This isn't for you as you do plenty but incase others read this, but if you happen to ever see a thick coat in a charity shop, second hand store, or thrift store (whatever you call it) and it is quite cheap, do buy it as there are many charities that take them to give to homeless people.
This is such an uneducated and entitled comment just showing how little regular people know about this situation in Germany. Its also one of the most commonly used arguments on this topic and its simply not true. Homeless shelters are overcrowded and extremely unhygienic. Our infrastructure isn't made for an ever-growing amount of homeless people. Law, rights and reality sadly grow appart heavily. "Die Tafel" is completely overwhelmed too. This statement might have been true 15 years ago but you should re-educate yourself on the topic.
It's not just the hygiene. it's that in those shelters you're constantly surrounded by a few mentally ill and possibly violent people who will lash out in unpredictable ways and make life worse for everyone with their constant tics and noises making you live in constant anxiety.
If you're homeless but not mentally ill yet, then being in such an environment everyday will definitely negatively affect your sanity as your daily struggle becomes surviving the shelter, instead of working to getting back on your feet. Kind of like being locked up in a prison but from which you can leave.
So then no wonder a lot of homeless people feel safer and less stressed just living and sleeping in public areas than in shelters.
However, if you give a homeless person money and they go buy drugs, I think you effectively made them poorer. I would advise giving them food instead.[2]
[1]: Word in quotes because there is no way to verify their identities.
[2]: I've literally seen a person asking for money get offered free fries at McDonald's and denying them. Beggars don't get to be choosers.
So if you give them food directly, you're certain where your money goes. You also eliminate the false homeless people (similar to the example I gave).
Did anyone ask what the money was for? Did anyone offer to buy whatever it was they needed, even if a meal at a better place? Or was the interaction to simply offer fries (probably the least filling, cheapest, far from healthy choice that they likely have been offered dozens of times already) and then do nothing when they refused?
Which isn't their strategy because the beggar spent probably 2 minutes in the restaurant.
It's not rare to see a beggar ask for money to "get food", get offered food and then decline.
Sometimes a homeless person needs a blanket, or a bus ticket, or just a safe place for a few hours.
If you don’t want to give money, that’s your prerogative, but don’t simply assume food. Ask.
However, understand the context: the beggar entered a McDonald's and asked clients that were currently eating for money. He got offered the fries of a woman who didn't finish them. So there was no poisoning (I think this is very much an American problem, where I don't live) possible—except if you consider McDonald's to be poison in the first place.
In my experience, people don't give cash to beggars anymore. Everyone has their reason, but I think the fact that a lot of beggars were not really in need hasn't helped. But I think many would be open to give food or donate useful objects instead (which they don't have at hand when being begged).
Consider the beggar’s context too. How many times per day/week must they go into that McDonald’s? Leftover fries are probably what they get offered the most. You can accept it a few times, but after a while they provide neither pleasure nor sustenance.
> In my experience, people don't give cash to beggars anymore.
Anecdotally, seems about right.
> But I think many would be open to give food or donate useful objects instead (which they don't have at hand when being begged).
Again, I agree, but I don’t think anyone asks either. One possible workaround would be to donate to your local food bank or another organisation you trust, then when asked by a beggar direct them there. Though that could be another can of worms depending on where one lives.
The person denied the fries without adding anything and left. This makes everyone who heard that the beggar didn't need food. Otherwise he'd have asked for something else (even food from the supermarket nearby).
You say "Ask"? I did. I just heard some rehearsed story Oh, your son is sick?" With what exactly? What kind of drugs he need, I can help? Result -> anger. I get more aggression from asking and trying to get helpfull than simply saying "no." I have tons of examples.
Why do they NEVER ask for a job? Why don't they ever offer to do the manual labor I was doing? I would be glad to let them do it and pay for it.
One time they stole my phone. A guy just came near me with a sign, put it on the table while begging, and simply garbed it and have runned away. That was end of I line for me.
