I won't dismiss the fact that this is good PR for CAH, but it is still morally-motivated positive impact for some fixed number of people. A company took some profit they had and exceptionally distributed to some of their less fortunate customers.
Don't immediately react and reply that this is gameable. Don't immediately react and reply that this isn't scalable.
Pause for a second and think about why this is necessarily coming from a game company that's small and makes a crude product. Think about why something like this shouldn't be coming from an entity with much more power to effect positive social or economical change.
And if you're part of one of those powers, can you do something?
I agree that positivity is important. Certainly, let us take a moment to genuinely appreciate what they’ve done here to help 100 people!
Now, since this is such a good thing they’ve done on a small scale, let’s scale this kind of help to EVERYONE who is in need! That would be truly awesome.
Oh wait, sorry — it looks like we can’t actually have that problem-solving discussion here, because you shut down the dialog by banning the topic. What you did there — see, that is “objectively a bad thing”.
Seriously though, you cannot really expect people to shut down productive problem-solving discussion, on a forum meant for exactly that. In fact, I believe inspiring discussion and problem solving towards scaling this concept is exactly what Cards Against Humanity wants to happen as a result of this!
I'll admit I was dismissive in my attempt at brevity so thank you for challenging me.
I didn't intend to shut down discussion. I was countering the flood of commentary around what I perceived as issues ancillary to the actual topic.
On the topic of scalability, I might been too dismissive, but I'd rather focus on the positivity of the topic as a whole, lamoon its impact, even if localized, and then secondarily bring up the topic of scalability.
I was intentionally stark because I recognize HN as being highly volatile. Top-level commentary often controls the conversation and I'd rather validate the topic than waste nuance in pessimistic challenges.
Could you please defend this assertion? They themselves admit that their redistribution method is flawed (see the FAQ).
I see this as an empty publicity stunt and something that doesn't help in the least.
First, I chose the word "objectively" in the sense that win/wins are still possible in consumeristic markets. I think most businesses would have taken a flexible $100k USD and spent it on marketing or expansion or something. The fact that this was distributed freely to people who self-identified as having use of it is good.
Second, flawed/unfair/biased/imperfect does not mean that something can't have net gains. Just because a company recognizes and discloses their faults, that shouldn't dismiss them from credibility. I'd rather a service that promises 99.5% availability than no service at all (or worse, a service that doesn't disclose their reliability).
Third, I think that the public, publicized, monetary actions of a trendy business have an additional non-material benefit. On top of any fiscal commentary about this bit, CAH is quite popular, and they have enough financial leeway to make a statement. This statements is "we are a business. we have knowledge that some of our customers have a greater need than others. we are making a decision to help those people with greater need".
Their statement is no more prescriptive than that. But damn if it doesn't make me question every other wildly profitable business, including the corp I work for.
You spoke to the 100 people and found it didn't help them?
I think this is a good thing that a private company is doing. They're benefitting from PR, but they're also using their stance on the capital and renown front to make a statement that it's cool to help out people who need help. Oh and also they're using their own cash to do that.
They didn't say fuck anyone and they didn't say fuck capitalism.
If anything, they're optimizing for capitalism: "people who care about the emotional plight of individuals in need would probably react positively to us publicly helping them out... and be more likely to buy our product."
To those seeking to criticize, it was not meant to be a perfect example of anything. It is also very relevant that this was done by a company who could have kept that money and sent a Christmas card with something snarky, and it would not have hurt their bottom line.
One of the coolest things I've read in a long time.
+1 this
I feel like we tend to demonize incremental progress in favor of easy criticism.
Let's maybe ask: "Is this a Good Thing? Is it better than nothing? Is it better than than yesterday's suggestion?"
If you answer no to any of those, shut the fuck up with your criticism and start working on the next iteration.
And i don't in any way mean this as a criticism. There's a lot of benefit to be had in experimenting with non-perfect ways to help the poor, but way too often those projects are criticized harshly for being imperfect. I love that CaH is able to do this.
Yikes. I certainly got a laugh out of that, then an overly reflective period of what I'm grateful for, especially the benefits afforded from being north of the border.
I've been concealing cancer symptoms for years, mostly because I can't afford to get a colonoscopy. Even the cheapest clinics run well over $1k, which is totally out of reach.
The secondary reason is an unhealthy fear of needles and a desire to live without a colostomy bag.
