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This week, a single pioneering donor gave gifts worth $640 million to hundreds of advocates of equity, environmentalism, public health, and gender justice.
Does anyone know how much advocates of space exploration, nuclear power, or good city governance received this week?
Does anyone know how much advocates of space exploration, nuclear power, or good city governance received this week?
When the directions of intellectual, ideological, artistic, and cultural philanthropy are lopsided by five orders of magnitude or so in one direction rather than another, it's hardly surprising that society follows in that direction.
A tremendous number of people seem to think that investing in businesses or working on technology balances out this kind of philanthropy somehow.
But better businesses and technology don't make a society's need for intellectuals, culture, art, or ideology go away.
But better businesses and technology don't make a society's need for intellectuals, culture, art, or ideology go away.
Unless businesses or technologies somehow prevent people who oppose them from using or benefitting from them (which they don't), then they have no impact or balancing effect on the future of society at all.
They just further empower the philanthropically and politically active.
They just further empower the philanthropically and politically active.
Posting irately on the internet or doing electoral politics are also totally ineffective counterbalances to philanthropy.
You can't critique or vote MacKenzie Scott into not donating or donating to something else.
You can only argue or impress her out of it.
You can't critique or vote MacKenzie Scott into not donating or donating to something else.
You can only argue or impress her out of it.
MacKenzie Scott is of course just synecdoche here for society as a whole. You can't critique or vote society into a new direction for the future.
Who is going to argue and impress human civilization into its glorious spacefaring future?
Who is going to argue and impress human civilization into its glorious spacefaring future?
The idea that MacKenzie is "destroying wealth" or "wasting money" is comical.
Her "wealth" is fictitious, socially constructed. This isn't the Middle Ages. She's not tearing down coliseums. If anything, by spending it, she is making it real by converting it into something else.
Her "wealth" is fictitious, socially constructed. This isn't the Middle Ages. She's not tearing down coliseums. If anything, by spending it, she is making it real by converting it into something else.
She is exchanging her money to shape the future intellectual, cultural, and ideological direction of society. It's just that simple.
In the long run, that's a lot more real than common Amazon stock or Vanguard ETFs or whatever.
In the long run, that's a lot more real than common Amazon stock or Vanguard ETFs or whatever.
Don't forget to check out last week's thread on philanthropy and its consequences:
https://twitter.com/mmjukic/status/1767312647710560406
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