Rayden117 t1_itsf7tb wrote on October 25, 2022 at 11:26 PM

Reply to comment by Tinac4 in Peter Singer Is the Philosopher of the Status Quo by TuvixWasMurderedR1P

The Gates foundation is a tough one which is why I’m happy to dig in. The Gates foundation in more than one instance has taken public money from counties to create limited research which supports the dismantling of public education in support of charter schools or less efficacious alternatives. This is a big deal. Often county or public money from locally partisan communities is responsible for funding these projects and the research has been repeatedly called into question. The foundation has tremendous PR though with Gates at the helm talking about philanthropic utilitarianism while avoiding talking about our variant of capitalism.

Taking on the comments further below. Charities categorically are catastrophic at dealing with social problems. It’s important to note I didn’t say individually but categorically, non-government organizations and non-profits can be added to the above statement in degrees. IE looking at Christian charities as an easy example but personally many charities in general can be problematic. It’s even more problematic with Publix or McDonalds when they became corporate tax write offs asking for public donations. They do not supplant social programs.

Further: Part of the problem of diffusing charity by 100 entities vs 1 is that much of the wealth no matter how large in magnitude is spent on overhead and that wealth is not necessarily easily regeneratable. Look at the Red Cross as an example of overhead and effective out reach. Many charities are not this effective.

3rdly, the idea that charities or independent organizations are better at independently managing societal problems from an ecological standpoint than say the government is an ideological position and is a wrongful assumption.

The government is evidently better, by virtue of so many effective social programs throughout the world, even for business development. Even social programs decried such as the the UK National Health Service don’t compare to the millions of Americans without access to healthcare; even with insurance and agreements between companies it’s unbelievably difficult to get the treatment appropriately paid for for many people.

And this is true even for charities, the scope of their social outreach is inherently incapable of solving the problems they address in society. Charities are a form of prevarication from the many and destitution for all.

Tinac4 t1_ittnxm7 wrote on October 26, 2022 at 5:57 AM

I think you’re conflating the Gates foundation in with a lot of other flawed charities that aren’t much like it. For example:

“Catastrophic at dealing with social problems”: Outside of some controversies regarding US education, the BMGF doesn’t seem to have caused much harm, while undoubtedly accomplishing a lot of good in global health. Some other charities are useless or counterproductive, but I don’t think that applies here, certainly not on net.
Overhead: Unlike the Red Cross, BMGF is one of the charities that accomplishes a lot of good without wasting everything on overhead. I feel comfortable saying this without citation; you can look up their vaccination programs if you want. Moreover, it’s overall effectiveness, not overhead, that matters in the end (and I’m not aware of the BMGF having excessive overhead anyway).
The BMGF is not intended as a substitute for government, nor does it substitute for it in practice. Most of its global health programs are done in countries that lack healthcare or social safety nets due to a combination of poverty and corruption; this is unlikely to change if the BMGF disappears. It’s an organization that focuses on improving some short-term aspects of health and well-being, and most of its long-term aspects (I think) revolve around eradicating diseases rather than large-scale economic development.

Regardless of what the BMGF has sometimes done wrong (any sufficiently large and complicated charity will screw up somewhere), they’ve very plausibly saved tens of millions of lives so far. Most of the above criticisms fall flat after taking this into account.