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After seeing problems with the Red Cross response local storm relief (example: 40% of available emergency vehicles used for press conferences), reporter Laura Sullivan decided to look into what happened in Haiti, where the American Red Cross collected a whopping $500 million in donations.
Her report is damning. The largest proportion of these were to go into housing. The Red Cross built...wait for it...six houses. In one area where the Red Cross promised to spend $24 million, and even printed a brochure exclaiming over all that they accomplished, the local residents are unaware of any Red Cross activity.
Meanwhile the Red Cross refuses to provide more than a very high level overview of their projects. No financial figures are provided that would allow one to figure out how much of that $500 million was actually spent on relief, and where the rest of it went.
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:13AM
I spent it on pizza and beer. My bad.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:18PM
I think the moderator of that post didn't read the summary very carefully. The parent was obviously joking on the following sentence of the summary (emphasis by me):
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:21PM
Sorry for the self-reply; it only occurred to me after submitting that I should probably mention that at the time of posting, the OP is moderated "-1 Offtopic".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:31AM
Perception is reality, and we have good publicity. The brochure proves it. If locals are unaware of our accomplishments, well they're just willfully ignorant. Who are you going to believe, no-income nobodies or a multi-billion-dollar charity. We're the Good Guys because we say so, and we have money. You listen to money.
Love,
International Red Cross and Red Crescent
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:28AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:38AM
Refuted. That's what the Red Cross billionaires want you to think.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:14AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:10PM
Red Cross has played damage control [cnn.com], as any multibillion dollar empire would. The allegations stand.
Reminds me of the time when the president of FIFA was reelected for a fifth term and then resigned within days.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:08AM
We can not trust our politicians, we cannot trust our charities, we cannot trust our government, we cannot trust our police.
This isn't how things were ever supposed to be.
Perhaps it's time we built something we CAN trust, and stop using people, because they keep failing us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:13AM
Human corruption is the problem. We need to get rid of them. There will be no more resource shortages with no mouths to feed and no chance of theft with no hands left alive. Total Genocide is the solution.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:23AM
You'd be surprised, but I agree. Our biology is problematic. Another solution is not to alter the environment, but ourselves. Going to mars might be easier not with a giant habitation dome, but if we are enhanced to survive the conditions bare. Creating housing for people might not be a problem if people didn't NEED houses to begin with. I do not consider the human body to be a machine that is so special it cannot be altered pulled apart and put back together like any other machine would be, or that we couldn't just create a new seed that's just better at survival than we are.
I just think drone technology is closer at hand to rapid build houses than genetic engineering is. Both solutions eliminate a 'big daddy' organization of people which appears to be the crux of the problem.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:29PM
Actually we don't strictly need houses (at least in most of the world); it's just damn more convenient to live in a house.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Monday June 08 2015, @01:08AM
Is it really that convenient to live in a house (consider the cost/inconvenience of heating, repairing, maintaining individual kitchens, bathrooms, yard, etc)? Personally, I really enjoyed living in a dorm, with a cafeteria.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Monday June 08 2015, @02:19PM
The conveniences of living in a dorm did not outweigh the stress of loud, rude, sociopathic neighbors who ruined any chance of good resting periods. Not sleeping well for periods of time can lead to all kinds of problems. By the time some sort of dorm that addressed all of that would be planned and built, the cost of which likely wouldn't be much better than a small house.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Monday June 08 2015, @06:38PM
Sound-proofing isn't really that expensive.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @07:24PM
> Sound-proofing isn't really that expensive.
Said the person who has never actually tried to install effective sound-proofing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:59PM
And that dorm was under open sky? I would bet it was in a house.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:38PM
I agree in principle, however there are severe limits on what can reasonably done in terms of adapting humans to alien environments.
>Going to mars might be easier not with a giant habitation dome, but if we are enhanced to survive the conditions bare
Good luck engineering humans to be fully photosynthetic at insolation levels 40% of what they are here on Earth, because our cells burn sugars and fats for energy, and you need free oxygen for that to happen, which is unavailable on Mars. There might also be potential for chemovores, but the power levels available there tend to be even lower, especially on a planet without significant tectonic activity - the source of most readily accessible non-biological chemical energy on Earth.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:46PM
Many have already tried the "pulling apart" part of it, but all of them failed the "put back together" one*
* At least under the assumption of "works as well as new or better"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:40PM
Human corruption is the problem. We need to get rid of them. There will be no more resource shortages with no mouths to feed and no chance of theft with no hands left alive. Total Genocide is the solution.
