the math Discord server at my left-leaning university), and philanthropy allows privileged people to hold onto power while feeling good about themselves. Social justice folks and EAs agree that everyone is complicit in injustice, and we should each take life-changing steps to help. The difference is that EAs claim that throwing away one’s power isn’t a good way to help. EAs could appeal to social justice folks by arguing that donating money is a great way to share the benefits of one’s privilege; GiveDirectly is particularly appealing here. Finally, I’ve heard good things about mutual aid societies; perhaps you could compare and contrast mutual aid societies and effective charities.
Your comment reminded me of this post, whose ideas I like as a starting point for handling this type of question:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DYr7kBpMpmbygBiEq/the-privilege-of-earning-to-give
Nice, thanks for sharing!