Priscilla Chan’s decision to stop funding the school she opened to help struggling families shows the risks for communities reliant on wealthy private donors.
Priscilla Chan’s decision to stop funding the school she opened to help struggling families shows the risks for communities reliant on wealthy private donors.
Libertarian types tell you all the time that this is what philanthropy is for.
No. No this is not what philanthropy is for, because the philanthropist can pull the plug anytime they want.
And charities can decide who to help. That’s probably the worst of it, and what makes libertarianism a thinly-veiled disguise for racism, or at the very least a caste system.
My idea of “perfect philanthropy” is something like the Carnegie Hall. While I think it is the government’s role to provide places for art, I don’t begrudge a city for having a more modest venue. So having a world class, tour de force concert hall is a pretty neat philanthropic project IMHO.
Sure that’s great if a rich dude wants to set up a trust and run a theater or a museum or whatever after they die.
But the problem comes in when you have an NFP running a museum that’s beholden to one or two key benefactors who want to decide everything, and they gotta listen or else there’s no more money.
That reminds me of this Tom Scott video, which shares a somewhat similar idea.