I’ve been really enjoying lately the commentary of Anand Giridharadas, particularly his thoughts on billionaire philanthropy. To quote and possibly paraphrase the wise Ricardo Semler, if you’re a billionaire and feel the need to give back, you probably took too much in the first place. There’s an open question right now, whether the billionaire ruling class still feels vulnerable to popular revolt, or whether they feel they’ve consolidated power enough to simply pull up the draw bridge. The actions of the most prominent billionaire philanthropists suggest they recognize that it is not in their interests to be seen as as nakedly greedy and power hungry as they in fact are.
This brings us to the fig-leaf of philanthropy. The rich believe, given their massive success in private industry, that they are more wise and effective than governments, and therefore should be allowed themselves to administer how their largesse is distributed. This is of course an idea which is absolutely core to Republican and global conservative ideology. The state should not tell us how to distribute charity, we will do it ourselves. Of course we need to look no further than the American president’s personal charity to see how well that works, in which he essentially used it as a money laundering vehicle and spent the charity’s funds on purchases of ugly paintings of himself.
If we look to the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world we find a less nakedly corrupt model, but one in which we find tremendous power consolidated in the hands of a very small and most importantly completely unaccountable group. No one is forcing their charities to make sure that ALL children have access to the charter schools they fund or that they also extend their philanthropic medical care to politically unpopular groups like black trans sex workers. This is of course why the rich resist taxation with all the powers at their disposal, and advocate instead for voluntary private philanthropy. Philanthropy is voluntary and can be immediately withdrawn the moment it threatens their wealth or power. Government mandated programs funded via taxes of course, can not be so easily withdrawn from.
