Douglas_Knight comments on The Last Days of the Singularity Challenge - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 February 2010 03:46AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 27 February 2010 10:46:09PM 1 point [-]

charities can gain political power by quoting a larger number of individual donors

Could you give an example?

I doubt that the above charities are interested in the political power that can be bought that way.

Comment author: Document 28 February 2010 03:14:04AM 2 points [-]

Could you give an example?

I can't, but item five here makes a similar statement.

Under US tax law, a 501(c)(3) public charity must maintain a certain percentage of "public support". [...] If, over a four-year period, any one individual donates more than 2% of the organization's total support, anything over 2% does not count as "public support".

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 28 February 2010 06:24:58AM *  2 points [-]

That's a reason for large donors to diversify. It is not at all a reason for small donors to diversify.

Comment author: JGWeissman 28 February 2010 06:45:29AM *  0 points [-]

Edit: The parent, before being edited, at the time I responded, as I recall, read:

That's about large donors, not small donors

It now reads:

That's a reason for large donors to diversify. It is not at all a reason for small donors to diversify.

I am disappointed by this departure from LessWrong's excellent track record of not abusing the edit feature to change the context of responding comments.

End Edit

The point is that the more total money they get from small donors, the more money large donors can give without going over certain percentages of the total that have arbitrary legal significance.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 28 February 2010 06:50:00AM 0 points [-]

No, that's not the point.

Comment author: JGWeissman 28 February 2010 06:57:30AM 0 points [-]

I meant, that's the point of Document's quote from SIAI's statement about the value of small donors. It may not be an example of what ciphergoth was talking about, but it is about the importance of small donors.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 28 February 2010 07:11:52AM -1 points [-]

So, arguments are soldiers?

Comment author: Kevin 28 February 2010 07:32:55AM 0 points [-]

Not much of an argument here.

This law does not provide a good reason for individual donors to diversify, but it does provide good reason for non-profits to actively solicit from small donors, and it shows that small donors are important.

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