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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

"The ends they want" - as opposed to the ends the recipients want (as expressed through an admittedly imperfect democratic system) - is exactly what I object to. Most "donations" are made to advance a personal agenda at least in part; even when the donor sincerely believes they're doing what's best for people, that's usually a reflection of their personal politics and you'll often find other people believing the exact opposite. It's fine to fund personal causes, admirable even, but you shouldn't be given a tax break for it.

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This seems to assume that the government is benevolent, whereas private actors are not. I have come to view government programs with the perspective that they are intended primarily to benefit the politicians efforts to become reelected. They can claim to be saving the world, but with other people's money. Some good may come of these efforts but I don't view them as inherently virtuous. You argue that private actors let personal politics dictate how they direct their funds, if the alternative is allowing politicians to do so, I don't see how that is much better.

I am perfectly content with private actors deciding how best to use their own money for philanthropic purposes. It leads to a more diverse set of approaches. If there are people that believe in one thing and others that believe the opposite they should both be allowed to fund what they think is right without a democratic majority stifling minority points of view.

I do not have a point of view on whether it is worthy of a tax break.

> This seems to assume that the government is benevolent, whereas private actors are not.

Not so much benevolent as accountable. The government, for all its faults, has a huge edifice of checks and balances, and while the gears grind slowly they do limit how far astray things can go. A private 503c is a real wild west in comparison.

> Not so much benevolent as accountable.

Remind me. Who was fired for Waco? Who at the CDC was fired for stopping the Seattle Flu Study from testing for COVID, or for banning commercial labs from testing for it while their own lab reported all samples as positive because of contamination?

If a charity to which I contribute does a single thing I don't like, I can decide to never give them another penny.

If the government doesn't do a single thing I like, more than half my income still goes to taxes each year to fund the government (income, property, sales, etc.), and there is nothing I can realistically do to change that.

Which one is accountable?

When we're talking about something that's supposed to support a whole community, being "accountable" to the whims of one individual is not a meaningful level of accountability. Changing government policy requires broad consensus from many people, which is exactly as it should be.

This assumes that charities are "supposed" to support the whole community, which I don't think is true.

It also assumes that government policies support the whole community, which I don't think is true either. It is pretty common for policies to harm one group in the community and benefit a different group in the community.

All the more reason they need to be accountable to the community as a whole rather than a small handful of individuals.

OK, we're using words differently here.

I think accountable means that when I give someone money, they should use my money for what I want, and you think accountable means that when I give someone money, they should use my money for what you want.

The whole point of "giving" is that it's no longer "my money". If it's still your money then it's not a donation.

This would be a more convincing argument if government assistance to the poor were in the form of some kind of UBI that its recipients could actually use as they wanted, rather than the current situation where it's a hodgepodge of social engineering programs filtered through layers of patronage jobs for administration.

> it's a hodgepodge of social engineering programs filtered through layers of patronage jobs for administration

Can you back that up? I know people who were in poverty and very much support many of those programs as lifesavers. It's wealthier people, who have no experience of them, who I see disparaging them.

Also, the criticism is cliche - I haven't seen much evidence of it. While nothing is perfect, the civil service in most advanced countries, including the US, are not patronage jobs; they are protected from such hiring and firing corruption. I know civil servants and they did not get the job through patronage and take their public service and professionalism very seriously. It's very easy to smear all those people in a few words.

> very much support many of those programs as lifesavers

That doesn't really address the issue though, does it? Food stamps are better than nothing, but they do not in fact allow recipients to spend the assistance as they see fit.

It's fine to be in favor of social engineering programs, but it's not consistent to then complain that philanthropists' charity comes with strings attached. The government's charity does as well.

> It's fine to be in favor of social engineering programs, but it's not consistent to then complain that philanthropists' charity comes with strings attached. The government's charity does as well.

I don't know what you mean: This doesn't seem to fit the common definition of social engineering, or we could call stop lights and tax forms social engineering; so I can't say I'm in favor, against, etc. And 'strings attached' is much too vague, as everything has strings attached (e.g., legal requirements); the question is the degree and who the strings serve.

I mean in the sense that it's not cash assistance to the poor; instead, it's the government saying "these are the things you need to buy" and providing a voucher system for those particular things. You cannot decide that you want to economize on food and spend half your SNAP benefits on liquor, and so you cannot decide that you want to economize on food and spend half your SNAP benefits on a car repair to upgrade to a better job that you'd have to drive to.

> we could call ... tax forms social engineering

Tax forms are obviously social engineering. The government incentivizes (having kids, having a mortgage, saving for retirement, charitable giving) and disincentivizes all kinds of things via the tax code.

I think that stretches the definition of social engineering to the point of meaninglessness. Everything government (or other powerful actors) does or doesn't do will influence people one way or the other. One could also say that we don't limit SNAP spending, we enable it or certain items. The money also can't go to building supplies.

> a hodgepodge of social engineering programs filtered through layers of patronage jobs for administration

That's somewhat true as a description of the average government programme, but it's far more true as a description of the average 503c.

>It's fine to fund personal causes, admirable even, but you shouldn't be given a tax break for it.

How does this argument work for other deductions that also allow you to "fund personal causes"? For instance, the IRS allows you to deduct interest paid on student loans. I can get student loans to study anything I want, and doing so is arguably used to to advance my "personal agenda" (eg. getting a phd in economics so I can work in a thinktank). Should I be worried that the action was a "reflection of their personal politics" and therefore not get a tax break for it?

Feel free to repeat this argument for other deductions that the IRS offers: https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions-for-individuals

Yes, most deductions should be abolished. Payments to 503cs are one of the ones that take the most out of the public purse though, AIUI, since even the richest people don't pay a huge amount of student loan interest.

Would you be happy with government-designed (so presumably democratic) tests and quotas for which charities get the tax breaks?

Isn't that already the case? You can't set up a charity to throw parties for yourself, for instance.

You pretty much can, if you can afford the O(1) legal costs to get it approved and set up. An "art museum" set up next door to the "donor" and open only by appointment with the "donor"? Perfectly legitimate according to the IRS.

> An "art museum" set up next door to the "donor" and open only by appointment with the "donor"? Perfectly legitimate according to the IRS.

Source? Most fundraising events have a deductible and non-deductible portion of the ticket price because the IRS does not look fondly on such practices.

That's a start, but for me to be "happy" I'd want there to be similar level of accountability and safeguards from bottom to top. So those charities would need to be subject to the same kind of legal rules as a government agency - FOIA, equal protection clause, that kind of thing. And there'd have to be a similar culture of holding them to account. (Like, counterintuitively I'd be happier if I started seeing a lot more news reports of charities wasting funds, because that would suggest that reporters at least cared enough to investigate)

You know what could be good, these charities talk about stories, not their statistics. Maybe they could humanistically keep records of their stories, like use a good system for that, maybe part digital, but with paper, so they can be read.

Like the complaints at Liga Chilena Contra la Epilepsia, they just have a Sugerencias y Reclamos book, which you can read (though they told me it is not for me to read). You can see for instance that they addressed one complaint they got a lot, which was the lack of cashiers, so in fact with their remodel five years ago they changed it completely so they now have up to 8 cashiers at a time, and short wait times. My favorite Chilean pharmacy, I'll repeat here the comment I left for that charity: "Un siete!"

> even when the donor sincerely believes they're doing what's best for people ...

They are wealthy people who have no experience or knowledge of what people without wealth need.

To be fair, that also describes a large portion of politicians.

I don't agree. Politicians aren't perfect, but they hear from their constituents a lot, especially the unhappy ones.

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