The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Billionaire philanthropy is bad for society

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Philanthropy, the act of giving, the sharing of one's resources is an inscrutable facet of our social compact. But as global economic trends widen the disparity between the haves and have-nots, the act of philanthropic giving has come under increased scrutiny. In just the last 18 months, billionaires have increased their wealth by $1.2 trillion dollars as markets boom while the rest of the global economy crumbles. And in the spirit of altruism, billionaires have committed portions of this windfall to serve the people most in need. But is it really making a difference? A growing movement of scholars, thinkers, and politicians believe the time has come to call these philanthropic efforts what they are: expensive PR campaigns that valorize extreme wealth and perpetuate a status quo of crushing inequality. If billionaires wanted to help the world, they would push for higher taxes, a greater role for government, and a fairer division of society's scarce resources. Supporters of large-scale philanthropy argue the critics' arguments are simplistic and ill informed. Citizens should be angry at governments for letting the urgent problems we face as species fester for generations. It's billionaire donors, not governments, who are stepping up with creative solutions to some of the biggest global challenges. In our time, billionaire philanthropy is creating tangible benefits for millions of people around the world by addressing urgent public health crises, environmental degradation and pushing for accountability on behalf of all donors. The world is a better place thanks to billionaire philanthropy and we are all benefiting from their charity. Arguing for the motion is Rob Reich, the Director of Stanford's McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, co-director of Stanford's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and author of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How it Can Do Better. Arguing against the motion is Beth Breeze, the Director of the Centre for Philanthropy at University of Kent and author of upcoming book In Defense of Philanthropy due out this November. Rob Reich: “We should direct our scrutiny at the rich people for how they make their money, as well as how they give it away”. Beth Breeze: “Philanthropy simply means love of humankind. I'm in favor of more, not less human kindness in our society”. Sources: CNN, CNBC, ABC, and ABC News Australia The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail]. To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Jacob Lewis Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. You can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those 8 minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Billionaire philanthropy is bad for society. A new milestone today for billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Back in 2006, he pledged to eventually give away all of his Berkshire Hathaway shares to philanthropic endeavors.

He's out with a note today with his annual contributions to five foundations. And he says as of today, he's made a yearly contribution of shares this time around worth $4.1 billion. He says that puts in half a recent estimate. The world is more than 2,000 billionaires. Many of them are being asked to give half of their fortunes to charity. The giving pledge was created by Bill Gates, his wife, Melinda, and Warren Buffett. In a 60-minute interview, the founders say the super wealthy need to make a big commitment. I'm going to turn now to a huge giveaway by McKinsey Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

She has now donated some $3 billion. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promising to give away 99% of his shares of the company to charity. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. Philanthropy, the act of giving, the sharing of one's resources with humanity is one of our most basic universal traits as a species. But as economic inequality winds the disparity between halves and have-nots, the act of philanthropy itself is coming under increased scrutiny. In just the last 18 months, billionaires around the world have increased their wealth by a staggering $1.2 trillion.

Many, to their credit, have come forward and committed significant portions of their immense fortunes to serving the people most in need. but is any of this really making a difference? A growing movement of scholars, activists, and politicians believe that the time has come to call out these philanthropic efforts for what they are. Expensive PR campaigns that valorize extreme wealth and perpetuate a status quo of crushing inequality. If billionaires wanted to help the world,

they would push for higher taxes, a greater role for government in society, and a fairer division of the world's scarce resources. We live in this age in which the rich and powerful do everything they can to help, except to change the system atop which they stand, and often use philanthropy, weaponize philanthropy, as a kind of anger management policy for populism to douse those flames, as a way of laundering the reputations that they have sullied by harming society and the way they made their money.

and as ways of actually increasing their political power and influence in this society through alleged acts of giving. Supporters of billionaire philanthropy countered that these arguments are simplistic and informed. Citizens should be angry at governments for letting the urgent problems facing society fester for generations. It's billionaire donors, not governments, who are stepping up with creative solutions to some of the world's biggest global challenges. In our time, billionaire philanthropy is creating tangible benefits for millions of people around the world by addressing urgent public health crises, environmental degradation, and pushing for accountability on behalf of all donors. The world is a better place thanks to billionaire philanthropy, and we all benefit from their charity. And when you're lucky enough to have substantial wealth, what are the possibilities?

You know, you can build a pyramid. You can have, you know, 400 people fan you. There's kind of a limit to consumption. And so then you have to say, what do you feel? What are you affiliated to? What really counts for you? If you feel like you're a citizen in the world and you want to help all of humanity,

then you think where is the greatest injustice? On this installment of the Monk Debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, billionaire philanthropy is bad for society. Arguing for the motion is Rob Reich, the director of Stanford's McCoy Center in Ethics in Society, co-founder of Stanford's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and author of Just Giving Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better. Arguing against the Motion is Beth Bree, the director of the Center for Philanthropy at the

University of Kent in the United Kingdom, an author of the upcoming book, in defense of philanthropy due out this November. Rob, Beth, welcome to the Monk Debates. Wonderful to be here. Good to be here. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Philanthropy is, for better or worse, a place where I've spent a lot of my adult professional career.