Read blessed scroll of genocide. Choose @ as class.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KGIII on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:35AM
I like to look into the various charities before I give them anything. It is amazing how many have absurd amounts for "overhead" and a small percentage goes to the actual work they claim to be doing. They have CEOs that are making absurd amounts of money (for an NPO) and a very low percentage of funds going to help. I do not donate to those. I have found this to be one of several helpful links on the subject:
https://www.charitywatch.org/ [charitywatch.org]
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:20AM
"All this work that you are looking at now, the calculation was made by Haitian people, Haitian engineers, Haitian architects, Haitian foreman," he says. "We know what to do."
The Red Cross does not seem to have used that strategy. In one internal memo, the top manager of the Haiti program complains that Haitians were not being hired for top positions — and in some cases were treated disparagingly.
It sounds like they're used to appearing in places where the infrastructure is basically gone, providing their own logistical support and keeping people alive until they can start their own rebuilding work, but have absolutely no clue how to handle supporting a rebuilding effort. This isn't normally a problem (it's fine for charities to limit the scope of their work - a 'fix the whole world' charity would have difficulty accomplishing anything), but in this case that had raised far more money than they could spend on their normal kind of relief work, but tried to spend it all anyway.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:16PM
CharityWatch.org is a great resource, but it's not the final word. You've got to do your own research and also pay attention to the press, for stories like this.
Unless the ARC puts together a decent rebuttal, which I doubt.
I guess I'll shift my annual RC contribution to other charities.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 07 2015, @11:48PM
There is another thing that I do not like... If you donate to RC with a specific tragedy being the intended target of your funds they do not apply it to that target, the place the money in a general fund. My method has been to simply donate to the local chapter which, if I understand correctly, goes to that chapter alone and not to the parent charity. I also realize that putting things into a general fund is easier but I think it should not be much accounting work to take the major projects and keep track of the donations that are intended for those specifically.
When the recent earthquake trashed Nepal I did not donate to the RC. I did donate to the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund, via the Ministry of Finance, directly. I feel that this was more likely to be beneficial in the long-run. The Nepalese government does not actually have a real problem with corruption. I suspect this is because they have no money.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:34PM
I am actually surprised the overhead is that low with as many chapters at the ARC has.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @04:06AM
No, the Red Cross doesn't know how to show up in places where the infrastructure is basically gone and provide their own logistical support and keep people alive. At least, not if Haiti is representative. I know because I was centrally involved in coordinating the Haiti response. I was working for a former American President whose wife was running the State Dept. at the time. In 48 hours my team built the digital infrastructure that became the hub for the Red Cross, USAID, UN Logistics Cluster, State Dept, US Marines, and every other significant relief body on the planet; the marines on the USS Bataan that hovered offshore even told us they used our crowd-sourcing map for rescue missions to go dig people out of rubble because it was the only actionable intelligence in the theater (we had set up a map with Ushahidi that put pins at locations where people trapped in the rubble were texting from).
The entire time I kept asking the Red Cross, the UN, and every one of them what their systems were, what data formats they used, etc so that we could flow the cash and in-kind contributions and volunteers coming through us to them, and they. had. no. such. systems. It was as though it was the first time a disaster had ever happened in the history of the world, and they had utterly no idea what to do. So my team built something from scratch lickety-split and actually saved lives. The Red Cross landed a plane full of bottled water, food, and medicine at the tarmac in Port-au-Prince and promptly had it all stolen at gunpoint by black marketeers because they had apparently never come across the black market before and knew they needed to guard it and distribute it under guard. Penske Trucks donated a fleet of their trucks to Haiti to distribute supplies around the capitol and surrounding countryside, but they sat in the Port of Miami for months because nobody at the Red Cross knew that they had to get export permits or how to get them or how to get the trucks from the transport ship to the shore when the dock facilities at Port-au-Prince were knocked out. After about 3 months they managed to get tents up just in time for hurricane season, which is just gold stars for that one; then everybody in the tent encampments started to get cholera because it occurred to nobody at the Red Cross that you need to take sanitation measures in Refugee camps to prevent that kind of thing.
I kept asking and asking, how do you guys not know how to do this stuff? Is this not the sole thing that you do? But there was no answer, and no competent person ever came to the fore to straighten things out on the Red Cross's end, and you know that had there been there would have been some such to come forward because of the cachet of working directly with an American President who had gotten personally involved with the thing. It was then that I understood in one moment the truth of government and NGOs, that they comprise rich, connected kids who want to stamp their passport on the way to the CEO job at the family firm, and sycophants who like to go along for that ride. They are no place for skilled people who want to and can make a difference; I knew I wasn't long for that place, and I wasn't.