Why do they reek of alcohol or drugs?
I used to offer help to people, but after they stole my phone, I just scream "NO." I never want to be stolen from again. I donate to some charities, but that is the end of the line for me. I don't want to pay a guy that is begging out of habit just to buy drugs. I don't want to pay women sedating their children or using them on the street just to earn money. Just watching them beg behind the building.
My main point is that I never could understand the aggression towards the homeless until I was stolen from. My street was filled with alcoholics living in cars, screaming random stuff, and fighting with passersby and each other.
Do you really think they want an answer, or anything else other than buying their drugs? I was really hating people like me, but in the end I was discovered why do they react with defense and aggression. But of course I would be glad to pay for food nonetheless and try to help with anything expect money and I pay for charities that try to provide medical healthcare in places like Gaza, but I don't believe that people in London (for example) need more and places like Gaza.
I would personally prefer to give money to someone that needs it to eat.
Outside of drugs and drink they can spend it how they like. They choose the food or maybe save for a hotel night.
I’m old enough to remember the Moonies with flowers at the airport[0].
[0] https://youtu.be/Ls_qFlF2gHw?si=znZJsjki-QLq5J1A (this actually was inspired by real behavior)
They're easy to recognize, because they're very forceful in their begging, relying more on intimidation than compassion.
There really is no level people won't sink to for some money.
Once you meet a real poor, it's obvious. You meet them outside of reasonable business hours, they are obviously a native, ashamed to ask for help and actually like to have a conversation.
The actual homeless people here have access to government support and shelters, those beggars don't as they're not here legally.
Some are genuine. People who went into debt, with health issue that prevented them from ever repaying it, fleeing from families so as not to burden them...
Smugglers who were found out, left with an unpayable amount of debt while the politicians that used to protect them went without punishment.
I'll take "Things That Never Happened" for $200, Alex.
https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/20/gang-of-beggars-pictured-gett...
I look forward to you donating that $200 to a homeless charity, KingMob.
And he stood up out of the wheelchair and walked to his Mercedes and drove away and that's why I never give to homeless people (or formal charities).
lol more like whatever keeps their heroin dealer warm
Anyway, yes, direct donation is always better, be it to some random guy down on his luck in the street (unless they have just missed their bus and need ticket money for the next one and so for 3 years in the same bus station) or to some trusted person/group who actually does deliver the stuff to the area. Way too many random NGOs have popped up in Europe promising to do good things, just transfer money to their bank account and they will take care of it all for you.
I always tell people to donate as local as possible. Ideally local Shelters, Churches (that take in everyone) etc...
Chance Letikva is registered with the US IRS as a charity. They've filed a Form 990. Location is Brooklyn, NY. [1] Address is listed. It's a small house. It's also incorporated as CHANCE LETIKVA, INC. in New York State. Address matches. Names of officers not given. There's one name in the IRS filing, listed as the president.
Web site "https://chanceletikva.org" has been "suspended". Domain is still registered, via Namecheap.
Some on the ground digging and subpoenas should reveal who's behind this.
[1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/852...
Edit: Clicked through some of the other entries in there and yeah, usually liabilities are relatively close to incomes. How the system didn't catch this is beyond me.
A news piece in a foreign affairs section is likely to have been written by a correspondent because that’s what their job and specialty is. If it’s an op-ed or a commentary or analysis piece, even more so. It’s not like you can do good journalism without boots on the ground, no matter how connected the world is these days.
In this instance it was a bust because no one useful was there. But if the mastermind behind the whole operation was there you’d want a professional to ask them questions. Because once they know they’ve been rumbled they’re probably going to disappear.
I saw this ad a few months ago on YouTube and flagged it as a scam when I couldn’t find much information about the company. Never donate money through random sites. If you use platforms like https://www.gofundme.com/, at least you have the option to file a complaint if you find something suspicious.
