Autumn: Dan's job is making it so when you give money to charity it goes to a different charity instead.
Dan: That's essentially accurate.
Lois: Wait, really?
Dan: The more positive spin would be that I make it so that when your donations would do nothing, they do something instead.
Dan: But both of those are true, really.
Dan: Whether it's good or bad for you as donator varies a lot from case to case.
Lois: I gave $20 to Unconditional Sharing last year
Lois: What did you do to it?
Dan: My group doesn't handle Unconditional Sharing. Well, not directly, at least. Our policy decisions do have some impact on how their funds get cancelled a few steps further down, but that's not really what you're asking about.
Dan: Other people with the same job as me would have taken that $20, along with $20 that some idiot gave to an anti-piracy group, and given $40 to people planting trees in Africa.
Lois: Seriously?
Lois: Why Africa?
Dan: Maybe not that exactly, but something developing world-related.
Dan: It wouldn't be anywhere in Asia, that's considered non-neutral for IP causes.
Autumn: That's racist, isn't it?
Dan: I don't think so, but it's a moot point.
Dan: When the people running charities are racist, having the cancellation procedures reflect that is actually the right thing to do!
Dan: It might sound bad, but the alternatives end up being worse in terms of incentives.
Lois: So my money didn't actually help with copyright stuff?
Autumn: It helped Dan stuff his pockets!
Dan: It helped stop an equivalent anti-piracy donation from doing anything to make copyright stuff even worse.
Dan: It probably didn't cancel out a full $20, because anti-piracy people are usually better at leveraging.
Dan: Whatever actual impact Unconditional Sharing could get with $20, you cancelled out the amount of money that an anti-piracy group would have used to get the same impact on the other side.
Lois: So then neither side does anything
Dan: They do if one of them gets more money than the other.
Dan: Weighted by effectiveness, I mean.
Dan: There's a lot of considerations that go into the formula.
Lois: None of this is anything like what they said they were going to do with my donation
Dan: They probably had it in fine print. Nobody likes to highlight how donations really work.
Autumn: Lois, think of it this way.
Autumn: It's like you're trying to order a pizza.
Dan: I guarantee this will not be a good way to think of it.
Autumn: And I'm trying to order thai food.
Autumn: And Dan's the one who takes our money before we can give it to the delivery drones.
Autumn: Then he buys himself a submarine sandwich that stretches from his bed to his toilet.
Autumn: So he can wake up and eat his way to his morning shit.
Dan: It's nothing like that, because that sounds like something I'd derive pleasure from doing.
Autumn: The sandwich is full of live mice and vomit.
Dan: Now you're talking.

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