There are more philanthropists than ever before. Each year they give tens of billions to charitable causes. So how come inequality keeps rising? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-th... Philanthropy, it is popularly supposed, transfers money from the rich to the poor. This is not the case. In the US, which statistics show to be the most philanthropic of nations, barely a fifth of the money donated by big givers goes to the poor. [...] The biggest donations in education in 2019 went to the elite universities and schools that the rich themselves had attended. In the UK, in the 10-year period to 2017, more than two-thirds of all millionaire donations – £4.79bn – went to higher education, and half of these went to just two universities: Oxford and Cambridge. When the rich and the middle classes give to schools, they give more to those attended by their own children than to those of the poor. British millionaires in that same decade gave £1.04bn to the arts, and just £222m to alleviating poverty. The common assumption that philanthropy automatically results in a redistribution of money is wrong. A lot of elite philanthropy is about elite causes. Rather than making the world a better place, it largely reinforces the world as it is. Philanthropy very often favours the rich – and no one holds philanthropists to account for it. Philanthropy is always an expression of power. Giving often depends on the personal whims of super-rich individuals... There are a number of tensions inherent in the relationship between philanthropy and democracy. [...] Bill Gates can become fixed on addressing a problem which is not seen as a priority by local people, in an area, for example, where polio is far from the biggest problem. He did something similar in his education philanthropy in the US where his fixation on class size diverted public spending away from the actual priorities of the local community. Other philanthropists are more wilfully interventionist. Individuals such as Charles Koch on the right, or George Soros on the left, have succeeded in altering public policy. More than $10bn a year is devoted to such ideological persuasion in the US alone. The result has been what the late German billionaire shipping magnate and philanthropist Peter Kramer called “a bad transfer of power”, from democratically elected politicians to billionaires, so that it is no longer “the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich who decide”. The UN general assembly has warned governments and international organisations that, before taking money from rich donors, they should “assess the growing influence of major philanthropic foundations, and especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation … and analyse the intended and unintended risks and side-effects of their activities”. Elected politicians, the UN warned in 2015, should be particularly concerned about “the unpredictable and insufficient financing of public goods, the lack of monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and the prevailing practice of applying business logic to the provision of public goods”. [...] Some kinds of philanthropy may have become not just non-democratic, but anti-democratic. [...] Continua con una analisi estremamente interessante su https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-th... Ne consiglio una lettura attenta e critica: mi pare sorvoli completamente la dimensione geopolitica della questione. E ovviamente non arriva lontanamente a suggerire l'esigenza di ravvivare una coscienza (ed una lotta) di classe. Se "più tasse" significasse un limite superiore alla ricchezza individuale come funzione fissa del limite inferiore, forse il "volemose bene" finale avrebbe un senso. Oltre un certo limite (3-4 volte il limite inferiore), l'unico modo legale per incrementare il benessere individuale dovrebbe essere incrementare il benessere collettivo, in modo che la spinta a collaborare bilanci la spinta a competere. Ma la rilevanza di questo articolo per la lista l'abbiamo evidenziata recentemente, discutendo dei progetti open source internazionali. D'altronde... non sembra anche a voi che l'ONU si stia spostando

pericolosamente verso un'analisi un filo complottistica del tutto

Come si può pensare a "qualcosa di orchestrato più o meno a tavolino"? ;-) Giacomo