They haven’t scammed nor inconvenienced a rich, well-connected person, so unlikely anything will happen. Remember that online fraud is effectively legal (10% of Meta’s revenue is from scam ads by their own estimates) as long as you only target the poor.
These scam campaigns have been going for years with people operating in the field across many countries - if there was an incentive to stop this it would’ve been done already, but since everyone’s making money why bother?
> file a complaint if you find something suspicious
Which will be piped to /dev/null, just like reporting scams on social media.
If you have content which is removed, or a moderation decision you wish to dispute, you can go to one of these bodies to get it reviewed. It cannot go to dev/null.
This doesn’t address whether flagging scams resulted in action. The bigger picture is the mismatched incentives for tech. Platforms are not quite incentivized to care about responding to user complaints, and do not give out information that lets us know what is happening independently.
To get to the point that complaints are actioned, those incentives need to be realigned. The ODS pathway, if used more frequently, increases that revenue and market pressure.
The ODS system is new, and I expect it will have tons of issues to discover. I wouldn’t be surprised it it is already weaponized.
On the flip side, platforms haven’t been tested or queried in this manner before.
Common pattern they had was:
- similar or same domains
- same messaging on their website
YouTube could have taken action, but it choose not to
I have a theory that it doesn't. Which set of companies' logic is more likely?:
Is LadyCailin a "tree-hugging liberal"? LadyCailin clicked on a lot of Sierra Club and PETA ads, so yes. Good, we will add LadyCailin to this list.
Is LadyCailin an "extremist right-wing nazi"? LadyCailin clicked on a lot of prepper and gold ads, so yes. Good, we will *also* add LadyCailin to this other list.
OR
Is LadyCailin a "tree-hugging liberal"? Well, they clicked on these ads, so we think so, but then they clicked on these other ads, so we're not sure. Then she clicked on these other ads, now we don't have any idea.
Speaking from personal experience: Because some people have used my phone number and email address as their own, I get emails for one political party and text messages for the other political party.
It doesn't make my ad profile useless to the people sending me ads.
Give your phone number to both U.S. political parties. Congratulations you will get spammed by both. I doubt they are cross-checking.
Their incentives contradict healthy behavior… :(
... the crimes they actually make a lot of money from.
However it's also a tricky business to be the adjudicator of what is and isn't a scam. You're going to have to deal with a lot of complaints from "legitimate businessmen".
- People who want to work in tech because it was a stable and/or lucrative career
- People who just want/love to code
- People who loved tech / think tech is cool
There’s also a degree of counter-culture that used to be part of the mix, which got jettisoned as tech became mainstream and mapped out.
The current state of Tech is unpleasant and alarming.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-tolerates-rampan...
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
Same with education. I am more than happy to pay taxes for an education system, even if I do not personally have children.
Public health systems vary with country. Private advocates say public sucks, until it is their turn to be scammed.
Public education is largely a scam to put 'original sin' of debt of children to society so when they grow up there is some plausible explanation that "we're a society" and they must feed into the pyramid scheme.
I'm not sure what nation you're from, but here, in the US, we pay a fairly significant part of our wages towards something called "Social Security."
If we pay a lot, during our working time, we can draw more, after retirement (and it is nowhere near a living wage -it was never meant to be).
In my country, we pay for education with property taxes.
Kids are not only getting classroom time. They inherit a whole baseline that previous taxpayers built: safer streets, clean water, courts that mostly function, vaccines, roads, libraries, stable money, and the accumulated tech and culture that makes modern jobs even possible. That bundle is huge, and it starts paying out long before anyone is old enough to “owe” anything.
Also, adults are not literally trapped. People can move, downshift, opt out of a lot, or choose different communities. Most don’t, even when they complain loudly, and to me that’s a pretty strong signal the deal is at least somewhat reasonable. Not perfect. Not fair for everyone. But not a cartoon pyramid scheme either.
If there’s a real fight worth having, it’s making the burdens and benefits less lopsided across generations, not pretending the whole social investment in kids is fake.
