When you donate to a charity, you not only give them resources to further their aims, you also affiliate with others who donate to the same charity. Because of this, you might not donate to a charity you otherwise like because you dislike other donors. And because of that, charities may refuse donations from disliked people.
Robin, I think your post is wildly flawed in not mentioning that Tucker offered PP $500,000 on the condition that they name an abortion clinic after him. That piece of information changes everything.
One thing people are leaving out: Planned Parenthood may have their own reasons for discouraging the kinds of remarks Tucker makes if they feel it contributes to misogyny - not accepting a donation is a way of socially ostracizing him for his remarks as an incentive to others, and simultaneously a way for PP to signal that they are principled.
I think Robin is overselling the "getting to affiliate with other donors" angle and ignoring the obvious issue having to do with completely reasonable inferences that people will make about organizations based on who funds them. Even if reciprocity effects are somehow magically not causing donor interests to be catered to by people in the organization, there's still the possibility that an organization has internally unintended causal consequences that are "bad" and which instrumentally rational "bad people" are in favor of, notice are being advanced, and intentionally fund for that reason.
You probably know a lot about SI and Alcor because they're regular topics of conversation around this blog and more distant reputation-based evidence is screened off for them by the details... But what if the first thing you heard about a new-you-you organization was that someone with high efficacy and goals you thought were terrible was funding them? Wouldn't that lead you to suspect they were causally connected to bringing those terrible goals to fruition?
However, spelling it out this way suggests a more amusing reason to discount bad donors as a signal about the consequences an organization is actually furthering: Perhaps, having trained yourself to think coherently for several years, you've started to think that the background rate of "consequential efficacy" among other people is really really low, even among those capable of making large donations, so you don't expect basically anyone else's donations to coherently mean anything ;-)
Planned Parenthood is a great organization doing important work. It's less clear how much the world benefits from Tucker Max -he entertains folks, on the other hand he's part of a fantasy industry that may be spreading STD's and lowering overall quality of life.
"Charity, in this context the fact that people will unilaterally give of themselves to help others, is the opposite of a cynical concept."
The market is amoral: just because you've got money doesn't mean you've morally earned it.
"Claiming that money either goes to a drunken writer or to hardworking women and mothers is a false dilemma."
Money is a piece of paper. Resources are what matter (and they are more or less zero sum because a scenario where resources go to a writer doesn't speed up technological progress compared to a scenario where resources go to working people): our IP rights system is immoral in that it does actually allocate way too many of society's resources to creative content producers (or rather the megacorporations holding the IP rights).
"Comparing an amassed sum of money to an annual salary is not even dimensionally consistent."
Unless Tucker Max 300 is years old, it kinda is.
"Someone making money is not “extracting purchasing power” from the economy."
You're right, should've said "society".
"The word “extract” has connotations (in some definitions denotations) of force, which is an inaccurate way to describe voluntary book sales"
People are not aware of how they get ripped off.
"Although there is no objective definition of worth, the most useful subjective definitions in a transaction are those of the people transacting. E.g. a person’s work is most commonly worth more than their income in the estimation of consumers of that work who provide that income, else they would not have volunteered to transact."
Society would not break down without Tucker Max's work and it's absurd to think that value can increase with population size, so we do know a linear number of sales-revenue relation is a scam.
"John Thacker made an argument, not an analogy."
He did make an analogy: "If private charity is not really generous, government charity, and voting for it, is even less so."
And yeah, it's sad that we haven't gotten rid of speculation yet...
1) All of it's supposed benefits can be provided by insurance, financial consulting and saving plans at lower cost and with lower volatility.
2) Speculating means people making money off of nothing, which means speculators are on the public dole (white collar welfare queens).
3) Speculation is worse than gambling because speculators often gamble with other people's money, or worse, when banks are speculating they can take money fresh off the FED's presses (only limited by the maximum allowed inflation for the year) and create a casino where they can only ever win.
There are at least 10 flaws in this thread as a whole.
Charity, in this context the fact that people will unilaterally give of themselves to help others, is the opposite of a cynical concept.
Claiming that money either goes to a drunken writer or to hardworking women and mothers is a false dilemma.
Comparing an amassed sum of money to an annual salary is not even dimensionally consistent.
Someone making money is not "extracting purchasing power" from the economy.
The word "extract" has connotations (in some definitions denotations) of force, which is an inaccurate way to describe voluntary book sales.
Making large public donations is a way of calling attention to how much money you have accumulated, not distracting from that fact.
Although there is no objective definition of worth, the most useful subjective definitions in a transaction are those of the people transacting. E.g. a person's work is most commonly worth more than their income in the estimation of consumers of that work who provide that income, else they would not have volunteered to transact.
