On Philanthropy

Yeah, so, I'm a big fan of lending club or whatever, because in theory people are lending directly to other people, cutting out certain entities who can break the law without going to jail because they are too big to fail.

There is a similar thing for donating.  Its actually micro loans for the "developing world," so you technically aren't giving away your money, however you aren't given the interest (because its given to the partner organizations or something), so you are giving away its time-value or whatever its called.

Anyway, if you want to help out other people, here is my referral link.  Kiva said it would "give" me $25 in my account if someone clicks on that, which makes me skeptical, because where does the $25 come from?

Anyway, since we are on the topic, there is also donorschoose.org which I know about because of some TED talk that was apparently not inspiring enough to remember much about it, except for...oh wait its coming back to me.  Some guy did some experiments and found that when people spend $5 on themselves, it doesn't really increase their happiness.  However, when they spend $5 on other people, it does increase their happiness.  Also, the amount of money you spend on other people doesn't matter regarding the happiness, so I typically choose to be a cheapskate and give them like $20.