And I think like many people, I have at times conflicting and unsettled views about philanthropy and its role in, society. So to have the opportunity personally to connect with two people who've thought long and hard about this issue is just very meaningful to me. And I know our audience similarly is going to be fascinated by this debate in this conversation. Our resolution today, be it resolved, billionaire philanthropy is bad for society. Rob, you're arguing in favor of the motion. so we're going to put a couple minutes on our proverbial show clock and turn the program over to you.

Thanks so much. I'm a philosopher by training, so I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty details, but rather operate at 35,000 feet. And I want to argue that billionaire philanthropy is indeed bad for society. Now let's start with the obvious, which is that philanthropy has a positive connotation to it. The idea, the root of the word is love of humanity, philanthropy, the donating of one's resources or time for the benefit of other people. Nothing possibly sounds bad about that. So there seems a special burden to claim that billionaire philanthropy would be bad for society. And I want to offer you three separate reasons why this is so. Reason number one, big philanthropy, philanthropy by billionaires,

is almost definitionally in tension with democratic societies. Democratic societies prize the political equality of all citizens and the collective shaping of our lives together. Billionaire philanthropy inserts the voices and preferences of the wealthy, amplifies them to large scale to help them and them alone determine the shape of our collective well-being. Big philanthropy is the direction of private resources to some public benefit, It's therefore an exercise of power by the wealthy.

Anywhere in a democratic society that concentrated power exists, it deserves our scrutiny, not our default gratitude. And when we direct scrutiny at the practice of billionaire philanthropy, we discover that in society after society, billionaire philanthropy is an exercise of almost entirely unaccountable power. Unaccountable power that is low in transparency, that is settled. up for the billionaire's preferences alone to determine what happens with the money. Billionaire philanthropy often lasts beyond the life of the donor. It's set up in many places to be perpetual, which is to say the preferences of the donor extend from the grave to strangle the

choices of current and future generations. And finally, billionaire philanthropy is lavishly tax advantaged, although, of course, those rules differ from Canada to the UK to the U.S. So we have a circumstance in which billionaire philanthropy is a concentrated exercise of power by the wealthy to undermine the ordinary arrangements of democracy to put billionaires in charge of our collective affairs rather than citizens. Thank you, Rob. A stirring opening statement, a lot for us to dig into there. So appreciate how you're setting out your arguments and ideas. Beth, your opportunity now, a couple minutes on the clock. give us your key points you're arguing against our motion today, be it resolved, billionaire

philanthropy is bad for society. Thank you, Rudyard, and thank you, Rob, for setting out your stall. So we're here to discuss if billionaire philanthropy is bad for society or not. So I thought it might be a good idea to begin with a few things that I think are bad for society. Hunger is widespread and causes the death of a child every 10 seconds somewhere in the world. Billions of people don't have safe drinking water or basic sanitation. sanitation. The whole world is facing a climate crisis and we're edging ever closer to the point of no return. It's also bad that more than half of the global population faces daily injustice because

of their gender, their race, their sexuality, their physical abilities, and we're still coping with the global pandemic that's pushed back a lot of progress that had been made on these issues. Those are things, unlike philanthropy, that I think are clearly bad for society. And interestingly, they're also all things that billionaire philanthropists are actively working on and funding right now. It seems to me an extraordinary privileged position to be worrying about whether or not some rich guys have their name on a building or getting some kind of reputational kickback when we consider the scale of the problems that need more, not less philanthropic funding. And it also seems a bit hypocritical for those of us who've benefited from billionaire philanthropy. Rob, your university was founded by the billionaire couple Layland and Jane Stanford,

and I've had scholarships and research grants from private donors. If something is truly bad, then we don't get to pick and choose who benefits. Why is it okay for us, but not other beneficiaries who may be in much greater need? If critics don't walk the talk, then it's just cheap talk, isn't it? But it's cheap talk that's going down very well with a receptive public who are fed up of elites and are looking for someone to blame. But it's a simple populist explanation that places all of the consequences of what I see as government failure, like inadequate regulation, failure to levy fair taxes, failure to provide decent public services,

and somehow makes that the fault of the minority of the very rich who do give, whilst overlooking the vast majority of billionaires who don't give. How on earth have we got to the point where it's less problematic to buy a yacht than it is to try and feed hungry children? And that's why my core point in this opening statement is to point out the consequences of damaging the reputation of philanthropy. By constantly running down wealthy givers, we're demoralising those who are trying to do the right thing with their spare money, were making fundraising even harder than it already is,

