I'm voting this up because it seems a heartfelt reaction against figuring out that charitable giving is its own scam -- a scam by well-meaning people all out to do good in the world, but a scam. By that I mean that there is no feedback loop in place to assure the donors that they're wrong. Every deal is one to save the day. Every idea is some great idea from one place transplanted somewhere else. There's a business in assembling ideas into attractive memes and then getting rich people to make themselves feel better by paying for them. A very big business. So hats off to Buffett for pointing it out. I especially like the term “conscience laundering”

Having said that, I call bullshit here. While he's done a bit of fumbling around at what his end of the problem looks like, and he's certainly correct that preventing slavery beats the shit out of having free wi-fi, I'm not feeling he has any better idea of what the hell he's talking about than the folks peddling the latest charitable cause. And he admits as much. So as a plea for the system being broken, count me in. As any indication of way forward? It's not in the essay.

I also want to point out that everybody seems to understand that you make money in your life one way, you may find value in a completely different way. But people giving money, most of which are rich, seem to be completely detached from this concept. Working in a factory for two bucks a day and not starving, while watching your family grow up and being involved in some religious or civic group might be a freaking ton better than not being "exploited" We cut ourselves slack for finding value in things other than money, but we do not allow the same privilege to others. Because charities run on dollars, we tend to subconsciously value their lives in dollars as well. Bad premise.

Since the solution space is so thin, I'll take a flyer on what he might like to see. As opposed to the latest in charitable wizardry, my ideas and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

Societies evolve by the flow of information and goods contributing to an open market. Information flow to people? Education. Unrestricted goods flowing to an informed buyer? A win for all parties. Innovation and solutions formed by cross-pollinating folks with radically different backgrounds and knowledge? Another win for everybody. It's all information and trades. Bad societies control information and trade. Good societies let a thousand flowers bloom and grow by productive creative destruction. So far, many folks are on-board with this. But what we continue to forget is that forms of society itself is just another structure that can benefit from these same principles.

My position is that the problem here lies in our hidden assumptions. Every charitable intervention has a bunch of a priori assumptions made about what would work or wouldn't. As Buffett said, many times it's just playing MadLibs with good ideas. This is the wrong way to look at the problem, and will continue to lead to suboptimal solutions.

If you're looking to do something radical, encourage governmental units to become much smaller. Instead of having one third-world country rule tens of millions over a large area, replace it with a hundred smaller governments with much less land area. Create zones where completely new ways of getting along can be tried -- a new form of socialism, radical objectivism, whatever. Instead of arrogantly thinking we know the answer to the problems and they must fit into one of our predefined categories and work inside existing societal structures, work on giving people ownership and control over trying zillions of their own ideas, and let's all watch and see what works for them. In this way, we actually create a huge pool of new information that didn't exist before about what works or doesn't work in various circumstances instead of just rehashing theory. This information can be shared and will have value to many millions more. And then we can all move forward.

Our problem is that we insist on taking highly-complex and intricately-detailed problems and then solving them by banging on them with feel-good hammers of convenient and easily-understood slogans from our own life experiences.