HXBC.us - 竹難月金

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> <meta property="og:image" content="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3903/15137494132_f8d766f153_z.jpg" />
> 
> Alternatively, "People give their hard-earned cash away and you won't
> believe it", or "5 charities you should donate to before you die".
> 
> <div style="text-align: center">
> <img
> src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3903/15137494132_f8d766f153_z.jpg"
> alt="Senators Martin Looney and Len Fasano take part in the Ice Bucket Challenge"
> title="Senators Martin Looney and Len Fasano take part in the Ice Bucket Challenge"><br><span style="font-size: small"><a
> href="https://flic.kr/p/p4DBC9">Source: Flickr</a> <a
> href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(CC BY-NC-ND
> 2.0)</a></span>
> </div>
> 
> I was looking for another book to read just when the ALS ice bucket
> challenge videos started showing up everywhere. Some of the videos
> were amusing, and who didn't want to see billionaires and celebrities
> get soaking wet? I didn't know what ALS was and had no idea why people
> would rather dump ice cold water on themselves instead of giving $100
> (the people who were doing the challenge initially certainly wouldn't
> even blink for that amount). Some quick thoughts about the California
> drought and popularity contest came to mind, but it wasn't something
> worth killing my brain cells over.
> 
> The videos were fun to watch but I needed more entertainments on MTR
> rides than 10-second videos. The book I had just finished,
> [The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty](http://amzn.to/1qfbysA),
> referenced a few other books:
> [Get Rich Cheating](http://amzn.to/1qXKF1k),
> [Nudge](http://amzn.to/1tdAIO7), and
> [The Halo Effect](http://amzn.to/1mdOwHr). Reading the reviews on
> those and browsing through related books eventually led me to
> [Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty](http://amzn.to/1yglZq8),
> the book that got me interested in behavioral economics and one that
> I've been meaning to re-read.
> 
> The premise of Poor Economics is although poor people have very little
> money, it doesn't mean that they don't make many economics decisions
> or that their decisions are uninteresting. Quite the contrary, they
> have to make numerous choices in their daily lives precisely because
> they have so little to spare. Furthermore, their choices often
> surprise us, and we cannot help them get out of poverty unless we
> understand how and why they make those choices.
> 
> <div style="text-align: center">
> <img src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/baeLtRZbwgY/hqdefault.jpg"
> alt="Mark Zuckerberg doing the ALS ice bucket challenge"
> title="Mark Zuckerberg doing the ALS ice bucket challenge">
> </div>
> 
> As I was re-reading the book, popularity of the ice bucket challenge
> exploded. More and more of my friends were getting themselves wet and
> the threat that this modern day chain letter would get from Mark
> Zuckerberg and the like to me was imminent. I decided to do some
> research so I could make an informed decision in case someone
> challenged me.
> 
> With popularity came criticisms. I didn't have to look far for
> opinions. "It's a waste of water! California is in a drought!" "ALSA
> only spends a few percent of their budget on research and who knows
> how they spend the other 90+%!" "People are just doing this for
> fun/fame and not for charity."
> 
> <div style="text-align: center">
> <img
> src="https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1139/926396551_74e423df70_z.jpg"
> alt="Cat asleep in a bucket" title="Every successful internet article needs a cat photo"><br><span
> style="font-size: small">Cat asleep in a bucket, because every
> successful internet article needs a cat photo <a
> href="https://flic.kr/p/2pS2qk">Source: Flickr</a> <a
> href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">(CC
> BY-SA 2.0)</a></span>
> </div>
> 
> Thankfully, it didn't take long to find out that a bucket of water
> isn't much compared to how much water we use everyday for other
> purposes (we use about
> [20 buckets of water everyday](http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html),
> on average). It also wasn't hard to find a breakdown of ALSA's
> [annual spending](http://www.alsa.org/assets/pdfs/fy2014-20als-20association-20financial-20statements-20final.pdf),
> and while they are not terribly efficient, they do largely seem to
> spend their money on the ALS community. And while not everyone maybe
> sincere in their efforts, it's undeniable that it helped
> [raise enough money](http://www.ibtimes.com/how-much-money-has-als-ice-bucket-challenge-raised-more-100-million-has-poured-where-will-1677980)
> for ALSA for the next 5 years, at current spending level. An amount
> most other charitable organizations could only dream of.