and it risked deterring future donors. So what I think is bad is not philanthropy, but hypercriticism of philanthropy, that overstates the problem of power and overstates the negative impact on democracy and understates the positive potential and contribution of philanthropy, which, as Robb has just pointed out,

simply means love of humankind. I'm in favor of more, not less human kindness in our society. Thank you, Beth, a sign of a great debate. I am completely confused at this moment of where I stand on this resolution. I know a lot of my listeners are joining me in appreciating the extent to which

you've both made compelling opening statements here that are pulling our minds and are thinking in very different directions. So let's go to rebuttals now. This is a chance for both of you to react to what you've just heard. So, Rob, you're up first, a couple of minutes on the clock. What do you want to connect with in terms of Beth's opening statement? Beth has given a compelling catalog of the social ills of so many societies, from hunger to poverty to lack of access to clean water.

and the list goes on. And no one could possibly disagree with Beth, that these are indeed social ills that deserve our attention and that the world would be much better and humanity would be much better off if we could attempt to solve these problems. However, pointing to billionaires as the solution to these evident problems is an enormous mistake. And I want to give you two reasons why this is so. Number one, Beth, it is true that several billionaires do direct themselves to certain types of causes of the sort that you identified, hunger, medical provision for the poor. But so many billionaires are obsessed with what you might call their idiosyncratic passion projects, blasting themselves, for example, into outer space,

rather than directing themselves here at the ills on Earth. When we look at the actual distribution of billionaire philanthropy, we find that it goes far more often to indebted. the wing of the museum and the art that sits in it rather than hunger, pestilence, or water access. So billionaires choose on balance not to direct themselves at these problems. Now, second, even if they were to do so, Beth, let's imagine a world, a fantastical world, I would claim, in which billionaires collectively organized themselves to direct their philanthropy to these evident social ills, we still have to ask ourselves, do we want our most urgent social problems solved by the whims of rich people among our midst. Rather, we should

direct ourselves as citizens to trying to rejuvenate and re-energize the very democratic institutions of the government that is the only possible realistic source of a solution to these problems. If Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos decided to direct all of their philanthropy to solving hunger, they wouldn't have enough money to eradicate hunger across the globe. Only the scale of a government or a state can possibly do that. And looking to billionaire donors distracts our attention from our core obligations as citizens to solve these problems collectively through the state, which is the ultimate backstop for ensuring that basic needs are met.

Thank you, Rob. your opportunity now, Beth, for your own rebuttal of Rob's opening statement or what you've just heard now. Thank you very much. What I'm hearing in the case that's being made here is an awful lot of mudding of waters, of pitting things as opposites when, of course, they're not opposites. The more crucial mudding of waters here is this idea that we either solve problems by tax or we solve it by philanthropy. They're counterposed as if either one or the other and that if you're in favor of philanthropy, that therefore, you're, you're against a generous welfare state and you're against higher progressive taxation. And that is simply not true. I'm in favour of closing tax loopholes, having higher tax. Many billionaire philanthropists are on record of saying the same thing. But the critics seem to be rather selective in not hearing that.

They've created a fantasy of a billionaire philanthropist who somehow wants to run public services. I've been interviewing and meeting philanthropists for about 15 years now. I have never met one. yet who wishes to take over or replace government. In fact, quite the opposite. Rather, what big donors are looking for is to do something new, something extra, something transformational, something they can be proud of, something that relates to their own life experiences of causes that they've had some personal connection to. And what tends to happen, unlike Robb made the point that the wealthy donors, it's them and all about them. They get to choose exactly what happens. and there's this huge issue of power,

that to me speaks of somebody who's not been around philanthropy and fundraisers in the nonprofit sector because in reality what happens is a nonprofit group that's working on a cause and a donor who has an interest in a cause get together and they say, hey, you've got the resources and the money, we've got the expertise and the feet on the ground in staff and volunteers, how about we get together?

Because money on its own can't achieve anything. Everyone knows that Andrew Carnegie funded, about two and a half thousand libraries around the world. What many people don't realize is that 225 communities were offered a Carnegie Library, and they said, no, thank you. No, thank you. It's not a priority for us at the moment. No, thank you.

We know we'd have to pay the running costs afterwards, and we don't want to do that. Or no, thank you. We don't like the man in his money. So donations have to be accepted as well as given. Great. My opportunity now to join the debate and think up some questions that are on the minds of our audience. and maybe to come to you first, Rob, and give you an opportunity, one, to respond to Beth there, possibly with some examples of billionaire philanthropy that you think is distorting or polluting of the public good,

but also just to push you a little bit on Beth's point that what we're really discussing here is civil society. We're discussing free and autonomous individuals and agents coming together, matching ideas with capital to improve the public good. Why shouldn't we celebrate that? Why shouldn't we celebrate the kind of spontaneity of billionaire philanthropy or the philanthropy of the ultra wealthy? Because precisely because it is so connected with the immediate, diverse, and complex needs of society. Yes, there's a role for government, but let's do this also. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. There's a sense in which billionaire philanthropy is indeed meant to replace or displace the activity of government.

