Philanthropy is a billionaire's way to moralize his immoral hoarding of wealth.
At the annual Courage and Civility award function, the world’s second richest man - Jeff Bezos - announced that this year’s award receiver would be Dolly Parton, a famous country singer, who would receive $100 million to fund the charities of her choice. Not only this, in an interview with CNN, Bezos said that he’s going to give away most of his $170+ billion worth of wealth, which, according to current estimates, goes up by $205m daily, to the “charitable” causes. (Sarcastic air quotes: mine)
Upon hearing a billionaire’s philanthropic gobbledygook, it’s common for the rank-and-file public to sing their praises. This kind of news is an orgasm for the mainstream media operatives as they are constantly looking for ways to bootlick their lords like the hunters on safari look for prey. The news coverage of a billionaire being a philanthropist is so splashy and fawning that the urge to take a picture of that billionaire, hang it on the cleanest wall of your house, and worship it all day long becomes irresistible.
We’re constantly told that billionaire philanthropy helps the needy among us or it helps us tackle the problems that we face collectively. Even if we take what they say at face value, then how come there are more philanthropists than ever before, and the wealth inequality of today rivals that of Pharaonic Egypt? This means philanthropy isn’t doing what its proponents claim it does. Modern philanthropy is understood as an act that the historical figure, Robinhood, is well-known for - transferring money from the rich to the poor, but it’s as detached from reality as the existence of Santa.
Modern philanthropy is a giant reputation-laundering and tax-evading scheme for the rich and the powerful. Out of the many ingredients that billionaires use to prepare the marination that they can dip themselves in to hide their true colors, philanthropy is the most important one. It achieves what every billionaire must seek to sustain their illegally built kingdom - public approval. The day we started believing that the world’s wealth inequality can be solved by the world’s billionaires was the day that the irony died forever. Saying that a billionaire who amassed his wealth by robbing the people and the planet is going to fix wealth inequality is a death blow to irony.
Philanthropy is an oxygen mask for the reputation of billionaires who suck the oxygen out of the world and force us and the planet to suffocate. For someone so evil who spent most of his life exploiting human labor on a global scale, philanthropy has been a time-tested formula to appear as a saint. Billionaires look generous and benevolent only when they swaddle themselves in the cotton wool of philanthropy or charity. When Bill Clinton was first asked about his connections with Jeffrey Epstein, he tried to illuminate his character by babbling about philanthropy: “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science,” Clinton told New York Magazine in 2002
If social well-being is as close to their heart as they claim it is, they should first start paying their fair share to the government and respectful wages to their employees. The fact that it’s not happening is a testament to how less they care about society.
The kind of public reaction that the news coverage about billionaire philanthropy receives would have been understandable if the hoarded wealth was accumulated morally or if the money being “given away” was actually going to better the lives of the rank-and-file public, but the fact that people still admire billionaires even when their wealth is neither just nor does it help people in any significant way should drive everyone crazy. Billionaire philanthropy is as much of a solution to society’s problems as smoking is a solution to respiratory problems.
In an interview with CNN, Bezos said philanthropy is “really hard,” which is true because if you google the definition of philanthropy it’s this: “the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes,” which is completely opposite of the principles Bezos and ilk encompass to sit atop the hierarchy. Therefore, what he and the likes of Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey does is fauxlanthropy which is A-B-C easy - giving out dollars to the non-profits you control, and as a result, avoiding paying taxes would be easier than getting your unethically accumulated money taxed to be deployed democratically for social use on any given day.
In the article Billionaire Philanthropy is a Scam, the author writes:
It’s great that there’s public recognition of charitable foundations’ role in sheltering the fortunes of the uber-rich—most are only required to spend five percent of their assets on furthering their charitable aims every year—but even when this money goes where it’s meant to, it does so free of democratic purview.
Without passing through what Jason Farbman calls the ‘formal mechanisms that put tax-based, public funding in the realm of democratic decision-making,’ billionaire philanthropy serves only to put greater control into the hands of capitalists—privatising the common good and increasing their already oversized influence over our lives.
The argument that “Billionaires should exist because they give back to society through philanthropy” gets shattered into pieces when studies conclude that middle and lower income classes provide more share of their money to charity than the uber-rich allegedly generous billionaires. Yet, no one calls you a “philanthropist.” No one invites you to an interview to show the world how kind-hearted you are. No one asks for your opinion about the problems we face collectively. No one sets up a red-carpet gala as an appreciation for your generosity.
You know why? Because it ain’t about philanthropy, it’s about reputation-laundering of the rich.
What if I call Hannibal Lecter, a fictional serial killer who eats his victims, a chef? As soon as I call him a chef, you’d call me an idiot, LOL. A billionaire is as much of a philanthropist as Hannibal Lecter is a chef.
The more you learn about the parasitic nature of billionaires, the more you’d experience gag reflexes when someone tries to feed you “billionaires are our well-wishers” kind of shit.
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