Let’s say I have a bag of bread, and I pass them down one by one expecting people to only keep one. You decide to keep two.
The human’s reasoning is often bulletproof:
I don’t have enough. You do. I’d didn’t steal from the person next to me, I took it from someone with plenty
^ No where in that reasoning is the possibility that in the aggregate, if enough people do that, you steal from each other.
—-
Insecurity needs to be rehabilitated before any form of support can be provided. Otherwise you get toxic results. How could charity possible go wrong? Easy - bad hearts are left untreated.
Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.
This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.
We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.
I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.
If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time. ”
--Franklin D. Roosevelt
There are plenty of capitalist nations that provide public healthcare on a large spectrum of coverage and quality.
"Aljin says treatment at their local hospital in the city of Cebu was slow, and she had messaged everyone she could think of for help."
The Philippines' constitution says access to healthcare is a human right. They have universal healthcare insurance, and public hospitals and medical centers.
The next one is the girl from Colombia. Colombia has a mostly public (with regulated private) healthcare system with universal health insurance.
The next one is from Ukraine. Ukraine has a government run universal healthcare system. Wikipedia tells me "Ukrainian healthcare should be free to citizens according to law," fantastic, but then it goes on, "but in practice patients contribute to the cost of most aspects of healthcare."
In first world countries with social healthcare systems like Canada and Germany and Australia, people with complex illnesses do not get coverage for unlimited treatments either, or general costs of being sick (travel, family carers, etc). There are many cases of fundraisers for, and charities which try to help, sick people in need in these countries.
Capitalism is not the reason not everyone with cancer is being cured and not chasing expensive treatments. Healthcare is something that you can throw unlimited money into. You'll get diminishing returns, but there will always be more machines and scans and tests and drugs and surgical teams and devices you can pay for. It doesn't matter the economic system, at some point more people will get more good from spending money on other things, and those unfortunate and desperate ones who fall through the cracks might have to resort to raising money themselves.
In capitalism it is easy and transparent: price, with the side effect of aligning society interests with those of the selfish individual.
Of course the strange and heavily regulated US health-care system is obviously far far away from a free market.
In socialism it's much more random: black markets, lists, lotteries, friends and network of connections. The side effect is that the most productive individuals are discouraged and punished, with the whole society lagging in effect.
Case in point: the EU that started lagging the USA so much in growth that ended up having to beg for basic defense when a blood-thirsty neighbor came hungry for land.
the market / capitalism won’t correct itself, much people want to call it God/ perfect
Regulation, anti-trust laws try to correct somethings but many politicians are against those things because they limit the profit that can be made, profit first, that’s the corruption
And no, no lists, no lotteries or any of that other lies the conservative US media is spewing out to keep the masses pacified.
I strongly believe, that if US citizens were to experience German healthcare for a year and having to go back to the US system, that there would be riots. Because I don’t think anyone with first hand experience of both systems would ever want to return to the US system.
There definitely are lists. You don't just get the surgery or therapy you need the next day. You get the next free slot in the list of people queuing at the hospital/practice that still has free slots.
For example the first appointment you can get at my state funded therapist if you call today, will be in june. How is that "not a list"?
Or like, if you call most public GPs in my neighbourhood, they'll all tell you they're full and don't have slots to take on any new patients and you should "try somewhere else". How is that "not a list"?
Anyway, do you not realize the fault with the system in your logic? Because if everything becomes urgent in order to bypass queues, then nothing is urgent anymore.
It doesn't fix the problem, you're just scamming the system to get ahead of the problem.
Even once I do hit the income threshold to switch back to private (switching back to fulltime work), I'm pretty sure I won't.
As far as doctor choice goes, I feel like I have more on the public insurance here (like 90% of the population) than I did with UHC in the early 2000's back in the US. I certainly have fewer financial surprises.