I see that from problem after problem after problem, this idea that government is inefficient, it's dysfunctional, let the smarter sector, the people with the business success now take over some of the solution. And so I don't see that as an activity in which citizen voices are lifted up in civil society, but rather as an exaltation of billionaires' preferences and their distinctive expertise, alleged expertise in problem solving. Last thing, I guess I want to ask you earlier about what you said, about civil society and a kind of, there's always a dance that goes on, the person with the money and then the nonprofit

with the ability to say yes or to say no in taking the money. There are very few billionaire philanthropists I'm aware of who, as it were, take grant applications over the transom. They look for worthy nonprofits who send in a an application that they then decide to fund. That's how smaller-scale philanthropists often work, but the billionaire philanthropists very often don't even have websites. If you wanted to try to get money from McKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos's ex-wife, you might be receiving a phone call that announces you're about to get a multi-million dollar infusion of cash, but you have no idea the source it comes from. You wouldn't be able to apply for the grant. You don't know how to ask for a renewal. The idea that

there's a two-way dance with one person having all of the money and a whole bunch of other people trying to get it makes a mockery of the idea of contract. Contract is when two people exist on a level playing field of power, the genuine ability to consent or dissent from the terms of the contract. When one person has all the money, the billionaire, and the non-profits so desperate to get some of it, there is not a level playing field, and the nonprofits very happily bend themselves to the preferences of the wealthy, so that billionaire philanthropy becomes subcontracting the vision of the philanthropist to the nonprofit to execute what the philanthropist wants to do. That's not civil society that makes for a flourishing democratic society. That's a shaping of our collective civil society

to the preferences and whims of billionaires. Hi, Redyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10 plus year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world, and you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.w.com.

I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. So let's go a bit deeper on this because I think this is an issue that I've agonized over a bit, personally having had a career in part in philanthropy, Beth. And it's that governments here in the West, Canada, the UK, the United States, we assemble ourselves as equal citizens in a democracy that elect governments who then spend society's resources for better or worse, but on the basis that they are democratically elected and democratically accountable. With billionaire philanthropy, we're going in a very, very different direction.

Are we not? Where that accountability goes away. And it really, as Rob characterizes, it is about the preferences of an elite select group of people who outside of their philanthropy have immense power in society simply by virtue of their wealth, the businesses they own. They're already very powerful. So I want to hear a bit more from you, Beth, about the accountability piece and why you're not concerned about, I know this is a grandiose phase, but kind of state capture where some of the most critical moral and ethical issues of our time that we're not concerned about, I know, this is a grandiose phase, but kind of state capture where some of the most critical moral and ethical issues of our time that we need to solve as citizens together, homelessness, poverty, mental illness, addiction.

We are now ethically and morally outsourcing to this celebrity billionaire culture to solve on our behalf. So that's, that proposition is yet another one that I hear quite often, which I still fail to see the lack of evidence for. Let's think about who's influential in society at the moment. when they speak, people listen, they get invited to governmental meetings. They have a very popular following. I'm thinking of people like Greta Thunberg. She's not elected. She does a wonderful job.

We're so delighted that someone like that has had the bravery to campaign and to have their voice heard. But the holding influence outside of elected politics is not a unique feature of philanthropy. Martin Luther King wasn't elected. Gandhi wasn't elected. celebrities from the sports world, music world, that people admire and follow and listen to, are not elected the royal family, not elected. It's again placing all the blame for something that we worry about

who should have influence and deciding that only philanthropies, uniquely philanthropies, have this problem and let's blame them for it. I think it's also hard to point to many billionaire philanthropies who do have this power. and Rob spoke about this huge reputational sort of boost that big donors get from giving. I don't see it, Rob. I see a huge amount of criticism of billionaire philanthropists.

I see almost no criticism of non-giving billionaires, but I see an awful lot of giving billionaires. And the ones I interview and talk to say things like, you know, we just have to accept from the outset that what we try to do will be rubbish. You know, there's some really interesting hypotheses that are being put forward by yourself and other critics of philanthropy. These hypotheses say that philanthropy is an attempt to grab power, that philanthropy is an attempt to whitewash a reputation. Why not test those hypotheses? Because just asserting them again and again doesn't make them true. We need to collect data,

find out what else is going. I've been interviewing philanthropists and they talk about their motivations being gratitude for a good life, for things they've benefited from their country or from particular institutions like universities and hospitals. They talk about empathy, compassion. They talk about religious convictions. They talk about duty. Your own institution, Rob, Stanford was founded because Leyland and Jane Stanford lost their son to illness when he was about 14, I believe. They channeled their grief into creating an institution so that all the children of California could benefit from them. John D. Rockefeller set up the Rockefeller Medical Institute after his grandson Jack died of scarlet fever when he was just a baby. And that Rockefeller

