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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, 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.