I know I need to see a psychiatrist or a therapist to help me get over these irrational fears, but you guessed it: I can't afford to. I make just enough not to be covered by any of the ACA's tiers, which means it'd be $400/mo for health insurance. It's like.. $400/mo? Do you have any idea what I could buy with $400/mo? I'd be able to afford to eat as much meat as I want to, let alone health insurance.
So yeah, just barely treading water down here in the good ol' USA. Cheers from down south.
(I'm not jealous, to be clear. Hopefully we'll get our stuff sorted out someday.)
I realise this isn't the only problem, but with a fear of needles you will be more likely to make bad decisions for your health than you would otherwise make.
I know because I resisted life changing medication for several years because it required regular blood tests.
About 18 months ago I decided I didn't want to do that anymore and sought help for my phobia. I was at the stage that one of my biggest fears was having an accident and waking up attached to IVs. I would likely have hit someone who would come at me with a needle. I would leave the room if someone had a fake needle pen (trigger warning: https://cdn.thisiswhyimbroke.com/images/syringe-pens1-640x53...). I would cover the backs of my hands involuntarily just having a conversation about needles.
I saw a therapist (on the NHS, free) for 8 sessions over the course of about 3 months, who guided me through a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), in my last session I held a needle (with it's cap on). Afterwards I was able to continue applying the techniques I learnt in therapy, and got better to the point where I started having blood tests in July. I've since had 7 blood tests and have been noticeably more able to cope with each one.
This is a fixable problem. This isn't part of you, it's just a bug in your brain, and CBT is a technique that you can learn to train your brain to work around the bug. There's a ton of evidence behind it, we know it works, it really is just this "one weird trick".
I highly recommend trying it, and while I was taught it by a trained professional, I suspect you'd be able to get significant value out of reading online. Find someone who can learn with you and have them keep you on track.
I say all this as someone who is skeptical of "therapy" and as someone who has seen very clear progress from CBT. It works, it's supported in research. Don't let a phobia be the reason you don't get medical help. If there are other reasons then tackle them, but a phobia will give you a reason not to even try so fix it.
Feel free to email me if you want to chat.
If you haven't gone to see any doctor at all (and presuming one visit won't bankrupt you), you really should. They don't have to perform any procedure or examination you don't want them to and they're very understanding of people's phobias.
If you have gone and you know for sure you need a colonoscopy then yeah, I'm not sure what to say. It's an awful situation to be in choosing between debt and healthcare. I hope things work out for you and you can get some help.
You want to die? Because this is how you die. Even if you can be saved, the longer you wait, the more expensive the fix. You know, ounce of prevention, pound of cure.
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/congrats-canadians-youre-worl...
America has truly failed these people.
The short-term impact of unconditional cash transfers to the poor< https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer_Shapi... >
> We find that treatment households increased both consumption and savings (in the form of durable good purchases and investment in their self-employment activities). In particular, we observe increases in food expenditures and food security, but not spending on temptation goods. Households invest in livestock and durable assets (notably metal roofs), and we show that these investments lead to increases in revenue from agricultural and business activities, although we find no significant effect on profits at this short time horizon. We also observe no evidence of conflict resulting from the transfers; on the contrary, we report large increases in psychological wellbeing, and an increase in female empowerment with a large spillover effect on non-recipient households in treatment villages. Thus, these findings suggest that simple cash transfers may not have the perverse effects that some policymakers feel they would have, which has led to a clear policy preference for in-kind or skills transfers [...] and conditional transfers.
EDIT: Added link to GD.
They've been on GiveWell's list of recommended charities for 6 years now: https://www.givedirectly.org/blog-post?id=434250678224991586...
I particularly like their commitment to producing evidence on the effectiveness of direct cash transfers. They see direct cash transfers as an important benchmark against which other charities should compare.
Full disclosure: I'm one of the UK trustees.
Donate here (US, tax deductible): https://www.givedirectly.org/give-now
Donate here (UK, with Giftaid): https://www.givedirectly.org/uk
$0.91 of every $1.00 dollar ends up in the hands of the poor.
I noticed something worrying about myself when reading these stories. A small voice in the back of my head judged a lot of these people. Those who say they will use it for gifts, travel or other things I apparently deem frivolous. It is not okay of me to think these things. These people deserve happiness, and these people can make their own choices. This disdain is something I really wanna work on. :(
And then I realized that these are the things they’re stressing about. It’s nice to think those will be one less stressor in a life full of stressful things. Which I think is good - if only for the mental win of not having to worry about X.
