No.
Money does not flow like water through pipes, and you cannot just siphon some off without affecting the whole. Dollars are packets... each one is addressed to a particular destination, and sent to accomplish a specific purpose. If we want money for {cause}, we must choose to address dollars to that cause to the exclusion of other purposes.
/rant
(I know that melling specifically mentioned giving up bottled water, but there has to be a compelling reason to do so that EVERY dollar/packet sender agrees on.)
millions, if not billions, are wasted every day by politicians propping up their political power yet by some miracle if we just took more money they could spend it more wisely.
if is the near impunity and preponderance of so many taxes that has led us into a situation with untold wealth in government hands and near financial accountability for a good portion of it.
Many love to lambast Federal spending but you would be aghast at how much of county, city, and state, funding is now going to pay. California, thirty thousand plus retirees pulling down 100k, nineteen thousand in Illinois. All justified because they were paid a lot working for the government. Twenty billion per year in retirement just from CalPers, twelve billion in Illinois. That is pension numbers, not active employees, which far outnumber them!
anti-tax rhetoric exist because politicians use the public money to grant largess to insured voting bases, the very people working in their jurisdictions and trying to FUD you in going along with it.
It isn't yours, because however mandatory it was you paid it to them, and when you give it it ceases to be yours. At any rate even the richest among us are making comparatively miniscule contributions in the scheme of things.
There are plenty of things the government does that I like, and I would sure like to pay for those ahead of say, funding for wars I don't like or finding new and indirect ways of killing people (by this I mean military spending), but I pay my taxes with the understanding that this is all part of the deal.
It's more than that.
Tax money was never yours to begin with. You owed it to the government by default. The government just allowed it to touch your bank account temporarily before collecting it.
Consumers can vote with their dollars. I’m not sure why you don’t think we can’t channel money in various ways. A lot of money has gone into AID’s research, for example, and a lot of progress has been made.
We spend enormous amounts of tax payer money on research that isn't reproducible.
Lots of research isn't published.
Research that is published is often produced in paid journals that restrict access.
We need to upend the research industry. We need more of a sci-hub approach to research and less of an elsevier approach.
But in reality, you are unlikely to get a $1000 from me even for the cause I find extremely important. For all I know, my money is going to end up in the pocket of some medical research center director, who is basically a politician and a fraud, with an income far surpassing mine to start with. And the new car he buys will provide zero help to solve the problem.
Basically, I believe much more that government will spend my tax money wisely (which I don't believe, obviously), than I believe academia is able to somewhat efficiently convert money into solutions. And it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong, it only matters that I'm not the only one like that, and it isn't even a human problem as much as the nature of how things are: and that exaplains, why the whole "there's so much resources(/money) in the world, why cannot we..." argument is silly.
Then if we double the research spending and double the effectiveness, we’ll get 4x the research.
> Give up bottled water and donate the money to medical research for a few years?
This is a false "we". There is no coherent group with similar goals you're talking about; just a mass of humans who care more about drinking bottled water than medical research.
just because I drink coke doesnt mean I care more about drinking coke than spending money on NASA.
> just because I drink coke doesnt mean I care more about drinking coke than spending money on NASA.
In your specific example, you can't easily give money directly to NASA, so it's a bit murky.
Just because you drink coke does mean you care more about drinking coke than spending money on animal shelters, the red cross or cancer research.
I, personally wouldn't feel bad about it; everyone, excepting a few weirdos, is like this.
"Action is distilled intent"
The reality is that you need a good marketing team like Breast cancer and such to get funding. Even my alma mater have a dedicated group reaching out for donation from graduates. You have to sell your cause and appeal to it so that potential donator can relate; basically target the emotion not the logical side of people for donation.
At least this is what I think is needed.
The US alone is a $20 trillion economy.
Harvard has a hedge fund of almost $40 billion, Yale is about $30 billion, ...
We spend $18 billion on bottled water yearly.
There’s a lot of money in the US economy that we just need to figure out how to get into basic research.
Give up bottled water and donate the money to medical research for a few years?