the paradox of the billionaire who tries to do good
After reading an essay on the Internet I wanted to know -- not just who authored it -- but who published it. And by who published it I mean, who owns the company that runs this website/magazine. Who is ultimately responsible for my having read this essay -- whose money is renting my brain?
If you've been reading anything published by The Atlantic, it is currently owned by Laurene Powell Jobs via a privately held for-profit LLC that she uses to run a bunch of projects that she claims include "philanthropy", "advocacy", and "impact investing" -- but with zero public disclosure of its budget or finances.
Ms. Jobs is the widow of the infamous Apple co-founder and sometimes CEO Steve Jobs. Her mostly-inherited net worth is estimated at around $20 billion.
If you go to the website for her LLC, the first thing you see is a full-screen-sized picture of a beautiful black woman's face, but Ms. Jobs is certainly not a black woman. And nowhere will you find an annual report or any other kind of audited public statement of what this for-profit LLC is up to. It tells its own story.
-----
In a country stuffed with $100 trillion in wealth, our United States, we have many famous billionaires who run so-called philanthropic efforts, and some less-famous or non-famous billionaires who do the same. But these philanthropic efforts seem to never cause these billionaires to become ex-billionaires, or to move the political needle off "gridlock". Somehow these philanthropists create the illusion of giving their wealth away to help the rest of us, while their piles of wealth grow ever larger, while economic inequality continues to skyrocket, while the Everything Bubble continues to produce unprecedented hypervaluations of every available investment asset class.
One thing these billionaires never seem to advocate is an end to billionaires.
But it is this existence of billionaires that is one of our world's worst problems. It's all the stuff these piles of capital are doing other than giving themselves away -- the 99+% of the world's net wealth that is not given away each year -- all that capital is busy reproducing itself at the expense of every living thing that does not own it. If these piles of wealth were shared more equally, let's say solely within the US for starters, we could easily wipe out poverty. If we were willing to jeopardize the size of these piles of wealth in favor of the global environment, we could start making a significant dent in our CO2 emissions and start rewilding parts of the planet.
As I wrote about yesterday, when projects like fixing the atmosphere and sharing the wealth are purely voluntary, the resulting gaps between our goals and reality remain immense. Health care disparities of 100x and more around the globe, alongside continuing increases in the proportion of CO2 in the sky, and 1000x the normal rate of species extinction.
And it's because voluntary donations and reductions are always a tiny fraction of our activities. Last year I gave away several thousand dollars to charity, for example, more than ever before, but it was only a few percent of my take home pay, and definitely less than one percent of my net wealth, especially if you include the present value of my pension in that calculation. I'm no better than anybody else at changing the world via voluntary sacrifices. Although I want to get better.
-----
Sometimes I get pushback from my LJ readers or others telling me not to criticize the baby steps that people are taking toward the goals we seek. But somebody should say out loud that these baby steps are not nearly enough; even our adult steps are not nearly enough, heh.
But not nearly enough for what? For any of us to be in control of the outcome on a globally relevant scale. This global capitalist machine is far far far from submitting to any sort of democratic control.
At the level of my daily life, I accept this, because I can generally accept reality as it is and go on living. I am not generally an unhappy or depressed person. But this is what I see --> I see an ongoing global catastrophe driven by a relentless accumulation of capital -- and maybe it has always been thus, and will always be thus, perhaps our species is destined to destroy all other species and then itself -- but I have the capacity to imagine doing something about it, and I'm not. Instead I'm living my own life and tossing a percent of my wealth at gestures that won't fix the catastrophe. And those billionaires who also care are trapped in the same mode of tossing a percent of their wealth at gestures that won't fix the catastrophe.
It's definitely virtue signalling, which has become a fancy way of saying hypocrisy. Benefiting personally from the catastrophe while tossing pennies into the beggar's bowl.
-----
For more than a couple decades I've forgiven myself because I've worked for non-profits or government agencies instead of working directly for capitalism; I've thought -- I give via my job, and I'm not in control of what they pay me to do it. I could have, instead, gone to work for the private sector for 2x+ what I make now. So I'm already giving up at least half of the income and wealth I'd otherwise have, and my job serves the community. Paid to do good!
But solving our biggest problems requires collective action that we aren't currently taking, not individual sacrifice or even community service, how do I get that ball rolling? The snowball of collective action?
