October 23, 2007

Size, in the abstract  

Ezra Klein has a clarifying post here about charity vs social policy and how they should fit together. A couple things strike me: First of all, I wonder about scope. Are we talking about smallish charitable gifts or the recent billionaire-philanthropy fad? I'm guessing both, but I think we should probably take them as separate phenomena. Billionaire philanthropists who have the power to effect policy on the societal scale can actually crowd out government -- wasn't there was a case recently where congress cut funding for education because that's the domain of the Gates Foudnation?

While it might be commendable on the part of the very rich individual to give one's fortunes back to society, I find it a little disturbing that an individual can hold that kind of sway over policy. Isn't that a bit undemorcatic? It seems to me when billions of dollars are to be spent in a policy context, it should be the elected government that makes the decisions about how.

Comments
barrett  {October 24, 2007}

What gets even more interesting is when you consider government programs, particularly those mandated by ballot proposition. How did that proposition get on there? Was it voted up or down based on actual enlightened self-interest or on the basis of who had the better (or more comprehensive) ad campaign?

It's maybe better when money is allocated directly to a cause by a billionaire than when that billionaire uses much less money to fund an ad campaign to allocate the money from the public treasury.

paul  {October 25, 2007}

Yeah, don't even get me started on propositions and direct democracy. What a mess.


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