Institute has since done huge amounts of good in terms of tackling some of the main diseases, created 26 Nobel Prize winners and so on. This is data, this is evidence, just imagining that they're doing it to launder their reputations or doing it to grab power or to have influence. I think that these hypotheses need testing. So, Rob, I mean, the quintessential example of the billionaire philanthropist is, you know, Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, which is impressive. Over 1,000 employees, a immense resources, tens of billions of dollars, other major billionaires, Warren Buffett, joining Gates, working on very difficult problems in the developing world, in countries where

there are not robust democracies or, let alone functioning states. I want to hear a bit more from you about why that type of billionaire philanthropy. Let's step aside for a moment from whether about the Sacklers or people who are kind of greenwashing themselves. in our own cultures, in our own societies, why isn't that kind of international development-focused philanthropy at the immense scale that a figure like Gates can implement that giving on? Why isn't that just a simple net benefit, net positive for humanity? I think that is also a common intuition. If a rich person shows up on the scene and tries to improve a desperate situation, that's got to be seen, as you put it, as a net benefit.

I'll begin just by first reminding folks that looking to the Gates Foundation as an example of an especially large, especially wise entity that isn't involved in reputation laundering is at least questionable because Bill Gates didn't start doing his philanthropy until the United States government

had sued him as a ruthless monopolist for his work. Microsoft, and the philanthropy came in the wake of that ongoing lawsuit as a way, I think, fairly of thinking about reestablishing his reputation socially from being an entrepreneur who was celebrated to someone who was seen as anti-innovation, anti-competition within the marketplace. But as you invite me, Roder, let's set that aside. Let's imagine that the money has all been legitimately earned. He's now got this generous and worthy aspiration to solve problems across the world for desperately poor people.

Billionaire philanthropy, even when directed at worthy causes, and directed in an effective way it worthy causes, because I want to grant that the Gates Foundation has had a positive effect in certain respects in public health. However, it interacts with the ability of governments to improve on their own. Sooner or later, the Gates Foundation will withdraw from the scene in global public health,

leaving the existing infrastructure of these other states to pick up what has been happening. The interaction between billionaire philanthropy sucking out resources from governments and placing them within the philanthropic enterprise is a problem itself to worry about. Bill Gates can't simply install his or her preferred leaders within the public health sector in other states. That would be an illegitimate exercise of power. that the citizens of those states wouldn't accept. And we know from lots of other experience across the world, some countries simply disinvite foundations and philanthropists from entering into them because it's seen as unwelcome interference in their internal affairs.

So when the Gates Foundation has a convincing story to tell about how its public health efforts are also sending in motion an opportunity to set up enduring, stable, well-functioning government, then I'll feel like there's a potential net benefit. But I don't think we have such evidence, and in fact, I worry we have the opposite. It's a displacement of a distraction from the task of building stable, well-functioning government, not a path toward it. So, Beth, let's hear your take on that. Rob's setting it, in effect, an argument that this internationally, this billionaire philanthropy is a kind of form of neocolonialism.

It's people outside of these cultures, imposing. their views and potentially leaving these societies and countries with expectations, legacies, programs that they may or may not be able to continue on or may not have even started in the first place if the King Leopold of the 21st century in the form of Bill Gates hadn't shown up. Sure. So I think we go back to this lack of understanding of how it works on the ground. In all of these cases, the main theme, the main practice is collaboration.

So the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is, as we've said, the biggest in the world. It cannot achieve anything it's trying to achieve without working with other donors, with international governmental and non-governmental organizations like the World Health Organization, and also without recruiting and working with the experts, scientists, medical practitioners, healthcare, frontline workers and so on. What Bill Gates brings to the table is resources, of course, but also it's long-held expertise in that domain. It's giving up running the company to become a professional philanthropist, which is an interesting development rather than just simply the check writing type of philanthropy,

but actually rolling up the sleeves, becoming an expert, educating themselves on their topic, which is what many of these big givers do. It's their resources. They want to understand where it's going and spend it well. And again, we're underestimating the ability of those they work with to say that's not the strategy we're going to follow. That's not how we're going to do this. Let's talk this through. I think it's difficult to overstate how much partnership is in collaboration and working together and having shared goals is really what defines philanthropy on the ground. Rather than this idea that if you're walking with a big wallet, that's it, you're in and everything happens. do you think everybody's a dupe? Do you think everybody's that easily bought? That's simply not how it works in practice. But while we're talking about Bill Gates, I want to just go back to something, a point that Rob made earlier and that he often makes this idea of philanthropy seeing itself as smarter than, better than, poised and ready to replace government. I do not recognise this. And Bill Gates himself is on record as saying, we know that philanthropy can never and should never take the place of government. How much clearer do you want him to be? The one thing Rob and I do agree on is that only government can take these things to scale.

