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Comment by jastanton | Hacker News Reader

Another option is a local Church that support missions such as building schools for impoverished nations. I support a church that does this along with a missionary that runs an after school sports program in very poor area of Elkhart, Indiana. This helps gets kids off of streets, gives them food, shelter and a develops the community. Benefit of this is that I get to actually see the faces of the youth this impacts both in my backyard as well as in other nations.

Say what you will about religion but there are a lot of people out there who have a heart that yearns to help others, I don't care if they do it in the name of a god or not, the fact of the matter is they are going out there every day and touching peoples lives.

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The concern here is that the purpose of a church mission is first to convert locals to Christianity, then to provide follow-on benefits like education and economic development. Donating the same amount of money to a secular organization should create more of those secondary benefits, because no effort needs to be spent on collecting followers for Christ.

However, you are right that church missions seem to have the easiest access to donations and labor, so they might be able to provide better secular education out of sheer scale.

> The concern here is that the purpose of a church mission is first to convert locals to Christianity, then to provide follow-on benefits like education and economic development.

So cynical. This definitely isn't true across the board. I grew up Southern Baptist, where charity was literally treated like a foot-in-the-door to evangelization and saving souls was the #1 agenda. So I get your sentiment. But in other veins of Christianity like Catholicism (which is roughly where I am now), the theology around charity is very different and it really is about serving others as Christ would--no strings attached. I think the proportion of Christian charities that behave as you describe is pretty small compared to those that focus on service first.

it certainly helps more than it hurts, but you can find the same thing without the baggage in many different charities. I've seen one too many missionaries get screwed because rumors overseas start telling congregations they aren't doing religion the right way. Usually it's just one supporting congregation and nothing comes of it, just hard times for the missionary, but I have seen one case personally where some epic rumors started and every supporting church pulled out at once and left a guy stranded overseas away from his family. The guy apparent was doing religion wrong or something. I was acquaintances with the guy and spoke with him regularly, although I never did get the low down on the whole story so maybe he deserves it for all I know.

This brings up an interesting question. What exactly comprises "the common good"?

That's a tricky philosophical question, but quick answer would be the long-term flourishing of sentient beings, treating everyone as equal.

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/the-meaning-of...

It's not a particularly interesting question. It's almost the definition of a wrong question.

Most smaller church / religious outreach organizations that focus on poverty _within their local community_ end up being very efficient. But a soup kitchen is already a huge asterisk on the word common. You can't reliably feed humans with a global strategy: successful charity only happens locally.

This blog post looks like a reasonable assessment of the allocation of US$20,000 of capital in isolation. But it's clear that such a small amount of money can't possibly have an impact on the global population of humans, taken in isolation. By definition, any assessment of the common good depends on all common actions:

If you want to know what the common good is, it always depends on what everyone else does.

<quote>It's not a particularly interesting question. It's almost the definition of a wrong question.</quote>

Is it possible you are thinking superficially and not considering the longer term ramifications of actions?

<quote>By definition, any assessment of the common good depends on all common actions</quote>

That isn't a definition. That's a sales speak type obfuscated platitude. What exactly is "the common good"?

> Is it possible you are thinking superficially and not considering the longer term ramifications of actions?

No.

> That isn't a definition. That's a sales speak type platitude. What exactly is "the common good"?

Seems like you're misunderstanding my connection of "common" to "every single human" here. There is no way to meaningfully divide twenty grand amongst eight billion people. When we discuss "human rights" we are usually conflating positive government action and negative government action. Providing a minimum set of non-controversial services from the government (like "food" for example) is never the right answer in these debates.

To wit: If you have $20,000 sitting around, and you don't know what to do with it? Fuck you. As a general analysis of the impact any given $20k has in isolation, this post is interesting.

"> Is it possible you are thinking superficially and not considering the longer term ramifications of actions?

No."

Manifestly a wrong answer. Examples of correct answers would be "I don't believe so", "I doubt it", "It doesn't appear likely from my perspective".

"Impact" and "Fuck You" and "Post is Interesting" aside, I still ask... what comprises the common good? If you really think about this you may find the answer is not as easy or as certain as you appear to believe.

This is how I know you're sea-lioning me:

You don't understand that "common good" is impossible to define. This is one of the most basic discoveries of utilitarian ethical theories. It is sensible to ask what someone means if they use the term "common good" within the context of a proposal, but there is no general meaning of common good. There absolutely can't be.

"You don't understand that "common good" is impossible to define"

Maybe I do understand that. I'm not "sea-lioning" you at all. I'm just responding to a derisive and dismissive remark you made to a (IMOP) valid point. I don't necessarily believe in the validity of "discoveries" of utilitarian ethics. But I do believe "good" has, as you say, no general meaning. Which is why it is an interesting question.

I think that's not only an excellent question, but really the only interesting question.

If you cannot determine what the common good is -- if you cannot define your goals, then , as the Chesire Cat observed, it really doesn't matter which way you choose to go.

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