The Problems of Modern Philanthropy

I think of philanthropy as a type of idea marketplace for public goods, funded by private capital. Like all idea marketplaces – startups, media, philosophy – it’s inherently pluralistic. We don’t have a single government-funded media channel, for example, but instead get our news, entertainment, and ideas from a multitude of sources.

If philanthropy is pluralistic – and, like any idea marketplace, that is one of its virtues – then there is no single school of thought that can “solve” complex social questions, because everyone has a different vision for the world. If you’re pro-pluralism in startups, you should also be pro-pluralism in philanthropy.

Unfortunately, being located in the field of international development also means that philanthropies suffer from the same pathologies as “traditional” development outfits — such as ontological solipsism, cynical paternalism, small ambitions, cyclical faddism, obsessive bean counting as an end in itself, and being used by their host governments to

... See more

To the extent that Substack fixes something in the journalism industry, it might be compared to GoFundMe—a survival mechanism whose resources are unevenly, arbitrarily distributed, laying bare systemic problems without directly tackling them.

Philanthropic foundations bias heavily towards granting large $ amounts exclusively to organizations (not individuals), meaning there are few existing avenues to fund promising people.

Effective altruism involves billionaires creating various institutions to give away their money to charity in a manner they deem effective

"“If you put these five things together - you can't use money to attract talent, you can't advertise, you can't take risks, you can't invest in long-term results, and you don't have a stock market - then we have just put the humanitarian sector at the most extreme disadvantage to the for-profit sector on every level, and then we call the whole syst... See more

The key reason that so much more money enters the stock market and the early-stage funding worlds than enters the charity or nonprofit worlds is that investors are not patrons. They are not simply supporting things out of the kindness of their hearts. Rather than relying on selfless giving, these sectors of society rely on selfish giving - and cons... See more