But you have lists, queues, lotteries, whatever you call it. That's not a lie. The fact you think lists are a vast right wing conspiracy demonstrates your government is not really forthcoming about your healthcare system. There are lists everywhere. There are ambulance wait times, hospital emergency wait times, various levels of urgent and elective treatment wait times. There are procedures and medicines and tests that are simply not covered at all.
Now, obviously USA has queues and lists too. And I could be wrong but I'm sure I've heard that US private insurance companies are notorious for not covering certain treatments and drugs as well. I don't know what it is exactly these right wing people are saying about healthcare, I thought they did not like the American "Obamacare" though.
> In socialism it's much more random: black markets, lists, lotteries, friends and network of connections. The side effect is that the most productive individuals are discouraged and punished, with the whole society lagging in effect.
Evidence: the vast majority of European countries who have socialized medicine and seem to be doing fine.
>Evidence: the vast majority of European countries who have socialized medicine and seem to be doing fine.
That evidence of socialism working well, only works as long as there are enough resources to cover the needs of most people, basically some of the wealthier European countries.
But when those resources become scarce due to poor economic conditions and/or mismanagement, then you'll see the endless queues, black margets and nepotism running the system.
Evidence: former European communist countries who experienced both systems and where in some, nepotism to bypass lists still work to this day.
Socialized systems don't work without abundance. How you generate that abundance is orthogonal to socialism since even countries that are wealthy on paper suffer from shortages and long waiting times in public healthcare leading to a gray-market of using connections to get ahead or more private use.
Ahead of Canada, sure (they come worst here in both scenarios) but behind countries like the UK, Germany & the Netherlands that do have universal health care.
Both actual capitalism, i.e. the bad thing, and this which can plausible be argued to be well-functioning market economies, are is often stabilized by adding elements of communism to the system-- publicly funded education, healthcare etc. This is one of the reasons why I as a vaguely socialism-influenced whatever I can reasonably be said to be see communism, i.e. a system characterized by the distribution principle "to each according to his need" as less revolutionary than the socialism distribution principle "to each according to his contribution". Communist distribution principles can coexist with ill-functioning market systems such as things which have degenerated into actual capitalism, whereas the socialist distribution principle can't.
The market is just reacting to the regulatory environment and all the political patches and shortcuts of same done to appease voters over the last 100 years. Fix that and the market will sort itself out.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm.
This allows decentralised decision making for large grained resource allocation - for example should we build a factory for shoes, or for toothbrushes? - and is a good thing, as central planning has been demonstrated to not work if applied to the whole economy. (the converse, no central planning to any of the economy, has also been demonstrated to not work!)
However that accumulation can be (and nowadays usually is) orchestrated by a corporate entity, which in an ideal world would be almost entirely beneficially owned by retirees on an equitable basis.
What has gone wrong, is that the benefits of productivity enhancements (since 1970?) have flowed to capital more so than to workers - which not least prevents them from forming capital themselves (savings/pensions), hence rising wealth inequality.
You won't have to worry about distributing advanced cancer medications when they don't exist in the Communist version, because they weren't discovered. You can't fulfil a need with a drug you never risked a giant amount of funding and effort to discover.
But don't worry your free market friends are killing it right now, for tax reductions
https://www.wired.com/story/how-trump-killed-cancer-research...
Also we don't need "pre-auth" and other Bullshit before we start standard treatments.
The real death panels are sitting in your Insurance Companies Offices as seen by the news coverage around United Healthcare et al lately
For comparison, the New York City public transport system (MTA) runs a deficit of about $3 billion. Six billion for universal healthcare in a country of 83.5 million people seems like a total bargain.
The German Healthcare System also has some historically developed peculiarities that don't make much sense in today's age, but they are difficult to address without pissing people off (The duality of Private and Public Health Insurance, allowing the first one to get rich and very healthy people out of the risk pool, and then loopholes to switch back into the public system when they grow older and don't want to pay the then high prices in private insurance)
The Hospital Reform is already working to reduce costs by reducing the number of small hospitals, and concentrate them into bigger ones. (As a side effect, quality of care will increase too, since outcomes are correlated with experience)
Also more care will be shifted to outpatient setting.
