"Philanthropy" is just another way that oligarchs take tax-free control of our society and shape it to their whims. A fine example of this is Bill Gates - with no educational training or experience, he used his fortune to push failing methods on millions on American kids.[1]
Bezos is a great creator of poverty. He is the wrong person to try and fix it. We need to just make these oligarchs pay taxes and living wages, full-stop.
Potentially hot take: charitable donations (perhaps over a certain small amount) should not be tax-deductible. "Philanthropy" by the ultra-rich is essentially just them deciding where their tax dollars go.
I just finished reading the book "human universals" which mentions that we're neither in a full democracy nor a full autocracy, so we're in a de facto oligarchy.
So where as I've often sneered at Russia for it's oligarchs we clearly have the same issue. Perhaps the Western oligarchs have earned their money more transparently, but they're still oligarchs.
Also one of the human universals is that we admire generosity in leaders, so these grandiose gifts are what oligarchs love.
Gates also has no educational training in Computer Science / Engineering nor Business, and he's seem to have done pretty well in those areas. :)
There's plenty of room to throw rocks at billionaire philanthropists, but Gates is more knowledgeable about the areas in which his foundation operates than the heads of most well-known non-profits and relief organizations.
> Gates is more knowledgeable about the areas in which his foundation operates than the heads of most well-known non-profits and relief organizations.
This is laughably absurd. Come on.
Edited because I was still thinking about this
Who do you think knows more about Malaria, Bill Gates (who is incredibly knowledgeable about Malaria) or Dr. Pedro Alonso who runs the WHO's malaria program?
> His professional career began in The Gambia in the 1980s. A study on the validation of verbal autopsies was followed by the scientific assessment of the efficacy of Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) as a preventive tool against malaria. The utility of such nets was, at the time, controversial, and the publication of new results in The Lancet[1] was critical for the launching of subsequent studies confirming first evaluations. Based on this evidence, WHO recommended the universal use of ITNs as a vector control tool, since a pillar in the fight against malaria. It is estimated that extensive distribution programs of ITNs can claim responsibility for 69% of the 663 million of averted malaria cases in Subsaharan Africa between 2001 and 2015.[2]
..
> With the support of the Hospital Clínic and the University of Barcelona, he founded in 2006 the Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB). In this institution he accomplished one of his most renowned works, the contribution to the clinical development and impact assessment of a new malaria vaccine: RTS,S. In collaboration with the Manhiça Health Research Centre in Mozambique, he implemented two proofs of concept that established for the first time the efficacy of the vaccine in infants[3] and children aged 1–4 years.[4] These results opened the door to subsequent assessments and to a Phase 3 clinical trial performed in 11 African research centres. Ultimately, this vaccine received a positive assessment by the European Drugs Agency, in 2015,[5] while the highest expert committees at WHO have recommended that it starts to be utilized, as of 2018, in pilot programs in three African countries.[6]
I appreciate you editing to acknowledge that Gates does, in fact, know a _lot_ about these topics (the main point I was trying to address with the parent post).
I was thinking of your example (and others in the WHO) as exceptions when I said "most". I more had in mind people who run organizations like the Red Cross.
Anyways, did not mean to denigrate the non-political / non-figurehead appointments.
Bezos is a great creator of poverty. He is the wrong person to try and fix it. We need to just make these oligarchs pay taxes and living wages, full-stop.
[1] https://www.philanthropydaily.com/gates-philanthropy-failure...