Google Voted Most Likely to Succeed

Today was the last chance to vote in Project 10 to the 100, which describes itself as a kind of opinion-gathering engine that is designed to find consensus about which of the world's problems or issues should be the focus of philanthropic energies. I find the rhetoric of surplus in their publicity materials interesting.

Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big.

In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the simple wisdom that beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people.

It looks as though the entries were often driven by particular interest groups who still urge pet projects that may ignore the organizational and systemic character of real NGO or non-profit work. I was particularly suspicious to see "social entrepreneurship," a popular neoliberal buzzword among the choices.

(I voted for public transportation! Yay Paris Metro, Aichi maglev train, and London double-decker bus.)