NationStates Jolt Archive

A few friends and I were watching TV, and an advert for a pet charity (a dog rescue home, I think) came up. One of my friends then tore into me because I said there were much more deserving charities out there.

I'm just curious as to what everyone thinks - Of course animal cruelty is bad, but this advert was asking for £2 a month, the same amount as another ad asking for money for polio and tuberculosis vaccines for africa. I cant help feeling that the money would be better spent on this, or cancer research, or child cruelty charities.

Yes, there are more deserving causes. However, people are free to choose what to do with their own money and time.

I donate to both the RSPCA and its NI equilavent, the USPCA, by direct debit. I give money to Cancer Relief UK and Age Concern on a more intermittent basis. However, I'm a misanthrope, so it's not unexpected that I donate more often to the animal charities.

its not that people care more about animals its just the fact that seeing an animal suffer is probably something you will rarely see whereas starving Africans is something the west has gotten used too

Basically it’s a subconscious thing

I regularly donate to the city animal shelter, and I work for a child abuse prevention nonprofit.

...am I covered?

i think theres room for pet charities.

its sorta like that whole "why do we have a space program when our schools suck?" thing. do we have to wait until we have a perfect society before we can go to mars?

if you have a soft spot in your heart for animals then its not wrong to spend your money on them rather than human charities.

i think theres room for pet charities.

its sorta like that whole "why do we have a space program when our schools suck?" thing. do we have to wait until we have a perfect society before we can go to mars?

if you have a soft spot in your heart for animals then its not wrong to spend your money on them rather than human charities.

The problem is that if I had a choice between saving 10 human beings or 5 human beings and 5 dogs, I would have to chose the former.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an animal hater - our family has a dog and a cat, and my father is a vet - but I personally value human life far more than animal life, and would'nt mind seeing a big chunk of that money going towards helping humans.

Not to mention people are partial towards cute. Fuzzy puppy's cuter than homeless man, so people are more willing to donate to the puppy.
There's differences in human donations too. For example, there are loads of cancer donation people, but you never hear about autism. It's all relative.

I tend to prefer animal helping donations because human-helping donations are far from black and white. For instance: There are charities for starving people in Africa. While starvation is bad, I must ask myself why they are starving in the first place. Will my donation help them or hurt them in the long run? Will saving the Africans actually hurt the entire African population(excluding the evil warlords and genocidal maniacs) in the long run? Is there a better solution elsewhere, that is faster, cheaper, and way more effective? Was it a good idea to take away the deaths that "plagued" us or has that come back to bite us in the ass with poverty and starvation? It's niether black, nor white. There's only a couple shades of grey.

The problem is that if I had a choice between saving 10 human beings or 5 human beings and 5 dogs, I would have to chose the former.

I would save the 5 dogs and look for 5 more to save while the people are drowning or whatever they're doing that they need saving. Unless I personally knew one or more of those 5 people, and I really liked one or more of them.

I regularly donate to the city animal shelter, and I work for a child abuse prevention nonprofit.

...am I covered?

what a great person!

*is shamed*