-----
"Advocacy" -- that's certainly part of it, yes, Ms. Jobs. But it's not enough. A bunch of us agreeing with each other in our conversations and social media posts does not, by itself, accomplish anything at all.
I recall how one person who stopped reading or following me years ago called me an "armchair" politician as her reason for doing so. I'd take that more personally if I didn't have a day job in public service, one that statutorily requires that I not run for office, and limits how I can advocate for partisan positions.
But, still.
Advocacy is not enough. Having a job in public service is not enough. What is enough?
Again, when solving a problem requires collective action, not individual sacrifice, how do you get that snowball rolling?
You can set a good example. You can join one or more organizations that are trying to coordinate collective action, or trying to build social support for collective action.
Ironically, from the point of view of this post, the for-profit LLC owned by Ms. Jobs calls itself a "Collective". Of course it isn't, but perhaps she is trying to get us to that point in her own way.
-----
Mass movements -- who controls these things? Could you have mass movements before you had mass media? Before the printing press, for example. Instances of popular sovereignty were mighty rare before the printing press came along, and even so were limited to property-owning (and often slave-owning) males. But then in Europe the printing press created massive problems for the ruling elite who had perfected a marriage between absolute monarchy and obligatory Catholicism.
As unofficial authors began sharing their essays about Christianity and politics, the ruling elite had to come up with a new formula -- Nationalism. You get the people to identify with their nation, to feel patriotism, to view other nations as The Enemy, and then implement an obligatory state-controlled church. Where this hasn't been enough, the ruling elite also needed to dangle a form of democracy in front of people's eyes, to get them to identify more closely with their nation -- because You the People Chose Your Leaders Yourself (wink).
Not really, of course. The ruling elite would produce a short list of candidates to choose from and use their ownership of the mass media to control what The People see and hear about these candidates. There might be a genuine contest for leadership, but within well-circumscribed limits.
-----
To create a mass movement, in support of collective action, do you need to control the mass media? If so, is it up to those who control the mass media to get us there? The Bezos, the Murdoch, the Jobs -- the billionaires who control the media?
In a country with a "free" press, there's still a genuine competition between the mass media empires, a competition for eyeballs, and I think this is ultimately -- in the Age of the Internet -- what has brought us to our current gridlock and inability to solve any of our problems. As I've written before, the Internet allows mass media to compete for your eyeballs by giving you more exactly whatever it is you WANT to see or hear. What you -- you -- individual you -- want to see or hear. Completely divorced from reality if that's what you want.
So there is no possible collective in this Age of the Internet! Only what you want to see. And therefore, no possible collective action. Mass media has been completely deconstructed by individual choice, and so has mass action. What passes for mass media now is a set of computer algorithms that are able to finely parse the available content such that you can see exactly what you want.
To the extent we still get mass protest popping up around the world, it is ephemeral, without any goals, without any true collective action. The world wanted justice for what's his name, after seeing that awful video, OK, they got it, but NOTHING ELSE CHANGED with respect to police violence in the US. Ephemeral, without any goals, without any collective action. There is no organized leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement, no single dues-paying democratically organized group that is applying systematic pressure to US governments to enact a clear program of remedies. Justice for George Floyd, but three more people will be killed by police tomorrow. And the next day.
-----
This is a long and rambling take on what I feel to be our collective powerlessness to effect global change during this Age of the Internet. But I'm not sure we ever had that power before? During the 20th Century the world was pretty well divided between the socialists and the capitalists for a while, but then the capitalists won. Arguably, it was only the highly destructive world wars between the various capitalist empires that gave socialists an opening to exploit. But eventually the largest and strongest socialist empires gave up and willingly embraced capitalism for themselves. China as Exhibit A. The last truly communist countries are like isolated historical anomalies, the Lands Time Forgot.
So I find myself echoing a book I bought but never finished (of course) -- Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? That's what I've been struggling with in this LJ lately. What does a person like me do to get the snowball rolling? I look at my life thus far and conclude I haven't done enough, but I'm not sure what "enough" would entail.
Giving more to charity/advocacy, sure, working on that. Downsizing my own footprint/lifestyle, sure, working on that. Possibly choosing a different career, sure working on that. Moving to a battleground state or even a different country, sure, working on that. By the end of this decade the outlines of my life could be quite different from what we all see now. But I doubt it will be enough. I think this is one of those games you continue to play even though you're probably going to lose, because you want to be a good sport and not quit early. Bug as Che, heh. Another book I haven't finished, that biography of Che.
