The white-collar, non-profit NGO is infinitely problematic.

August 4, 2022

The white-collar, non-profit NGO is infinitely problematic. I will refrain from using the inside joke squeeb to describe them, and stick with easily accessible language for public consumption. I think this trend of making non-profit NGOs for everything is an example of cultural corruption and not distinct in analogy from the 501(c)4 Super PACs that have proved so corruptive to our politics and cultural discourse. On a very general level, an NGO is funded and supported, besides its private donors, by tax breaks and tax loopholes. Or what they call "favorable" tax filing conditions. Sure, to a certain extent they must exist because someone's got to do some of that stuff with government leftovers. But to keep harping on how important NGOs are and how we need to have more, and calling for putting all this effort into boosting them, is a particular Millennial fallacy. Let's not try to lobby to increase government waste in order to spin it off into corporate offices. I went to public policy school on the back end of the Millennial/Gen Z divide, so I can tell you, there's gonna be a problem. It's not that they are categorically bad: some actually do free press work. But more, than anyone would be comfortable with, are dark money operations, money laundering operations, or excuses to pay people for jobs that not only the government wouldn't pay people to do, but if you think about it, for stuff the government thought about or tried to pay people to do, and decided they wouldn't. A lot of people in those don't really get that what they are is lobbyists, and say they're in "government sector" work - which is, let me tell ya, what is making that whole corrupt-looking, "light sweet crude"-smelling Washington DC–Fairfax–Arlington Sprawl, really fucking sprawl.