When I think back on the colossal, gigantic clusterfuck the Haiti Earthquake relief was, I feel a lot of frustration and contempt for all those who used that tragedy to line their pockets and advance their careers. The Red Cross people certainly did. Still, I do feel enormous satisfaction that I personally was able to use every technical skill acquired over a lifetime in IT to actually, directly, save lives, for the first time in my career. Sometimes I wonder if any of the lives I helped saved will turn out to be the person who cures cancer or something, but then I think that if it meant they got to hug their kids again then everything I've ever done as a professional was worth it. I sleep well on that.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:15AM
I will take the karma hit...
Allow me to say thank you for having done so and having posted your story. Both are appreciated.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @12:18PM
Thank you--I was grateful to have the chance to do something meaningful with my skills. Helping those people made me the happiest I've ever been.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by koick on Monday June 08 2015, @05:35AM
I would also like to give a shoutout to charitynavigator.org [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:12PM
I like to look into the various charities before I give them anything. It is amazing how many have absurd amounts for "overhead" and a small percentage goes to the actual work they claim to be doing.
I used to think like this. I still think like this to a large extent. However, this TED talk made me seriously reconsider it. You might want to take a listen.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong [ted.com]
For those without the time or inclination to watch or read the transcript, the short summary is as follows. Imagine you have two charities dedicated to a cause you agree with. The first, "NobelCause", has a 5% overhead rate and has raised $10,000. That's $9,500 for good purposes, which is good.
The second, "MarketDriven," has a 30% overhead rate but has raised $50,000 (through things like advertisement, which hits overhead). That's $35,000 for good purposes.
It's clear that $35,000 is better than $9,500... Personally speaking, I'm not prepared to endorse the high overhead rate of MarketDriven and them "wasting" the money I donate... but I can't exactly condemn them as they are effectively contributing 4x more money than NobelCause cause does...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @11:30PM
We can not trust our politicians, we cannot trust our charities, we cannot trust our government, we cannot trust our police.
These are the precise scenarios that gamers have been telling everyone about and even training for.
Perhaps it's time we built something we CAN trust, and stop using people, because they keep failing us.
Welcome to Gamergate.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:57PM
From what I can tell "Gamergate" is some idiots doing stupid things followed by other idiots responding to them. Chaos ensues as per any reality TV show.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:16AM
Perhaps we should build something we can trust. I propose a machine that 3d prints many of the parts needed for drones, and that an army of the machines be setup. This first batch will be doomed to failure, acceptable. They will be destroyed and rebuilt towards purpose, they will be destroyed until they can create a house. They will be destroyed until we find their physical limits and push past them. Once our savior has been assembled and is operational, we place our printer at location, and the system begins. Homes will automatically be assembled in massive scale all at once via an army of drones.
We need this technology to build habitation on the moon and mars for future mining operations, and we need it for disaster relief, and down the line for regular non-emergency home creation.
Had we invested in something like this that could really get the job done instead of the red cross, the job would be done now, we'd have exactly our real solution.
It is time to stop giving our money to charlatans, I do not have the means or knowledge to make this project work, but it is the absolute solution and we all know it. The system cannot help but build houses, and there are no humans, no greed, and no issues with bullshit cronyism, nepotism, and corruption.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:05PM
Yeah, an army of drones couldn't be used for any nefarious purposes . . . seriously though, the world is a lot more complicated than that.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:54AM
There are many charities that never actually give a damned thing to anyone, outside of the clique that runs the charity. Collect x millions per year, pay the CEO about .3x and decreasing amounts to the remaining officers. Any leftover money is used for publicity campaigns and fund raising.
The Red Cross does do some good, albeit only a fraction of the good that they COULD DO. So, they are still a long way above the real bottom feeders.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:09AM
The purpose of charity is not to give money to poor people. Charity exists for the sole purpose of helping rich people claim tax deductions. Charities need to spend money on advertising because they are competing with other charities for donations from rich people who want tax deductions. Poor people are not even involved in the charity game.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:22AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:43AM
Instead they should be paying doctors to prescribe sleeping pills and paying therapists to teach them how to become sociopaths.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:38AM
I wish I could mod you insightful but the dropdown list is full of blanks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:44PM
Good thing you can't, because it's trite and at odds with basic arithmetic as both isostatic and maxwell demon spelled out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Sunday June 07 2015, @11:03AM
I don't get this argument. If I give $1m to charity, I'm without it. If I keep it I pay 40% tax or whatever but still keep most of it.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:09PM
That's because you're looking at it backwards.