If you've been reading anything published by The Atlantic, it is currently owned by Laurene Powell Jobs via a privately held for-profit LLC that she uses to run a bunch of projects that she claims include "philanthropy", "advocacy", and "impact investing" -- but with zero public disclosure of its budget or finances.
Ms. Jobs is the widow of the infamous Apple co-founder and sometimes CEO Steve Jobs. Her mostly-inherited net worth is estimated at around $20 billion.
If you go to the website for her LLC, the first thing you see is a full-screen-sized picture of a beautiful black woman's face, but Ms. Jobs is certainly not a black woman. And nowhere will you find an annual report or any other kind of audited public statement of what this for-profit LLC is up to. It tells its own story.
-----
In a country stuffed with $100 trillion in wealth, our United States, we have many famous billionaires who run so-called philanthropic efforts, and some less-famous or non-famous billionaires who do the same. But these philanthropic efforts seem to never cause these billionaires to become ex-billionaires, or to move the political needle off "gridlock". Somehow these philanthropists create the illusion of giving their wealth away to help the rest of us, while their piles of wealth grow ever larger, while economic inequality continues to skyrocket, while the Everything Bubble continues to produce unprecedented hypervaluations of every available investment asset class.
One thing these billionaires never seem to advocate is an end to billionaires.
But it is this existence of billionaires that is one of our world's worst problems. It's all the stuff these piles of capital are doing other than giving themselves away -- the 99+% of the world's net wealth that is not given away each year -- all that capital is busy reproducing itself at the expense of every living thing that does not own it. If these piles of wealth were shared more equally, let's say solely within the US for starters, we could easily wipe out poverty. If we were willing to jeopardize the size of these piles of wealth in favor of the global environment, we could start making a significant dent in our CO2 emissions and start rewilding parts of the planet.
As I wrote about yesterday, when projects like fixing the atmosphere and sharing the wealth are purely voluntary, the resulting gaps between our goals and reality remain immense. Health care disparities of 100x and more around the globe, alongside continuing increases in the proportion of CO2 in the sky, and 1000x the normal rate of species extinction.
And it's because voluntary donations and reductions are always a tiny fraction of our activities. Last year I gave away several thousand dollars to charity, for example, more than ever before, but it was only a few percent of my take home pay, and definitely less than one percent of my net wealth, especially if you include the present value of my pension in that calculation. I'm no better than anybody else at changing the world via voluntary sacrifices. Although I want to get better.
-----
Sometimes I get pushback from my LJ readers or others telling me not to criticize the baby steps that people are taking toward the goals we seek. But somebody should say out loud that these baby steps are not nearly enough; even our adult steps are not nearly enough, heh.
But not nearly enough for what? For any of us to be in control of the outcome on a globally relevant scale. This global capitalist machine is far far far from submitting to any sort of democratic control.
At the level of my daily life, I accept this, because I can generally accept reality as it is and go on living. I am not generally an unhappy or depressed person. But this is what I see --> I see an ongoing global catastrophe driven by a relentless accumulation of capital -- and maybe it has always been thus, and will always be thus, perhaps our species is destined to destroy all other species and then itself -- but I have the capacity to imagine doing something about it, and I'm not. Instead I'm living my own life and tossing a percent of my wealth at gestures that won't fix the catastrophe. And those billionaires who also care are trapped in the same mode of tossing a percent of their wealth at gestures that won't fix the catastrophe.
It's definitely virtue signalling, which has become a fancy way of saying hypocrisy. Benefiting personally from the catastrophe while tossing pennies into the beggar's bowl.
-----
For more than a couple decades I've forgiven myself because I've worked for non-profits or government agencies instead of working directly for capitalism; I've thought -- I give via my job, and I'm not in control of what they pay me to do it. I could have, instead, gone to work for the private sector for 2x+ what I make now. So I'm already giving up at least half of the income and wealth I'd otherwise have, and my job serves the community. Paid to do good!
But solving our biggest problems requires collective action that we aren't currently taking, not individual sacrifice or even community service, how do I get that ball rolling? The snowball of collective action?
-----
"Advocacy" -- that's certainly part of it, yes, Ms. Jobs. But it's not enough. A bunch of us agreeing with each other in our conversations and social media posts does not, by itself, accomplish anything at all.
