>Woke up this AM to discover that @slatestarcodex has a new post cleverly titled "Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy" in which some of my work serves as a foil.
>Really grateful to have my writing taken seriously by someone whose blog I've long enjoyed and learned from. And I know that he has a big following of folks who do serious work in the effective altruism community, such as @GiveWell @open_phil @juliagalef @dylanmatt @KelseyTuoc
>Will have a proper written reply sometime soon. But since many comments on the post express incredulity that there are critics of billionaire philanthropy -- which on its own undermines one of Scott's main points, btw -- I would point readers to two books for the arguments.
>Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better.
>And a volume I edited with @p2173 & @chiaracordelli called Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values, with fantastic chapters by @raymadoff @horvathianisms Paul Brest, Jonathan Levy, and more.
>And of course there's @AnandWrites's Winners Take All. And @VillanuevaEdgar's Decolonizing Wealth. And @tompkinsstange's Policy Patrons on billionaire philanthropy to public education. And @meganfrancis on philanthropy and social movements.
>And @JaneMayerNYer on the weaponization of philanthropy in Dark Money. And much more from folks like @KAGoss @SReckhow @MaribelMorey1 @BenSoskis @CageJulia @awh.
Vox's Matthew Yglesias wrote a short response:
>I think this whole post from @slatestarcodex and, indeed, most of the dialogue on the subject of “billionaire philanthropy” actually misses the bulk of what it is billionaires do with their philanthropy.
>In their great book “Billionaires and Stealth Politics” what Page, Seawright, and Lacomb find is that most billionaires don’t seek publicity for their activities & mostly donate to right-wing causes like regressive tax cuts & lower government spending.
>Which is to say both sides of this debate are making clever arguments but mostly missing the big picture as to what billionaire philanthropy actually is — not complicated reputation laundering that helps people, but quiet lobbying for libertarian economics.
>If we want to debate whether Bill Gates, personally, is Good or Bad it would probably be better to do it on those terms (he seems pretty good to me) rather than talk broadly about billionaires — he is very unusual.
>Scott Alexander on billionaire philanthropy: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-philanthropy/ …. He mostly criticizes @robreich, whose charity critique is actually one of the better ones, admitting a lot more nuance than (e.g.) Giridharadas.
>I've said a couple times that I think there's a good point circulating - lots of billionaires spend their philanthropy in ways that don't do good, and we should be impressed only when a process looks results-oriented and smart.
>And there's a bad argument circulating - unkindly, it's that billionaires suck, and the highest-status thing they do is give to charity, so we'd better go after them for that. And it's that bad argument that risks endangering some of the greatest work going on today.
>A lot of how you perceive the billionaire philanthropy conversation will turn on which of these you perceive as dominant. If you mostly perceive gradual progress towards taking the first critique seriously, it's far too early to start pushing back.
>If you mostly perceive the second critique rapidly gathering steam, including in places where it might influence billionaires, then you should be worried, because effective billionaire philanthropy is actually really important.
Adversarial collaboration on this topic?
>David Manheim: I definitely think this is important, and given how much @slatestarcodex champions principled debate, I wonder if @robreich is willing to respond and/or discuss this? (If so, would Vox commit to publishing his reply, a transcript of the discussion, or similar?)
>Rob Reich: Sign me up! @KelseyTuoc ? Or does Scott host replies on his site?
>David Manheim:@slatestarcodex - would you host this?
>Alternatively, if @robreich was willing, a discussion between the two of you could lead to an amazing entry into your adversarial collaborations project -