What if you have to pay $1 million dollars in taxes because you made so much money. You can pay $1 million to the government and get nothing but the knowledge that you did your civic duty, or you can pay $1 million (or whatever the maximum deductible amount is according to local laws) to a tax deductible charity and still be without $1 million but now you are able to milk the shit out of the fact that you're such a nice, kind, charitable organization. It's good PR. The charity gives you something extra for the same money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:37PM
You are not subtracting the amount from the taxes, you are subtracting it from the taxable income. So if your tax is 40%, and you spend $1 million to a charity, your taxable income decreases by that $1 million, and therefore your tax decreases by 40% of those $1 million, or $400,000. In other words, you still have $600,000 less than you would have had if you just had taxed that money.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Sunday June 07 2015, @04:30PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:41PM
Now this is where it makes sense, but if you can't liquidate at that level it's not clearly not worth that, so surely that would be fraud
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:43PM
Now this is where it makes sense, but if you can't liquidate at that level it's not clearly not worth that, so surely that would be fraud
That is why they are working so hard to dismantle the ability of the IRS to investigate fraud.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TLA on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:59PM
life gets interesting if you donate your tax bill to a charity that YOU OWN. Even more so if you don't declare it.
THIS is how philanthropic tax dodges work. Ask Bill Gates. He pays his tax contribution to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, THEN claims a salary off it. He's double dipping right there, AND avoiding a huge chunk of tax liability. He's not the only one.
It's a piece of piss to register a charity. Even easier to assume another name for the sole purpose of drawing a salary. Hell, your "charity" doesn't even have to do any actual work, just sit there and accept donations, and pay salaries to any and all who are willing to pay a 10% service fee so they don't have to pay the Treasury instead (plus it gets you a "Member of the Board for X Charity" on your CV), and I can tell you it doesn't matter who you are, even if you're on the lowest tax bracket that's still a fucking great deal.
The best part about it is, IT'S COMPLETELY LEGAL.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 1) by Soybean on Monday June 08 2015, @12:06AM
THIS is how philanthropic tax dodges work. Ask Bill Gates. He pays his tax contribution to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, THEN claims a salary off it. He's double dipping right there, AND avoiding a huge chunk of tax liability.
How does that work? You seem to think that salaries don't have income tax. In fact, when you are your own employer, salaries are double-taxed because there is an employer side FICA tax [accountingcoach.com] that regular employees never see.
So, your theory is that Bill Gates is taking capital gains, which has a maximum tax rate of 20% and 'donating' that to a charity which then pays it back to him with an effective tax rate of well over 30% as a tax dodge?
Puhlease.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Monday June 08 2015, @05:35AM
30% of a 40% tax dodge. Let's run the numbers. Keep it simple.
Gross from job: $10million
Tax liability: $4million (assume high tax band rate of 40%)
Donate that to your charity.
Draw 4 million salary, minus 10% "servicing": that's 3.6million taxable income.
40% of THAT is 1.44million.
I just cut your net tax liability by 64%, in one go. Rinse and repeat, for further 64% net reduction in liability each go round until you drop into the low bracket. YOU'RE WELCOME.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @02:27PM
> Tax liability: $4million (assume high tax band rate of 40%)
> Donate that to your charity.
WTH? You've obviously never made a charitable donation in your life.
If you donate $4M out of $10M that does not cut your tax by $4M, it cuts your taxable income by $4M.
You still owe 40% on the remaining $6M.
Where did you come up with this bullshit theory anyway?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:40AM
> WTH? You've obviously never made a charitable donation in your life.
Quite, but it looks like a common belief.
Lets run the numbers from the muppet you replied to
>> 30% of a 40% tax dodge. Let's run the numbers. Keep it simple.
>> Gross from job: $10million
>> Tax liability: $4million (assume high tax band rate of 40%)
>> Donate that to your charity.
So that reduces taxable income to $6m, leaving a tax bill of $2.4m
>> Draw 4 million salary, minus 10% "servicing": that's 3.6million taxable income.
WTF is "Servicing"?
>> 40% of THAT is 1.44million.
OK, so tax of 2.4 + 1.44 = $3.84m
>> I just cut your net tax liability by 64%, in one go. Rinse and repeat, for further 64% net reduction in liability each go round until you drop into the low bracket. YOU'RE WELCOME.
No, you cut it by 5%, made up of this unexplained "servicing" thing.
Now I can accept there are tax dodges, things like lending yourself money, writing down asset values, etc which means rich people pay a fraction of the tax (as a percentage, still way more in actual dollar-value) than the rest of us, or that you could get untaxed benefits (e.g. donate $4m to charity, get free use of a $80m charity jet or something), but the simple act of donating to charity doesn't save you money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:07PM
You're not supposed to get it. These loopholes are only to be exploited by billionaires, if a poor plebe like you could understand it then the government might rush to start closing loopholes that let billionaires pay less in taxes than you do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:22PM
(Score: 1) by Dr Spin on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:23PM
When can we have an investigation into whether Sepp Blatter is running the American Red Cross?