I recall how one person who stopped reading or following me years ago called me an "armchair" politician as her reason for doing so. I'd take that more personally if I didn't have a day job in public service, one that statutorily requires that I not run for office, and limits how I can advocate for partisan positions.
But, still.
Advocacy is not enough. Having a job in public service is not enough. What is enough?
Again, when solving a problem requires collective action, not individual sacrifice, how do you get that snowball rolling?
You can set a good example. You can join one or more organizations that are trying to coordinate collective action, or trying to build social support for collective action.
Ironically, from the point of view of this post, the for-profit LLC owned by Ms. Jobs calls itself a "Collective". Of course it isn't, but perhaps she is trying to get us to that point in her own way.
-----
Mass movements -- who controls these things? Could you have mass movements before you had mass media? Before the printing press, for example. Instances of popular sovereignty were mighty rare before the printing press came along, and even so were limited to property-owning (and often slave-owning) males. But then in Europe the printing press created massive problems for the ruling elite who had perfected a marriage between absolute monarchy and obligatory Catholicism.
As unofficial authors began sharing their essays about Christianity and politics, the ruling elite had to come up with a new formula -- Nationalism. You get the people to identify with their nation, to feel patriotism, to view other nations as The Enemy, and then implement an obligatory state-controlled church. Where this hasn't been enough, the ruling elite also needed to dangle a form of democracy in front of people's eyes, to get them to identify more closely with their nation -- because You the People Chose Your Leaders Yourself (wink).
Not really, of course. The ruling elite would produce a short list of candidates to choose from and use their ownership of the mass media to control what The People see and hear about these candidates. There might be a genuine contest for leadership, but within well-circumscribed limits.
-----
To create a mass movement, in support of collective action, do you need to control the mass media? If so, is it up to those who control the mass media to get us there? The Bezos, the Murdoch, the Jobs -- the billionaires who control the media?
In a country with a "free" press, there's still a genuine competition between the mass media empires, a competition for eyeballs, and I think this is ultimately -- in the Age of the Internet -- what has brought us to our current gridlock and inability to solve any of our problems. As I've written before, the Internet allows mass media to compete for your eyeballs by giving you more exactly whatever it is you WANT to see or hear. What you -- you -- individual you -- want to see or hear. Completely divorced from reality if that's what you want.
So there is no possible collective in this Age of the Internet! Only what you want to see. And therefore, no possible collective action. Mass media has been completely deconstructed by individual choice, and so has mass action. What passes for mass media now is a set of computer algorithms that are able to finely parse the available content such that you can see exactly what you want.
To the extent we still get mass protest popping up around the world, it is ephemeral, without any goals, without any true collective action. The world wanted justice for what's his name, after seeing that awful video, OK, they got it, but NOTHING ELSE CHANGED with respect to police violence in the US. Ephemeral, without any goals, without any collective action. There is no organized leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement, no single dues-paying democratically organized group that is applying systematic pressure to US governments to enact a clear program of remedies. Justice for George Floyd, but three more people will be killed by police tomorrow. And the next day.
-----
This is a long and rambling take on what I feel to be our collective powerlessness to effect global change during this Age of the Internet. But I'm not sure we ever had that power before? During the 20th Century the world was pretty well divided between the socialists and the capitalists for a while, but then the capitalists won. Arguably, it was only the highly destructive world wars between the various capitalist empires that gave socialists an opening to exploit. But eventually the largest and strongest socialist empires gave up and willingly embraced capitalism for themselves. China as Exhibit A. The last truly communist countries are like isolated historical anomalies, the Lands Time Forgot.
So I find myself echoing a book I bought but never finished (of course) -- Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? That's what I've been struggling with in this LJ lately. What does a person like me do to get the snowball rolling? I look at my life thus far and conclude I haven't done enough, but I'm not sure what "enough" would entail.
Giving more to charity/advocacy, sure, working on that. Downsizing my own footprint/lifestyle, sure, working on that. Possibly choosing a different career, sure working on that. Moving to a battleground state or even a different country, sure, working on that. By the end of this decade the outlines of my life could be quite different from what we all see now. But I doubt it will be enough. I think this is one of those games you continue to play even though you're probably going to lose, because you want to be a good sport and not quit early. Bug as Che, heh. Another book I haven't finished, that biography of Che.