Mao had some really good ideas on the subject too.

Yeah, you show those lazy freeloading CHARITIES, Nom. Show Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch how much better than them you are!

Aw, Haz's computer is broken and he couldn't watch the video. Sad. :(

I agree 100% that landlordism and rent-seeking is awful. It's just Nom's years-long "charities are evil" crusade that I find a touch silly.

Seriously Hazelnut the charity sector is under-regulated and rife with abuses. Being the CEO of a major charity is in the same social class as being the CEO of a major for-profit company. Notice their boards are populated with business people. There's been an ongoing scandal here in Canada about the "WE" charity (formerly Free the Children) who seemed to have started off good, but then got too big for their britches and turned corporate-evil. Have you seen Pink Ribbons Inc.?

Charities can do good work, just like how a business can provide employment and goods or services to a community. But once enough money gets involved they turn into money laundries, funnels for public money into private hands, outright scams, or just honest "let's make young people feel good about paying 5000$ to volunteer" shenanigans.

The category of "charity" should not bring strong assumptions about good-will or positive effect on society. Just like any other large human organizations, you have to judge them based on their actions, not their labels. FWIW I do think Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and HRW are some of the good ones.

You're reasoning with the guy who thinks billionaires should be allowed to continue extracting wealth because "Warren Buffet has donated more to charity than you ever will" and that unfairly judging all billionaires is BNP propaganda.

Sorry, Haze. That Warren Buffet line is now enshrined up there with bouncers and stencil buffers for all time poetv gems.

Haze has these weird blinders where he’ll claim some subjects are so impossibly gray that no human dare try to evaluate them while others are so black or white that the sides are based on immutable laws of physics.

Tax code needs to be changed to make owning too many homes too expensive. For individuals and corporations.

Exemptions for high density and/or rent controlled construction.

And speaking of propaganda, jesus christ how many CENTURIES has "charity" been used to defend the absolute wealthiest classes of society?

See also: suggestions we turn to a full-on Medici-style patronage system to fund the arts. As opposed to, you know, recognizing that public interest may sometimes not intersect with profitability.

I'd tolerate Medici-style patronage for the arts if the produced works were public domain. The patron gets the intangible prestige, the world gets access to great literature. Printers and distributors get their fair profit from doing that work, but no one gets rents on culture.

I think once you've managed to invoke a requirement like the work going into the public domain, you've already escaped the fetters of brutal capitalism. But that does sound like a nice tweak.

@jfcaron_ca, totally agree with you that a lot of charities are gross and abusive.

@Nominal, I don't know why you find it so important to ascribe all these beliefs to me that I don't hold. I am not pro-billionaire. I am not pro-Warren Buffet. I do think Doctors Without Borders is pretty great.

@SolRo is a racist and a liar, so I know exactly why he makes shit up.

Thanks for confirming my statement.

Says the piece of shot who this very week was supporting the “I was reaching for my taser bro” police murder defense, just like he spent all last summer supporting every cop that attacked BLM marchers.

Before this comment was hijacked by SECRET BNP OPERATIVES, can we focus on the video I linked? At least take a minute to check out the self-parodies of (literal) blackshirt proto-proudboy, trust fund landlord douchelords featured in it.

Oh, five stars for the video, no question there. SolRo & Crackersmack's racist dog-whistling in the other thread needn't distract us here.

I live inside your head bitch