It is the mythical man-month applied to charity. It takes time to get results, adding more money doesn't help.
Nobody wants that much cash in one lump sum, they want an anual income. If you give me my anual income (including benifits and supplies) and I can quit my current job to do charity work. If instead you were to give me a billion dollars, I can still quit my job to do charity work, but this time I'll be doing it from a very nice yacht or something else.
Money to charity is the same way: you are much better off funding a smaller amount over the years (as opposed to some other job they could do instead) than giving them money, either they waste the money - even prudant investing of money is a waste since it takes away time that could be used on the thing you want the charity to do.
Mm. Makes me realize the mythical man-month is also a good counterargument to the "superhuman AGI is imminent" predictions. The correllary in AI:
It takes time to get intelligence, adding more cycles doesn't help. For all the same reason throwing more money at programming problems doesn't make them go away.
Hmm I think it's probably better to get the lump sum and operate off interest. Even 1% of $50 billion yearly is $500 million. I think the foundation could manage to exist off that.
The problem might be solved - what should a charity dedicated to smallpoxs do with their 50 billion?
A good charity today might not be good tomorrow. Today they pay their officers a reasonable sum and the rest goes to scientists who get a reasonable sum. Next year they fire all scientists but one (the officers brother-in-law), and give everyone a massive raise. Science still gets done - just enough to stay legal.
Nobody wants that much cash in one lump sum, they want an anual income. If you give me my anual income (including benifits and supplies) and I can quit my current job to do charity work. If instead you were to give me a billion dollars, I can still quit my job to do charity work, but this time I'll be doing it from a very nice yacht or something else.
Money to charity is the same way: you are much better off funding a smaller amount over the years (as opposed to some other job they could do instead) than giving them money, either they waste the money - even prudant investing of money is a waste since it takes away time that could be used on the thing you want the charity to do.