I seriously have never, ever, ever understood the thing where Unknown Person gives money to Good Cause, then Unknown Person turns out to be Bad Person for some reason, and then Good Cause decides to give the money back to Bad Person. Even if it is true and Bad Person is indeed quite bad, money is fungible, giving the money away means Bad Person no longer can do Bad with it, and Good Cause is good. Take the money. Forgiveness is optional, but take the damn money.
Why does the typical person donate? To feel like a good person? The charity wants to stop evil people donating to it. There are some really good people who donate to help others. And some ok people who want to say “I donated to X, so I must be good”. As soon as one blatantly evil person donates, the whole reputation laundering for the middlingly ok people system fails. People donate as a costly signal. And its only a good signal if there is a strong correlation. And one really evil person donating will greatly weaken the correlation.
If you put something sufficiently filthy in a load of washing, all the other cloths come out dirtier than they went in. The same holds true of reputation laundering.
Plenty of charities have ways of receiving anonymous donations. They wouldn’t do this if they wanted to actually avoid receiving money from evil people. They would only do this in order to avoid being seen to take money from evil people.
Why does the typical person donate? To feel like a good person? The charity wants to stop evil people donating to it. There are some really good people who donate to help others. And some ok people who want to say “I donated to X, so I must be good”. As soon as one blatantly evil person donates, the whole reputation laundering for the middlingly ok people system fails. People donate as a costly signal. And its only a good signal if there is a strong correlation. And one really evil person donating will greatly weaken the correlation.
If you put something sufficiently filthy in a load of washing, all the other cloths come out dirtier than they went in. The same holds true of reputation laundering.
Plenty of charities have ways of receiving anonymous donations. They wouldn’t do this if they wanted to actually avoid receiving money from evil people. They would only do this in order to avoid being seen to take money from evil people.