Giving Well: Part II
Part I on the “Value of the Donated Dollars” here on why you shouldn’t be randomly booking Airbnbs in Ukraine as a way to “get money directly into the hands of Ukrainians.”
We have another version of that, but worse in a way. Two Harvard students created Ukrainetakeshelter.com, which is essentially a public housing bulletin, Craigslist to match refugees with those offering shelter. It sounds nice, except that there is no verification process, which means nefarious actors can abuse the site for human trafficking. A twitter thread explains:
Full thread from Kasia Chojecka:
Thank you for your unexpected attention to my latest post about @AviSchiffmann and his (in our opinion) website UkraineTakeShelter which we consider unethical and harmful to refugees that we are currently dealing with (over 1 mn traumatized people entering the country).
You encouraged me to translate it into English. It is a very sad and very disappointing story about ethics in tech, about thoughtlessness and pride. Please, don’t recommend UkraineTakeShelter to the newcomers – it doesn’t fulfill the safety standards those people need. Let’s go.
What pisses me off now with the whole process is the cheekiness of Western tech specialists and the lack of humility in organizing effective help. Consider @AviSchiffmann, a Harvard student, who organized an alternative website linking Ukrainians with hosts. A noble idea, but…
Together with @ZygmuntowskiJ we asked them to coordinate it with volunteers from PL before the action of creating a new system even begins.
We already know from working on the spot that the needs of Ukrainians are more complex than booking an accommodation. It is also transport, medical, financial and psychological support.
I’ll mention the fact that listings on UkraineTakeShelter look like a joke: a place close to Warsaw is “Riga” and there are many locations from the US. Jesus christ, sometimes those people have only a few hryvnia in their wallets. Who is going to pay for the tickets, you?
The second issue is the safety of UA women and their children - unfortunately, people can be cruel and accomodation must be verified on the spot, so that people fleeing the war can find a safe haven. Hence, our volunteers are using the forms and distribute the accommodation.
Many people, especially from the West think that "help is help", for which, as a person involved in on-site assistance, I have zero consent. Assistance provided to people fleeing the war MUST be coordinated with the volunteers or the public authorities. Sorry.
That's why two Americans now going to the TV and boasting about their idea (which most of the Polish aid forces have not heard of at all) is a slap in the face to all those people here (and officials ofc) who are trying to get this shit together.
Btw. the press kits on the website. It gives me chills. Negative ones.
Such website could be PRICELESS (there are already more than 20 of them though), but only if volunteers from Eastern Europe received clear messages that something like this is being created.
Then the volunteers could help with adapting it to the current needs of #refugees. But it seems that the whole project is just for the sake of these guys’ portfolio or a means to getting a funding. I’m so sorry that you decided to use refugees.
You could be really useful with designing tools that would help us with Russian propaganda in Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Lithuanian internet. We are flooded with it.
And that's what I consider to be Silicon Valley or start-up mentality - the feeling of being a SAVIOR, even when you are operating from a safe country and you don’t really care about refugees’ needs.
The sad thing is that it's not a tech competition, it's war and a very brutal one. And these people are hurt, are helpless and need our support.
I don’t fault these Harvard kids for not knowing better, because they are kids. However, upon launch, I’m 100% sure they received feedback on how dangerous the site could be for vulnerable refugees. Instead of working on that immediately, or temporarily closing, the creators did a press tour. Only today, did the creator say he’s pausing new listings to work on verification.
Meanwhile, unverified old listings are all still up, apparently. And the way that the verification process is described, as “major partnerships” sounds like dealmaking (partnering with Airbnb/VRBO), not safety protocols. It could be partnerships with volunteers on the ground in Eastern Europe. Let’s hope it’s that.
I appreciate their effort, but it’s important to understand risks and why there’s a reason instant fixes simply cannot work. There’s a reason for red tape at times, and Silicon Valley is just so ready to bust through it all, disrupt safety/risk protocols, as if they’re the first ones who ever thought of solving a problem. It’s hubris. And it’s hugely insulting to government, nonprofits, and volunteers who have been trying to tackle these social issues for literally centuries.
Paul Graham, one of the YCombinator founders, had a similar take this morning, insulting all of government and nonprofits.
Governments can absolutely be inefficient in their spending, but ineffective is unfair. This kind of stuff really pisses me off. So many people have zero sense of how governments and nonprofits work, and they’re extremely dismissive. And inefficiencies are often due to rules/requirements on how politicians have defined fairness/transparency, which are in turn, often defined by private sector lobbyists.
The reality is social goods will never be fully funded, because there is a huge chunk of the population that doesn’t want to fund services they think they don’t need. Chronic underfunding leads to inefficiencies. It’s not a choice to be inefficient. And the stuff that Graham suggests have been tackled by entrepreneurs: space, health/medicine — that’s because there are private profits to be had in those realms. Find me a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants to disrupt foster child placement, and I will find you a real life leprechaun.