Otherwise we are fighting with the demographic change. But these problems are also hurting all other developed nations including the US, where funding problems in Medicaid are also expected in the next decades
tl:dr We have problems due to the demographic change, but these are in line with other developed nations. There are some efforts to address them, but politicians are hesitant to do real reforms, because old people have the most voting power
Yes.
To help you think a bit more clearly: the health insurance system is not a for-profit system, even though some people mistakenly hold on to the idea that it should be. It is a risk spreading mechanism.
I have three second-hand cancer experiences from family here in Australia (Dad, Mum and my half-sister - under 35/yo). All three were detected early thanks to regular checkups and screening (covered under Medicare), treated in major hospitals (Dad was in a rural hospital, Mum and half-sister in Metro major city hospitals) and are all alive and certainly not in debt. The biggest cost was parking at the hospital, drinks from the vending machine and the PBS medication (all PBS medicine costs $31.60 for adults, and $7.70 for concessions).
Any PBS medication has the full-cost price printed on the label for reference, more often than not the printed prices go from $300 - $2,000, but I remember that these aren't the full price anyway since our government collectively bargains for cheaper prices on OS medication).
I can't imagine having to pay for treatment AND the insane full price of medications, it must be so much more stressful for families going through cancer treatment.
Americans, don't let the media and your government tell you otherwise. Universal healthcare is cheaper [0] and more effective than whatever archaic system you have now.
I am so god damn proud of our system in Australia, it's not perfect, but damn it's so efficient for critical care, thank heavens for Medicare and the PBS.
Oh and for those that say "well doctors aren't paid very well"... they are. My brother-in-law is a surgeon and he's doing pretty well for himself, bought a new Audi last month for his wife, heading to Europe for a month-long holiday with his family and just moved into a new house.
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?most_...
The end of ACA subsidies is probably gonna collapse that approach.
Boy are you in for a ride. France will be first and Germany is on a good track for it within the next two decades.
So then you would expect life expectancy in the US to be higher than in Germany, France, UK?
It is not.
As we all know, American insurance companies never deny coverage, nor do you ever have to wait in an American hospital. /s
Even with waiting lists, people get healthcare. They get better health outcomes per $ spent. America can provide excellent cutting edge healthcare, which is especially great if you can afford it. At some point, you have to decide whether having most of the bell curve taken care of, is more / less important in terms of rhetoric and priority.
Yes, there is quite a bit to improve in the German system. No doubt there. But if I compare it to the abysmal situation in the richest country on this planet, I am left standing awestruck asking myself why. I really, genuinely cannot wrap my head around.
[1]https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor... via https://truthout.org/articles/6-in-10-americans-back-medicar...
Now maybe when I stop working that may be a different comparison. And its not like there is a choice, voting for a D doesn't magically get German healthcare.
You need to show that it has a chance of working (literature etc...) and it will be reviewed by a doctor from the "Medical Service" which is independent from the Health Insurers.
If they decide it should be paid, it will be paid (which is most of the time the case).
Otherwise you can go through the social courts. (No court costs for the insured person. You can get a lawyer reimbursed if you're poor)
If the US were to shift to that model today, a country already heavily in debt would have to either take on more debt PR increase revenues in a manner that they wouldn't have been willing to in order to fund our already growing debts.
The debate over whether public or private healthcare is better is all well and good, but first we should be debating how the US would pay for it in the first place.
Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
It's all very well and dandy that you can say "actually, there is a larger structural problem underlying it all" when meeting something bad, but it doesn't make that particular bad disappear.
You're absolutely right.
Local man embezzles $20,000 meant to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine.I mean almost the entirety of the US healthcare system is a industrialized scam engineered by middlemen
The incentives are there. Our economy runs on incentives. Create a vulnerable group and the sharks smell blood in the water.