The possessive is spelled "Your", not "You're".
John Thacker made an argument, not an analogy.
There aren't actually 10 flaws in his argument.
Even if there had been 10 or more flaws, claiming to have counted 10 of them but not enumerating any would have been unhelpful.
He's not doing it on purpose, but the nature of our economical system is such that a donation to charity basically does come down to throwing a bone to the masses. I do not think Max should not be paid anything for his work, I'm just against people making money off of population size (he doesn't have to work a minute longer to sell twice as many books, yet he makes twice as much money). Do note that I favor the abolition of money and capitalism alltogether, so when I say a writer shouldn't get a lot of money I'm not saying he should be left to die on the streets, I'm saying he should get the same basic income purchasing power as an unemployed person, stay at home parent, student or hobbyist painter), so less than someone who does a vital, tough job for society (military, science, designing, education, healthcare, mining, production, recycling, emergency services, etc...), but still enough to live comfortably.
Then your model is wrong. Women find wit extremely attractive, even if its delivered in a misogynist fashion. Anyway, amusingly enough he wrote for a bit for Cosmo usually mocking women in his articles (I bet you didn't know that).
This doesn't entirely invalidate the point but it does look like this donation was a not completely sincere (meaning getting rejected may well have been the point) publicity stunt where tucker Max attempted to procure naming rights for an abortion clinic. Even without the naming rights a large organizations name is important so I can see cases where accepting large donations from controversial figures that are likely to be highly publicized and potentially a source of ridicule may not be wise.
I think the issue isn't that he wanted to donate to planned parenthood, they'd probably take his money- its that he did it in order to get naming rights for a clinic. This promotes his book- and plays into his joke that he has caused so many abortions they should name a clinic after him.
At a time when planned parenthood is losing money in donations primarily because of the erroneous belief that abortion is the majority of what it does, allowing a publicity stunt that ties them strongly to abortion is clearly stupid.
I agree. They aren't afraid of discouraging future donors but in giving the enemies of PP more political ammunition. It isn't hard to imagine social conservatives saying "PP is an organization that caters to sluts and if you don't believe it read one of Tucker Max' books and note that they have a clinic named after him."
Robin, I think your post is wildly flawed in not mentioning that Tucker offered PP $500,000 on the condition that they name an abortion clinic after him. That piece of information changes everything.
One thing people are leaving out: Planned Parenthood may have their own reasons for discouraging the kinds of remarks Tucker makes if they feel it contributes to misogyny - not accepting a donation is a way of socially ostracizing him for his remarks as an incentive to others, and simultaneously a way for PP to signal that they are principled.
About 143,000 web pages worth of publicity - according to Google - not too bad for an investment of no dollars!
I think Robin is overselling the "getting to affiliate with other donors" angle and ignoring the obvious issue having to do with completely reasonable inferences that people will make about organizations based on who funds them. Even if reciprocity effects are somehow magically not causing donor interests to be catered to by people in the organization, there's still the possibility that an organization has internally unintended causal consequences that are "bad" and which instrumentally rational "bad people" are in favor of, notice are being advanced, and intentionally fund for that reason.
You probably know a lot about SI and Alcor because they're regular topics of conversation around this blog and more distant reputation-based evidence is screened off for them by the details... But what if the first thing you heard about a new-you-you organization was that someone with high efficacy and goals you thought were terrible was funding them? Wouldn't that lead you to suspect they were causally connected to bringing those terrible goals to fruition?
However, spelling it out this way suggests a more amusing reason to discount bad donors as a signal about the consequences an organization is actually furthering: Perhaps, having trained yourself to think coherently for several years, you've started to think that the background rate of "consequential efficacy" among other people is really really low, even among those capable of making large donations, so you don't expect basically anyone else's donations to coherently mean anything ;-)
Planned Parenthood is a great organization doing important work. It's less clear how much the world benefits from Tucker Max -he entertains folks, on the other hand he's part of a fantasy industry that may be spreading STD's and lowering overall quality of life.
"Charity, in this context the fact that people will unilaterally give of themselves to help others, is the opposite of a cynical concept."
The market is amoral: just because you've got money doesn't mean you've morally earned it.
"Claiming that money either goes to a drunken writer or to hardworking women and mothers is a false dilemma."
Money is a piece of paper. Resources are what matter (and they are more or less zero sum because a scenario where resources go to a writer doesn't speed up technological progress compared to a scenario where resources go to working people): our IP rights system is immoral in that it does actually allocate way too many of society's resources to creative content producers (or rather the megacorporations holding the IP rights).
