The Moral Rot Files: On the perversion of philanthropy

Axios comments on how some modern billionaires see philanthropy -- it's not pretty:

1 big thing: Silicon Valley's perversion of philanthropy

Under the new conception of philanthropy, the act of making the fortune itself is the philanthropic act. There's no need to give any money away — feel free to go ahead and drop more than $220 million on Malibu property if you're so inclined. Just by dint of getting rich, your philanthropic work is largely done.

This vein of thinking is now solidly in the Silicon Valley mainstream.

Google founder Larry Page said in a 2014 interview that the most philanthropic thing he could do with his fortune would be to give it to Elon Musk. As New York magazine's Kevin Roose explained, Page was "saying that companies like SpaceX and Tesla are themselves philanthropic organizations, and that supporting those companies financially is preferable to supporting charitable causes in the traditional way."

PayPal and Palantir founder Peter Thiel said in 2016 that seeking revenge on Gawker by bankrolling legal cases against the company was "one of my greater philanthropic things that I've done."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was asked in 2018 how he could "do good with" his fortune. His answer was that "the only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel" — something he described as his "most important work."

OpenAI founder Sam Altman decided this year that his organization's philanthropic mission would be best served by converting it from a nonprofit to a for-profit. 

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen's techno-optimist manifesto, published this week, generalizes such thinking. "Technological innovation in a market system is inherently philanthropic, by a 50:1 ratio," he writes. In other words: Every dollar an innovator like Andreessen makes for himself equates to a $50 philanthropic donation to society at large. Why even bother giving away the dollar, if that's the case.

Well, there we have it. Delusional (or mendacious) billionaires drink their own Kool-Aid. That's how they get delusional. And jaw-droppingly arrogant. Every dollar a billionaire makes gives $50 to charity. I can feel the love now!