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by acp_sn on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:05PM
government, corporation, religion, charity/philanthropy, tribe, nation, extended family group
The true purpose of all large organizations is to enrich/empower the "leadership". Of course the leadership will vehemently and emotionally deny this. They are always universally on message about how everyone needs to "sacrifice" for the "greater good". Coincidentally the "greater good" always involves providing more resources and powers for the leadership.
Whenever anyone say that you need to be "part of something greater than yourself" they are attempting to exploit you for their own benefit.
Most people go into large organizations with good intentions. Then they will experience an instance of corruption within the organization and they have a defining moment. Either they can internalize the corruption or they can fight against it. If they ignore or participate then they "prove" their loyalty. If they protest, whistleblow, or fight against the corruption in any way then they are branded as traitors to the organization and drummed out.
Don't trust anyone over 30 is shorthand for don't trust anyone claiming to be a "leader".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @04:54PM
My church has built 50 or so buildings in Haiti. They do it on a shoestring budget (about 100k a year) and volunteers that go there and build them buildings themselves. They then teach the locals how to build houses to a decent set of safety codes. The locals immediately turned them into school rooms.
I have seen them doing it personally. My point? Unless you see someone doing something with the money you are putting your trust into someone else. Keep in mind Haiti is a bastion of corruption. You do not trust corrupt officials to do something there. You just do it yourself.
Haiti has always been 'poor'. It will take more than large sums of money to fix. It will take work.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:38PM
I think you are on the right track. It's not a specific organization that is the problem. It's human cognitive fallibility and game theory (egoistic interest) in play. That's why there's election for the supposedly most important organization.. the government. Which is now run by non-elected organizations elected by shareholders.
Anyway the key is human cognitive properties in relation to each other. Once an organization gets large enough, it will start to have an internal life..
(Score: 1) by acp_sn on Monday June 08 2015, @03:59PM
this is a pretty good cracked article by david wong (written before he went full SJW kool-aid drinking crazy) about the subject
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html [cracked.com]
tl;dr The human primate brain can only has the capacity to consider about 150 other people as actual humans. The rest are categorized the same as "objects" not worth expending empathy or emotion towards.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 08 2015, @11:07PM
I recall reading about a entrepreneur that said at 150 people the organization becomes inefficient. So perhaps every company that grows above this size should be made into a separate organization. The problem becomes how these organizations will treat each other and how you do really big projects like moon landings with less than 150 people. Perhaps people on the AS-spectrum works better?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @12:00AM
> I recall reading about a entrepreneur that said at 150 people the organization becomes inefficient.
Efficiency isn't binary. Clearly there is still a marginal increase in producitivity after 150 employees. If it was zero or negative then no company would ever survive very long past that threshold and there are tens of thousands of counter-examples.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:27PM
From some one I know, he posted a short blurb about the Redcross at http://www.unclekage.com/man.html [unclekage.com]
This is why I at least try to get the word around to not donate to the redcross. The redcross was on the verge of bankruptcy, then the "terriests" came along on 911 and saved the orgasation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:27PM
First of all I want to note that I am Christian.
Years back we used to occasionally donate to the Red Cross. Years back I eventually talked to someone that volunteered there for a year or two and they told me it was a corrupt organization with little accountability over where the money went. This person also said they tried volunteering for other similar organizations and the same thing and it took this person a while to finally find an honest charity to volunteer for.
Put this in perspective. You have a potentially multi billion dollar organization, a huge cost for any organization is labor, yet you have unpaid volunteers doing much if not most of the work. So where is all that money going?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:37AM
...and what exactly (or even incidentally) does your choice in religion have to do with that? With anything?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @11:06PM
This is why I refuse to give to charity.
You actually end up paying for the ceo's Mercedes or bmw, and their pay packet.
Fucking scum, right up to the top.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @12:21AM
If you really use incident like this one to keep you from making ANY contribution to ANY charity then you're easily one of the biggest/greediest idiots on the Internet, which is saying a hell of a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @01:00AM
Give to OxFam. The CEO lives in a dinky little house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @01:24AM
If you use someone's desire to actually do some good in the world, rather than funding the pay check of the wealthy, in an attempt to bully them into just funding the wealthy then I think you have the problem.
You've no idea what this person is doing. He could be deployed, a medic, he could be sitting at home handing out food parcels through food banks. This person could be doing more good than you're capable of in your entire life.
You've got no clue, and yet here you are passing judgments.