Where the private sector could really help? Bring tools (software, pro bono consulting) that have demonstrated efficiencies and improvements to the public sector and make them available free or severely discounted (provide it at cost). Improve UI on government sites. That kind of thing at a discounted price. Social services are providing services that no one wants to pay for already. This is why it cannot afford to improve UI— all money is going towards keeping the lights on.
And I’ve ranted before about how nonprofits are wrongly penalized for having any kind of overhead costs.
And I really don’t want to hear about how “inefficient” large charity orgs are. There are some fools who can’t think beyond their intentions, and don’t understand what it takes to actually provide aid on a global scale. The reason large orgs have serious, stable overhead costs is because of infrastructure in place that allows the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders to get to Ukraine and start work immediately and effectively. They have the people, petty cash, trusted connections, supply, and logistics plans to get going and get to work. Smaller orgs and individuals will do great things, too. Donate to both if you can. But if you have only one place you can send money, make it a verifiable organization with a track record and a commitment to transparency.
Recommendation: this 15-minute TED talk on nonprofit overhead Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong. It costs money to do good work, and nonprofits shouldn’t be penalized for investing in their people and infrastructure, because it enables bigger and better things. There’s a ridiculous belief that nonprofits workers should be earning starvation wages, despite that they are doing literally God’s work.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, hundred billionaire, donated sleep apnea machines when he promised ventilators early in the pandemic, and the world worships his generosity.
If I had my way, I’d like everyone to do a gap year after college to work a full year in civil service or nonprofit work of some kind. I posted on Instagram about this idea for California undergrads, where the state will pay students $10K do to a service-oriented internship, basically. I think it’s great. You get academic credit and you learn how public entities work, what is working, what is failing, what is hindering improvement, what is tangibly fixable, what is out of reach and why.
Bonus: if you click into the comments of my IG post, you’ll see a comment from an old school buddy who tells me I’m wrong, insults government work, says it will “taint” any worker’s view of work in general, and believes the subsidy to the public sector is unjust. Re-reading all that, I’m still upset by that comment. I could have deleted it, but it certainly captures why I find the libertarian view of the world so repulsive, demeaning, and harmful.
Hero worship is always dangerous
Zelenskyy trying to guilt-trip the US/NATO into providing a no-fly zone is understandable, but inappropriate, as it would almost certainly trigger WWIII.
Halper said the media has been complicit in promoting the idea of a no-fly zone through its coverage of the Ukrainian leader.
“In theory you want the media to be able to overcome that kind of human nature of focusing on personality over policy and actually it’s media malpractice to focus on personality over policy because that can get you to very scary places,” she said.
Zelenskyy is a hero, undeniably. He deserves all the accolades for leading his people when they most needed leadership. But the level of adoration now has some real Cuomosexual vibes.
I posted on hero worship on Instagram recently, re: some sordid information about Thomas Jefferson we didn’t learn in history class:
“We should not create false gods to fulfill some bs vision we have of ourselves” —last tweet from some random
The older I get, the more I feel it’s better to admire great decisions/ideas, not people. We are all human, some more flawed/talented than others, and really, no one is worthy of a pedestal when you think about it.
When it comes to the Founders or any figure establishing domain, right to rule (self-rule, whatever), it’s pretty much impossible to be a clean hero. By the nature of establishing a power structure, they are asserting dominance/superiority/preference over someone. So it shouldn’t be a surprise some of these guys exhibited that in their personal lives as well.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful we do not live under a goofball sham of British monarchy. Someone had to draw a line, and I’m glad they did. Just don’t exalt people. They’re just people who did a thing that we can wholly appreciate without deifying.
On a lighter note
The Morning Show doesn’t deserve an 8.3 rating on imdb. It’s a 7.0 show. Good, not great. Nice to see Jennifer Aniston given the chance to act. And it’s hard to take the Fred character seriously, as this big bad Media guy, because he is played by Angela Chase’s dad from My So-Called Life. And Billy Crudup — I can’t view him objectively ever since he left Mary Louise Parker for Claire Danes, while Parker was like eight months pregnant. I don’t think I will watch Season 2.
There’s a real opportunity to do something great with this show, but they’re not gonna do anything with it I think. Ever since the Good Wife went off the air (that show was deserving of an 8+ rating on imdb), there hasn’t been a good drama that could comment smartly on current topics. The Morning Show did a good job with MeToo throughout the first season, but there was this entire episode set in California wildfires, and they served merely as a backdrop for Alex’s breakdown. The show’s focus is on the personal drama, which is fine, but it’s a wasted opportunity imo.
On an even lighter note: bodybuilders can’t figure out how many days a week to work out. Thread is from 2008!