> 
> The ice bucket challenge was clearly a very effective way to get
> people to open up their wallets (so effective that ALSA tried, and
> then backtracked, to
> [trademark "ice bucket challenge"](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/als-group-moves-to-trademark-ice-bucket-challenge-viral-sensation/)). A
> little too effective, maybe. Regardless of what you think about ALS,
> (no doubt it's a horrible disease but it only affects about
> [0.0039% of the population](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6307a1.htm))
> it's questionable whether any organization can effectively make use of
> such a large and sudden infusion of money. It would have been better
> if some of that money were donated to other charities instead. But
> which ones?
> 
> Back to the book. Much of the book is devoted to analyzing the lives
> of people in extreme poverty: those who survive with less than 1 USD a
> day, after adjusting for
> [purchasing power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity). Through
> various randomized controlled trials, researchers attempted to find
> concrete and provably effective ways to improve the lives of the
> poor. Because "[t]alking about the problems of the world without
> talking about some accessible solutions is the way to paralysis rather
> than progress." The same paragraph points to Peter Singer's
> [The Life You Can Save](http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/). In
> [the promotional video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onsIdBanynY)
> (and [his book](http://amzn.to/1wCUN34)), Singer points out that the
> annual budget needed to cut global poverty in half is not much more
> than the amount Americans spend on alcohol every year.
> 
> <div style="text-align: center">
> <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/onsIdBanynY?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
> </div>
> 
> That reminded me of a short lived personal initiative. For a while I
> was trying to note down how much I spend on alcohol and donate half of
> that amount to charity. Bookkeeping while intoxicated was clearly not
> a trivial problem, so I gave up soon after I started. That said, I
> still think there's merit in tying charitable givings to spending on
> guilty pleasures, although I'd need to come up with a better execution
> strategy first.
> 
> <div style="text-align: center">
> <img
> src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7134/7028306781_4c116139af_z.jpg"
> alt="A Boot (of beer) at Leopold's" title="A Boot (of beer) at Leopold's"><br><span style="font-size: small"><a
> href="https://flic.kr/p/bH4UK8">Source: Flickr</a> <a
> href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(CC BY-NC-ND
> 2.0)</a></span>
> </div>
> 
> On the website, Singer asks visitors to pledge giving at least 1% of
> their income to help others. The pledge doesn't require you to donate
> to specific charities, although there is
> [a list if you wanted suggestions](http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/where-to-donate).
> 
> Near the top of the list is an organization called
> [GiveDirectly](http://www.givedirectly.org/). [This American Life](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/503/i-was-just-trying-to-help?act=1)
> talked about them last year. Their basic idea is instead of
> prescribing what we think poor people need to them, just give them
> money directly (hence the name) and let them figure out what to do
> with it. Turns out if you give people who live under leaky roofs a lot
> of money (the amount they give per family is usually a couple times
> their annual incomes), the vast majority of them
> [use it wisely](http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/cash-transfers#Howdopeoplespendthemoneytheyreceiveviacashtransfers).
> 
> For the record I have not made the pledge. Given that I am not
> currently working, pledging to give 1% of my $0 income doesn't make a
> lot of sense. That said, using my past salary as reference, I haven't
> been too far off, at least not orders of magnitudes off. Of course, I
> never dumped ice water on my head every time I made a donation. I
> didn't need to, I thought, because the decision to help others is a
> very personal thing.
> 
> The ice bucket challenge showcased the power of social media to
> charities around the world. Replicating that success maybe difficult
> though, eventually we get unsensitized by all the wet
> celebrities. Amazon is (in?)famous for their one click patent, and
> Buzzfeed showed us how to give any article an enticing headline. We
> have learned a lot in studying human behaviors and making tons of
> money from it. Applying that knowledge to eradicate extreme poverty
> from the
> [remaining billion of people](http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm)?
> That could just be the Next Big Thing.