Way to go CAH - you got me thinking. And this time it wasn’t about something I had to go look up on urban dictionary.
Before you judge, ask yourself how you would spend the $15.
The biggest 3 points were census information from addresses (median income/percentage below poverty line), race/gender/education plus BLS statistics, and occupation (combined with median income for that job from BLS.)
I'm glad this year they're not literally throwing money into a hole...err..dig a hole.
Does this give insight into the fact that under certain circumstances, we are post-dotcom (as a critical tool for branding)?
Their regular domain is quite long too: https://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/
(and is definitely not as friendly to the eyes as something like: cah.[trendy-extension])
It's one of the 5 pillars of Islam. One has to give 2.5% of their wealth to poor. It's compulsory unlike Sadaqah - Charity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadaqah ).
I guess if everyone followed just this 2.5% rule, there wouldn't be any poor left in the world (I didn't do the math though).
P.S. When I say poor, I'm not referring to people who cannot afford the new iPhone.
http://www.cameroncad.org/cadclientdb/propertymap.aspx
Tarpon Haven Subdivision
Edit: There's also two huge tracts of land above that subdivision that are also owned by the US. I'm not sure they even need to go through that subdivision if they wanted to just build a wall through the land the government already owns.
That's rather... ineffective.
Sometimes work just seems like random people fighting tooth and nail to earn millions. It would be interesting to see everyone's reasons for acting that way. I bet it usually boils down to "it's for my family". But the real truth there is, having a happy family does not require millions.
What if $15 means something different to people with fungible assets* vs. those where money is tight.
*: HN population
I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that all pictures of the $1000 winners have women.
Plus, while Pedro and Ian have women on the pictures, it sounds like those were sent after receiving the gifts, so that couldn't have been part of the selection process.
Plus the trans individuals, whose identity or desired direction of transition I won't guess.
At the end of the day, who even gives a shit who they're helping? It's a private, for profit company sacrificing profits and trying to do "good", as seen through their own lens. Power to them.
On another note, I can understand why single moms would have more expenses. But why would a woman who is not a mom have more expenses?
As far as the border property, I wish more people of consequential power/capital would follow their lead and buy up border property. The wall is preposterous and any form of resistance is credible in my eyes.
Why? This site is obviously biased, but it presents a case for the wall saving us money: https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Border-Wall-vs-Cost-Illegal-Immi...
I'd rather spend money on dumb, long-term tech like that instead of our ridiculous military budget.
The wall was certainly a success for San Diego: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxhhjfiSy2Y
I'm amazed this isn't a bigger issue politically. Nutrition is a huge driver of health inequality. In 50 years the obesity rate has quadrupled. A return to the eating habits of the 1960s is perhaps the greatest possible welfare achievement right now (in the US), with impact far larger than universal healthcare. And it doesn't need to cost anything.
1) Healthy food where I live is much more expensive than unhealthy food. I get that in SF and NYC, it's possible to buy such food at Asian grocers for a reasonable cost, but not everyone is fortunate enough to have an Asian grocer on their corner. So they'll need more money.
2) On a related note, many poor neighborhoods don't even have a grocery store within walking distance, and many poor Americans own no car.
3) Unless somehow the food is pre-cooked (unlikely), they'll need the time to prepare it. Many poor people work 2 jobs, and I know of some single mothers working 2 FT minimum-wage jobs. These are investment banker hours. They don't have time to cook.
4) Many poor people also don't have working stoves/ranges, just microwaves or hot plates. It's much harder to cook healthy food in microwaves, although it can be done.
5) The also need to learn how to cook new healthy foods, which isn't always easy.
6) Finally, and this is a big one, but it's very stressful to live life as a poor American. Many people both rich and poor stress eat, so that is another factor here.
Anyway, not sure what you're suggesting, but if it's just that someone needs to tell those poor people to eat better, it's not always so easy. But I do agree with you it would be great if it were possible to work on some of the challenges above. 3)
96.6% of US households below the poverty level have a working stove.
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/censu...
You are talking about so called food deserts. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this hypothesis. Here is a good academic article that is representative:
http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2015/10/26/if-you-build-it-th...
You are comparing a concrete policy with a policy outcome for which there is no even remote concept of a policy mechanism that would achieve it.
> And it doesn't need to cost anything.