But the role that philanthropy plays is in identifying new needs, having some energy and risk-taking to decide to work at how to tackle them. If it goes wrong, then there's no government money loss. There's no shareholders upset. The risk is all absorbed by the private donor. But if it goes well, the happiest philanthropist is one who then hands it over to government. That is their idea of success. They thought of a new way to do something, and it's become mainstreamed, and it's now organized and funded by government. So if we do nothing else in this debate, I would really love to put to bed this idea that there's a secret cabal of billionaire

philanthropists who are eager to become public civil servants. They really are not. That is not fun. That is not what they want to do, and it's simply not possible. If it were true that billionaire philanthropists, on the whole, saw themselves as I'm operating in the model Beth just described, piloting experimental programs or projects for social problem solving, which, if successful, are then happily handed off to government to scale up, I might be inclined to say, billionaire philanthropy operating in that mode is a net benefit for society.

But as Beth suggests, the test has to be what actually happens in practice. And even the Gates Foundation, which I, I will concede is one of the better run, more interesting, more long, long range outfits in the world, still, I think we can point to various problems. Let's go back to something that's very urgent right now, the COVID-19 pandemic. And the Gates Foundation, as Beth said, had been early on the scene before the pandemic had begun to call attention to, you know, the worries about what a pandemic could cause across the world and to be prepared for it. They had hired experts. They had genuine knowledge about how to think about the pandemic. And then once it arrived, how to confront it. And when Bill Gates was

presented with questions about whether or not the vaccines that he had helped a champion should be open-sourced so that the intellectual property would not be owned by private pharmaceutical companies, he rejected that idea, keeping in place the very idea that private companies should profit as it were off confronting the pandemic. I see that as symptomatic of the business person's mentality taken out of the marketplace, installed into philanthropy as a do-gooder, preserving the background system that's part of the problem.

And then we should look at the rest of philanthropists and what they're doing. And I have to just disagree with Beth, that they are not the kind of people who are looking for opportunities to test out pilot projects and happily, gladly hand them off to government to scale them, but rather are denigrating government,

complaining about its inefficiencies and dysfunction, and pointing to themselves as superior problem solvers. We could go through a bunch of examples if it were useful, but rather than seeing this virtuous sort of path or dynamic of philanthropic experimentation handed off when successful to government, I see the reverse dynamic. I see philanthropists trying to take the place, of government. And the space

sort of charades of our billionaires are just a good example of that. The exploration of space was once the activity of governments funded collectively with the pride of citizens seeing a competition on the global stage between countries to get to the moon or get into space.

And now it's a contest between elderly billionaires to blast themselves into orbit. I don't see that as progress at all. Let's before we go to closing statements, let's talk a little bit about possible solutions or changes that both of you would like to see in philanthropy. Because I think I've heard from both of you that you agree that fundamentally philanthropy, love of our fellow human being, is a civic virtue and it's something we need

more of, not less in society. So, Beth, do you have a prescription, an idea as to how, I guess in your view, maybe it's a question of optimizing, not eradicating billionaire philanthropy? What's your take on that? That's absolutely right. I see philanthropy as improvable and not illegitimate. And I think that's a really important distinction. And I think critics don't need to actually explicitly say it's illegitimate. They can just treat it as illegitimate by the language they use, by the assertions they make. And as I say, that demoralizes and deters donors. But I think a very different take is to have constructive critique that tries to improve philanthropy. Because look, nobody. thinks that philanthropy is perfect. How on earth could it be when it involves fallible human

beings? It's been an extremely one-sided debate for quite a long time. So yes, to your question, Rudyard, of course philanthropy is improvable and something else that people who are not in the sector, Rob said earlier that he comes up this as a political philosopher. When my training is in anthropology and I now work in a sociology and social policy department, we tend to do, get our data and do our research by more participative methods, by rolling up our sleeves and getting involved with the communities we want to study, being part of their activities, interviewing them, surveying them, and so on. And I could spend my entire time attending conferences on how to improve philanthropy and do it better.

I could spend my entire time speaking to foundation staff as well as actually donors who want to learn. Donors pay a lot of money to learn how to become a better philanthropist. There is an absolutely endless array of training, books, efforts, magazines, articles. How can we give better? How can we work better with the non-profit sector? Which seems to have completely passed by the critics. I would also love to know, Rob. You know, I've been reading your work for many years. We all appreciate your scholarship.