Plus the phrase "cure" does a lot of heavy lifting. People seem to see a win here as being "here's a tablet, all cancer is gone."
So yes, we have spent an insane amount of money that can be ascribed to "cancer". (We've Also spent a lot on heart disease, diabetes and so on.)
But yes, we have got an extraordinary return on money spent. Treatments and survivability of common cancers (breast, prostate etc) have gone through the roof. Better screening, better education and much better Treatments lead to much (much) better outcomes.
Not all cancers are the same though. Some are harder to treat. Some rare ones are hard to investigate (simply because the pool is too small) but even rare cancers get spill-over benefits from common ones.
In terms of "cure" - that's not a word medicals use a lot anyway. Generally speaking we "manage" medical conditions, not cure them. "Remission" is a preferred word to an absence of the disease, not "cure".
In truth, we all die of something. Cancer is usually (not always) correlated with age, and living longer gives more opportunities to get cancer in the first place. So it's not like we can eradicate it like polio.
Just one example, prostate cancer today has a 90+% 10 year survival rate, in 1970 that was 25%
That’s not utterly transformative but I wouldn’t call it negligible either.
Replace the body.
The only fatal cancer in 2026 should be brain cancer.
Parents had enough problems to think about.
In a similar way we can say that every shop in Amazon can create own digital shop themselves, but marketing, sales channels and distribution is not easy to acquire.
Money goes in, and good feelings come out. It certainly serves a purpose, but not the intended one.
To put it in HN terms, this is what people here like to use to shit on Mozilla for how much they pay their executives while having zero insight into how much Firefox's for-profit competitors pay their executives.
Is the bottom line roughly:
Money received: 1000
Money used for good: 800
Labor: 200
Is that it?
Because I can assure you, that will not turn out well.
The same people that audit your taxes, roughly with the same consequences for lying. Except the IRS is far more likely to send unannounced auditors to NGOs than they are to send them to for-profit companies or individuals. It's more of a hassle to get/retain tax-free status than it is to simply pay your taxes like everyone else (as it should be).
> Is that it?
Let me guess: you haven't clicked on "view filing", which leads to a roughly 20-pages-long document.
Which could also include a QR code going to a gov website with details why this org was given the certification.
This isn't perfect but would certainly lower such incidents.
France cancer fraud trial begins (1999) [0] (the head of the charity was found guilty, imprisoned, and fined)
And you are less likely to be killed by a mob, as a bonus.
Do you know how many scammers are from India? Do you know how many scammers are from the US? Jeffery Epstein was from the US, is every US citizen now a pedophile?
How the country origin is related to them being scammers? They're scammers because they're shitty people, it's not related where they're from.
https://jacobin.com/2023/02/israel-law-of-return-extradition...
Same thing happened in my post communist country and the neighboring country too. Perp stole tens of millons through a banking scam in the 90s, then fled to Israel because he was Jewish and claimed persecution.
At which point should the pattern be acknowledged?
These monsters.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/b676/live/3589b...
Laws can be based on ethics, but moral judgments really should not be involved in their application.
Unless you want to live in a theocracy, of course.
Law in a democratic society is a manifestation of so-called social contracts considered binding for members of that society.
However, law in a non-democratic society can be the complete opposite, to the point of enabling immoral conduct, including but not limited to legal crime, persecution of political opponents, ethnic cleansing and offensive warfare.
Where are you seeing the hate?
In this book an old NGO worker explain very well how it work the business: https://books.google.dk/books/about/Blanco_bueno_busca_negro...
SilverElfin•6h ago
zwnow•6h ago
Braxton1980•5h ago
zwnow•5h ago
enneff•5h ago
kakacik•5h ago
There are many existing punishments - go after all their wealth, family and connected business, trusts etc. Simply ban them from western financial world. Publicly shame them and make their name a curse to spit on. Properly harsh jail and making sure all inmates know who arrived, I wouldn't expect kinder treatment than pedophiles get. And so on.
vladms•5h ago
toolslive•3h ago