Massive changes to behavior are not free; the changes in eating habits that happened since the 1969s were driven by a number of economic and other factors, and counteracting all those factors to drive people back to 1960s eating habits would not be cheap.
But there's a large distance between that and having enough money to fund every level on Maslow's hierarchy, and there's a larger distance between even that and not noticing a $15 expenditure at all. Maybe they have a budget for things that make life worth living, things other than ramen and a cardboard box, and they spent $15 out of that.
Anyway, my point was that I don't think "lack of money" is a very instructive way of looking at poverty. If these people are so poor yet have $15 for an impulse buy do you think giving them $1000 is going to change their life? Probably not. Education and building better habits would really help them a lot more. They could save $1000 or probably a lot more and really turn their life around.
It's a "complicated promotion" and in this phase they are redistributing wealth to the poorest of the group who paid -- not to the poorest people in the country. I had originally thought that people were signing up with the hopes of getting a payback -- some kind of horrible poorest person wins the pot kind of game. But this is literally, "Pay us $15 and we will do something crazy with it". So far the other things they have done is bought up land to try to interfere with Trump's wall between the US and Mexico (and built a trebuchet), and set up a "good news only podcast" (and sent out stickers).
Most people in the US have discretionary spending even if they are poor. $15 to participate in crazy stunts to "save America"? Certainly there are people who can not afford that, but I don't think that was ever the point.
Edit: Is $1000 potentially life changing for people who are not in abject poverty. I think point is: yes. They point out that half of Americans do not have any emergency money at all. So you don't even need to be in poverty to be living hand to mouth. Will $1000 realistically change that? Clearly not. But the whole thing is a bit tongue in cheek.
I blame this lack of financial education on our failing high schools and bad parenting. And a stigma against judging others for poor financial choices (I see people in this thread lauding the gifts the charity recipients plan to buy).
Your comment makes me think we really are worse off than many people are aware of.
Nice sentiment though, and that counts for something.
The average American is incomparable wealthy compared to the average African, and you can on average save a life for only a few $thousand to one of Givewell's top recommended charities.
1: https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
It's incredible how humans do this.
Doing something for some people and is better than the status quo but instead we lambast them for not doing even more.
Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367855
Actually, it's an emergent phenomenon!
A poor person can spare little, a comfortably off person can spare more. If you really want to increase the charitable givings of a population, decreasing wealth disparity and making more people feel comfortable about their finances (ie. redistributing wealth), is a pragmatic way to do it.
The more I have, the more I give. The more the general population has, the more they will give.
Everyone ultimately has to focus on themselves in hard times. Want to increase charitable givings? Make it easy to be charitable.
If there is an overpopulation of deer, we don't put big buckets of feed in the forest to support them. But for the human animal, that is exactly what we do.
I know this is a taboo subject, but I think that we may be creating more misery by giving charity, then by doing nothing.
Using the absolute population size? If so, is America far more "overpopulated" compared to every other developed nation? If China were to split up into 20 sovereign nations, would it suddenly stop being overpopulated?
Or perhaps you're using population density? If so, Taiwan, South-Korea and Netherlands must be absolute cesspools to live in, since they all have population densities higher than India's.
Or more likely, you think that a country is overpopulated because it has a lot of poor people? If so, that sounds like a mighty fine circular reasoning. "Why is XYZ so poor? Because they are overpopulated." "What makes you say they are overpopulated? Because they are so poor."
Charity is very much better than doing nothing.
they found a good thing to do. The fact that there are other good things they could have done doesn't make this less good.
There are a lot of things, like civil defense and firefighting and road building, that historically started working more reliably when they became government-run instead of depending on volunteers or private industry. What makes charity different?
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/cards-against-humanity...
A lot of hardworking people don't want handouts from the government. Though some do, but I believe they are a minority. I generally hate the mindset of wanting money from the government. I want off of the government if I can help it.
The fact is that most Americans pay virtually no federal income tax, and get money back during their returns. When I was starting out and made the median income level for the state I was living in at the time, I still paid no tax (outside of SALT) and got a return larger than what I paid in. People don't realize the government already heavily subsidizes the poor and as well as people well above the poverty line.
This is not really true. Especially when you also look at payroll taxes which are, for all intents and purposes, income taxes.
When I...made the median income level for the state I was living in at the time, I still paid no tax (outside of SALT) and got a return larger than what I paid in.
This is highly unlikely to be true. I'm sure you remember it this way but without supporting data it is very hard to believe.