My students enjoy reading your work. But I think it was 2005 when you first started to critique philanthropy. 16 years later, what improvements do you see? do you see the developments that I'm seeing in terms of participatory philanthropy, trust-based philanthropy, core funding, trying to reduce the burden on grantees? What do you see as the ways in which philanthropy is improving? Terrific. Well, Beth, thanks a lot for the question. And you mentioned that the first thing I wrote was in 2005. And maybe it's worth sharing because this is itself an answer to your other question about the kind of philanthropist who wants to, as it were, replace the state or aims.

to act in a smarter way. As a philosopher, unlike perhaps you or others, I didn't come to this topic with experience in philanthropy. I didn't have data collection about how philanthropy works initially as a stimulus for this. I came to it for a very personal reason and a personal experience, which was here in the Bay Area, you know, this Silicon Valley and a kind of growing wealth inequality in the region and in the country, I had my first child who turned school age and sent him off to the local kindergarten in the public school district of Palo Alto, where Stanford University is located. And on that first day of school, he was sent on with a package of materials that included a welcome to the school district and glad that the parents had chosen this exceptional educational

opportunity and an invitation to donate $2,000 per child to supplement the public school budget because the school district leaders deemed it inadequate. And in Palo Alto, I discovered, many, many parents and indeed local businesses make philanthropic donations to support the school district's budget. Why is that a problem? Well, it exacerbates the inequalities in school funding between school districts. Wealthy people in Palo Alto can donate far more money. and it bypasses as well the core source of the problem, which is the school finance system in Sacramento, or wherever it happens to be generated as a public budget.

Wealthy people are substituting their actions as donors and calling themselves civic benefactors instead of taking heed of the core source of the problem, which is the public school finance issue. That's just one example, and that got me launched into this entire topic. I want to ask you, reciprocally, Beth, if I may, a question, which is perhaps we can agree that when we wonder about billionaire philanthropy,

the problem is less about philanthropy, because I agree with you, it's improvable, but it's more about billionaires. In other words, if the philanthropy we had was done by people with relatively less power than the billionaire has, if it was done by ordinary donors like you or me, casting their, you know, their dollars and their volunteer time into civil society, I would indeed find that an enriching and democratically enhancing activity. Maybe the problem is billionaires, and that's what's illegitimate, not the philanthropy. Would you agree with that?

I have a point to come back on that. So, well, let's start with that first. The most of the causes that I donate to also raise money from millionaires and billionaires. There is not a separate set of organizations that only fundraise from billionaires or receive checks that come in the post to them from billionaires and a step of organisations that just look to the ordinary donor, a fundraiser would try to have a portfolio of income sources which would include lots of small mass contributions,

a few mid-sized ones, and then you know you hope for one or two big donors. And it forms what we call the income pyramid so that if you lose your big donor, you've still got that massive small donors at the bottom. And if something awful happens like the pandemic and you lose a lot of small donors, you've still got the big donors at the top. this is how fundraising works in practice. Big donors and small donors collaborate and work together because on the whole, they care about the same things. Cancer, you know, rich people and non-rich people get cancer. So every year, the cancer charities are the most successful fundraising charities.

Rich people and poor people care about hunger and poverty and lack of clean water in poorer countries. So every year, that's another of the top causes for both rich and poor. So perhaps I can reassure you that in reality, much of what you worry about is maybe not actually happening and that billionaires and ordinary donors do work together. But I do want to go back to your school example because it's such a good example that you've used over the years. And the more I've thought about it, I think it's helped me work out where I differ from you. What you present as philanthropic failure looks an awful lot like government failure to me. And you just said then that what's happening is a bypassing of the poor problem, which is insufficient public school finance. That's the problem in the US. In the UK,

the way we fund schools is not from local property taxes. It's done at a higher level so that you don't get this crazy situation in the beginning when poorer areas with kids who may have more problems have less money to fund them. We redistribute funding according to need. And if you have a school with particular amounts of poorer kids measured by parental income, they get a top-up, they get the pupil premium, an extra amount of money. That's how civilised societies run their tax system. First of all, we pay more tax in the first place. And secondly, we allocate on the basis of need, not by some arbitrary, do you live in a rich

area or a poor area. We do still do a bit of fundraising in UK schools, but it's a matter of a few pounds here or there. It's not in the thousands of pounds. So what I don't understand is why people put so much energy into talking about philanthropy be problems when clearly the problem is systemic government levying of taxes and spending of taxes. I'm genuinely confused by that. The heart of the problem lies with government, not with private donors who are maybe trying to

sort out the problems that are there, but didn't create them in the first place. This has been a fascinating conversation, but we need to move to closing statements. So, Rob, I'm going to give you the opportunity in your closing statement to come back and react to what you've just heard from Beth. but Beth, this is your opportunity now, a final two minutes on the clock here, to sum up the key point or two that you want to leave our audience with as we consider our motion today, be it resolved, billionaire philanthropy is bad for society. Let me just go back then to my core point.

