I have seen the idea of “earning to give” mentioned in a few places, too. Don’t know a whole lot about it, other than the obvious.

It strikes me as suboptimal, though. Because money is not the only thing needed to do important work, and it seems to me that the “earning to give” approach makes it so that the only thing you have to give is money.

Which is important, to be sure, and in my experience harder to get than hen’s teeth. I look at people who can make money easily with awe, like they are a species of wizard.

But I can easily see all that money going essentially nowhere, as the people who accumulate it give it to non-profit organizations and the non-profit organizations use almost all of it to run themselves and pay their employees. A lot of administration is done, a lot of documents are created and a lot of people are paid, but how much progress is actually made towards … whatever it is the non-profit organization is supposed to be doing?

It seems to me like a lot of charitable giving doesn’t really do much beyond keep the non-profit industrial complex going, and I’m not sure how much I care about that.