"Comparing an amassed sum of money to an annual salary is not even dimensionally consistent."
Unless Tucker Max 300 is years old, it kinda is.
"Someone making money is not “extracting purchasing power” from the economy."
You're right, should've said "society".
"The word “extract” has connotations (in some definitions denotations) of force, which is an inaccurate way to describe voluntary book sales"
People are not aware of how they get ripped off.
"Although there is no objective definition of worth, the most useful subjective definitions in a transaction are those of the people transacting. E.g. a person’s work is most commonly worth more than their income in the estimation of consumers of that work who provide that income, else they would not have volunteered to transact."
Society would not break down without Tucker Max's work and it's absurd to think that value can increase with population size, so we do know a linear number of sales-revenue relation is a scam.
"John Thacker made an argument, not an analogy."
He did make an analogy: "If private charity is not really generous, government charity, and voting for it, is even less so."
How much free publicity did PP get by rejection this donation? How much did Tucker Max get by offering it? Win-win.
And yeah, it's sad that we haven't gotten rid of speculation yet...
1) All of it's supposed benefits can be provided by insurance, financial consulting and saving plans at lower cost and with lower volatility.
2) Speculating means people making money off of nothing, which means speculators are on the public dole (white collar welfare queens).
3) Speculation is worse than gambling because speculators often gamble with other people's money, or worse, when banks are speculating they can take money fresh off the FED's presses (only limited by the maximum allowed inflation for the year) and create a casino where they can only ever win.
There are at least 10 flaws in this thread as a whole.
Charity, in this context the fact that people will unilaterally give of themselves to help others, is the opposite of a cynical concept.
Claiming that money either goes to a drunken writer or to hardworking women and mothers is a false dilemma.
Comparing an amassed sum of money to an annual salary is not even dimensionally consistent.
Someone making money is not "extracting purchasing power" from the economy.
The word "extract" has connotations (in some definitions denotations) of force, which is an inaccurate way to describe voluntary book sales.
Making large public donations is a way of calling attention to how much money you have accumulated, not distracting from that fact.
Although there is no objective definition of worth, the most useful subjective definitions in a transaction are those of the people transacting. E.g. a person's work is most commonly worth more than their income in the estimation of consumers of that work who provide that income, else they would not have volunteered to transact.
The possessive is spelled "Your", not "You're".
John Thacker made an argument, not an analogy.
There aren't actually 10 flaws in his argument.
Even if there had been 10 or more flaws, claiming to have counted 10 of them but not enumerating any would have been unhelpful.
He's not doing it on purpose, but the nature of our economical system is such that a donation to charity basically does come down to throwing a bone to the masses. I do not think Max should not be paid anything for his work, I'm just against people making money off of population size (he doesn't have to work a minute longer to sell twice as many books, yet he makes twice as much money). Do note that I favor the abolition of money and capitalism alltogether, so when I say a writer shouldn't get a lot of money I'm not saying he should be left to die on the streets, I'm saying he should get the same basic income purchasing power as an unemployed person, stay at home parent, student or hobbyist painter), so less than someone who does a vital, tough job for society (military, science, designing, education, healthcare, mining, production, recycling, emergency services, etc...), but still enough to live comfortably.
You're analogy is flawed in at least 10 ways.
Then your model is wrong. Women find wit extremely attractive, even if its delivered in a misogynist fashion. Anyway, amusingly enough he wrote for a bit for Cosmo usually mocking women in his articles (I bet you didn't know that).
He has numbers to back this, it's not just a made-up assertion.
This doesn't entirely invalidate the point but it does look like this donation was a not completely sincere (meaning getting rejected may well have been the point) publicity stunt where tucker Max attempted to procure naming rights for an abortion clinic. Even without the naming rights a large organizations name is important so I can see cases where accepting large donations from controversial figures that are likely to be highly publicized and potentially a source of ridicule may not be wise.
http://jezebel.com/5898721/...
I think the issue isn't that he wanted to donate to planned parenthood, they'd probably take his money- its that he did it in order to get naming rights for a clinic. This promotes his book- and plays into his joke that he has caused so many abortions they should name a clinic after him.
At a time when planned parenthood is losing money in donations primarily because of the erroneous belief that abortion is the majority of what it does, allowing a publicity stunt that ties them strongly to abortion is clearly stupid.
I agree. They aren't afraid of discouraging future donors but in giving the enemies of PP more political ammunition. It isn't hard to imagine social conservatives saying "PP is an organization that caters to sluts and if you don't believe it read one of Tucker Max' books and note that they have a clinic named after him."