A Waste of Money?

Tyler Cowen on why donors do not focus on whether they actually end up improving the world:

• Donors to charities tolerate high administrative costs, fail to monitor charities and do not insist on measurable results.
• Donors often prefer simply feeling good about their generosity and deceive themselves into thinking that all is going well.
• Many donors seek a sense of affiliation and wish to be a part of large and successful organizations.

And there's also this nugget: Relatively attractive women who ask for donations get more. (Attractive people get more of everything, don't they?)

I'm attempted to adopt what Daniel Akst calls the Ayn Rand approach:

which is to invest the dollar in whatever business seems most promising because capitalism produces the greatest good for the greatest number, and the marketplace rewards those things people need and want most. Thus, a successful investment by definition does the world all kinds of good—and throws off funds for doing more good still. In this day of globalization, that good is increasingly likely to be shared by workers in China and Ecuador and Bangladesh because so many products are manufactured in such places.