Why do I care about this? Why do I, why am I making a defence of philanthropy? It's not because I think rich people are particularly thin-skinned or need me to be an apologist or defender for them. I'm pretty sure they can cope quite well without. me. My concern is about the costs of criticism. Who at the end of all of this, if we dent and damage the reputation of philanthropy, who will suffer? And I see it from my own practice in the sector and from my relationships in the sector that we are making it harder and harder for people

to raise money because people are not wanting to do not see being philanthropic as an aspirational thing to do with their money. It seems like too much grief. They worry about getting it wrong. they think they're going to get shot down in flames as a tax dodger or an egotist or a reputation washer. And so, frankly, it's just a lot easier. There's only three things you can do with money. You can either spend it on yourself, you can hand it on to your kids, or you can give it away. And we're making the last of those three options less and less appealing. And I really struggle to understand why that's a good use of our time.

So in conclusion, I think it's unarguable that philanthropy is a force for good. if you're the parent of one of those millions of children who's only alive today because of philanthropically funded vaccines, medicines and health care, is also obviously life-enhancing in less dramatic situations if you're at the theatre or in an art gallery or a sports facility that's funded by private donors. Philanthropy saves lives, it extends lives and it improves lives. And if some people choose to use their money to help others,

then we can acknowledge that they didn't have to do that, and we can certainly praise and thank them. We're going to give the last word in this debate, be it resolved billionaire philanthropy is bad for society to you, Rob. So in a couple minutes, what are the key points that you want to leave our listeners with? Well, thank you for the opportunity. And, Beth, you make a number of extremely persuasive points. And one of the things you say which I want to agree with and yet celebrate is that we now are living in an age in which directing scrutiny and criticism at billionaire philanthropists is more common. A generation ago, Bill and Melinda Gates,

along with Bono, appeared on the cover of Time magazine of the People of the Year for their efforts to act philanthropically on the world stage. It's typical for names to be adorned on buildings and for people to know and understand the lives of long dead people, not for their business prowess, but for their philanthropic activity. In other words, we've lived through a long period of default civic celebration and gratitude towards donors rather than scrutiny. And because billionaire philanthropy is an exercise of power over the rest of us, it deserves our scrutiny and indeed our criticism in order to try to improve it. So I celebrate this age of scrutiny and critique. Journalists who try to cover the activity of philanthropists just as they do corporate activity

and political activity. It's another source of power in society. and it deserves investigative critique, not de facto celebration and gratitude. Now, let me conclude by reminding the listeners that we're arguing about whether on balance billionaire philanthropy is bad for society. And having agreed with Beth already that, of course, philanthropy is improvable in certain respects, I want to remind everyone who's listening that we should direct our attention to the total practice of billionaire philanthropy, rather than talking about any particularly individual or virtuous donor, all of us will be able

to point to examples of billionaires whose philanthropic projects we celebrate and we see good in. And we also, if we paid more attention, would find donors whose projects we disagreed with and thought subtracted from the social good. So I invite us all to think about the aggregate practice of billionaire philanthropy, to look at the system rather than the individual, to do a way. with inquiring about the intentions of the donor and to think about the incentive structure of the overall system. And when we look there, I think we can only conclude that billionaire philanthropy undermines the well-being of a democratic society, erects the philanthropist as a problem

solver over the work of ourselves as collective citizens, and on top of it does so very frequently at taxpayer expense. Billionaire philanthropy is not the exercise of the liberty of the rich person to decide what to do with his or her wealth. Billionaire philanthropy is the generously tax-advantaged subsidization of the preferences of the billionaire to substitute for those of citizens and elected officials. On balance, I think we have to direct criticism and scrutiny at billionaire philanthropy and change the basic system in which it operates. Change our tax system in order to collect more taxes and to remove many of the tax advantages that attach to philanthropy. Get rid of the default extension of perpetuity so that philanthropic projects last beyond the death of the donor.

Change the transparency requirements of philanthropy that allows it mostly to operate in the dark and insist that where philanthropy exists, there's far more information about the philanthropists so that we as citizens and journalists can scrutinize those projects. When we change the system, perhaps it will be the case that big philanthropy is good for society. But at the moment, we have to conclude that it's bad. Thank you, Rob, and thank you, Beth, for a terrific debate. So many important issues that we've explored. I'm coming away from this conversation, edified, and informed in a way that it's going to cause me to do some thinking about the nature of philanthropy in my own life and in society. So mission accomplished, appreciate the civility and substance that you both brought to this debate on behalf of the Monk Debates community.

Thank you for coming on the program. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Rob and Beth. If you have some feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at Monk Debates, MUNK. debates with an s.com. Also a reminder that our free weekly members only podcast is yours to listen to any time when you become a basic member. You can do that at www.w.munkdebates.com. You get all kinds of great privileges and perks, including a terrific second weekly monk debates podcast. Thank you for lending your time to our efforts to restore the art of public debate,

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