International Man: Let’s
start by defining our terms. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
defines philanthropist as "one who makes an active effort to
promote human welfare."
What do you make of this concept?
Doug Casey: Who can
possibly be against philanthropy based on that definition?
The problem is that most philanthropists don’t actually care so much
about their fellow man. They care about building their own reputation—their
so-called legacy—and seeming like a good guy. They give money to organizations
that, in turn, are supposed to "do good" with it. In fact, most
philanthropy is irresponsible; some is outright destructive.
Everybody in the public eye wants to look like a philanthropist. However,
I think the whole concept has been perverted and turned on its head. A little
later in this interview I’d like to talk about what a real philanthropist should
do.
Most people claiming to be
philanthropists are just guilt-ridden. They’re unhappy with what they’ve done
with their own lives, or done to other people, and are trying to make up for it
by dispensing money.
I have no problem with somebody
who wants to build a museum, a library, or a stadium with their name on it.
Those things may or may not be the most productive use of capital, but they
certainly do no harm. I know a number of wealthy philanthropists; I consider
them decent human beings—otherwise I wouldn’t associate with them. That said,
most are misguided in this regard.
The problem is that most
philanthropy goes to charities that are supposed to help the poor. I don’t like
them for several reasons. In brief, they’re often counterproductive toward those
they’re supposed to help, they often help the wrong people, they send the wrong
ethical message, and they’re shockingly wasteful.
First, and least important, they
typically have giant overheads. They typically allocate anywhere from 10 to 50%
or more of donations to fees—commissions—for raising money. Then they have huge
administrative overheads on what’s left. Top executives are sometimes paid
millions of dollars per year. They put themselves up in lavish office
buildings.
Public charities are basically
bureaucracies. When you look at their income statements and balance sheets,
which are usually quite obfuscating, you find very little of the money actually
goes to the supposed beneficiaries.
And even after some finally
arrives "on the ground," much of it is wasted. It’s disgusting to see
the hotshot yuppies self-righteously driving around the African bush in new
Land Rovers, pretending they’re eliminating poverty. In fact most of the money
goes to showing off, virtue signaling, self-justification, writing worthless
reports, high living, and more overhead.
Worse, some of these charities are actually destructive to the people
they’re supposed to help.
When money is given away by NGOs,
it’s almost as bad as government welfare. It makes it unnecessary for the
recipient to produce and that tends to cement him to his current station in
life. The very act of making an urgent situation non-urgent takes away the
incentive, the urgency, to improve.
But it’s even worse than that.
Even when people are starving through no fault of their own. Feeding the poor
and clothing the naked may sound good in theory, but it’s usually a bad idea in
practice.
Charities and NGOs tend to
destroy the local economy when they give food to a starving region. I can
understand the impulse if there’s a temporary disaster, like a flood or an
earthquake. But most disasters are manufactured by a local government. Then outsiders
come in and turn a temporary problem into a permanent condition.
How do they do that?
When free food hits the local
market, it typically drives the price of food down so low that the local
farmers can’t produce profitably.
What happens when you drive the local farmers out of business? They
stop planting and move to the cities to take advantage of the handouts. Then
there’s no crop the next year, and the shortage of food becomes even worse. And
permanent. The very act of these charities trying to help people in
famine-stricken areas prolongs the famine. And creates lots of social and
political distortions in the bargain.
The same thing is true of
clothing.
Backward countries all had
clothing industries before the arrival of Western charities. Believe it or not,
the natives weren’t all running around naked. But when you import shiploads of
cheap used clothes, local artisans and manufacturers are bankrupted, and their
workers unemployed. It’s tough to compete with free stuff. The recipients also
look like beggars and street people from the US.
Charities corrupt the recipients. Giving money away usually puts
it in the hands of people who don’t deserve it. That sends the wrong moral
message. People should have, or get, things because they deserve them. And you
deserve things because you earn them, by exchange of value for value. In other
words, wealth should be a consequence of doing things that improve the state of
the world. Endowing groups or individuals because they happen to have had some
bad luck or are perpetual losers is actually immoral.
Charities and NGOs in Third World countries are like the US government
putting people on welfare. And just as destructive. The givers feel like big
shots and feel good about themselves. The recipients are degraded. They’re
transformed from simply being poor into mooches and beggars. That makes
charities largely counterproductive. The main beneficiaries of charitable
giving aren’t the intended recipients, but the givers. They get some tax
benefits, of course, but they mainly get the holy high of do-goodism. Frankly,
the idea of charity itself is corrupting to both parties in the transaction.
International Man: We
often hear the mainstream media use the term "philanthropist" to
boost the images of certain people. It helps to brand them as
"do-gooders" in the eyes of the public.
George Soros, Bill Gates, Saudi
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg, and many other
rich and famous people are described as philanthropists.
What do you think is really going
on here?
Doug Casey: As I
said before, in most cases, philanthropy doesn’t arise from a love for one’s
fellow man but from a need to assuage guilt, a need to show off, and a lack of
imagination.
It seems these people feel they
have to justify the fortunes they’ve made. They say that they like to
"give back." Which is a completely ridiculous and wrongheaded
concept.
I’m not a fan of any of those
people. Let’s look at Bill Gates. Although he apparently doesn’t understand it,
he has no moral obligation to give back anything to society. Why? Because
Microsoft, for all its numerous faults, created a gigantic amount of wealth
that arguably wouldn’t have existed without it. He should use that capital to
make the world even wealthier, not piss it away social engineering primitive
countries.
Look at Bill Gates’ famous
enterprise to wipe out malaria. He gave away millions of mosquito nets in
Africa. Most Africans didn’t like them, didn’t use them, and sold them in the
aftermarket to generate cash. It was a waste of capital on Gates’ part.
But let’s suppose he succeeds.
And because of him, 100 million Africans who would have died from malaria
survive.
How is keeping more people alive,
who can’t support themselves, a benefit to anybody? They’re likely to become an
additional drag upon the world at large—and their neighbors in particular.
Africa doesn’t need more poor people. It needs more wealth and more rich
people.
If he really wanted to help
people, he would’ve tried to bring his businesses to Africa so that these people
could support themselves and create new wealth, not just stay alive to be an
additional burden.
Of course in today’s world there
are a lot of "philanthropists," mainly politicians and their cronies,
who’ve become wealthy slopping at the public trough. They have a lot of money
that has, in effect, been stolen. Simply because they’re rich, they’re often
confused in the public’s mind with actual creators: legitimate industrialists,
inventors, investors, and the like.
When the phrase "give back
to society" is used—it’s become quite popular and sounds righteous—it
implies that something is taken away from society when wealth is created. It’s
perverse. It turns both economics and morality on their heads. When these
idiots say they’re "giving back," they make it seem creating wealth
is a form of theft.
Dissipating capital by giving it
to undeserving paupers isn’t laudable. To the contrary, it’s unethical. People
who "need" money—who haven’t done anything to deserve it except have
bad habits or bad luck— shouldn’t get it. Deserving people are a better choice.
Of course that begs for a definition of "deserving," but that’s a
different subject.
In any event, the entire concept
of charity is backwards.
International Man: Do you
think that Gates and others write these large checks in part so they can be
branded as philanthropists? That certainly gives them a PR boost.
Doug Casey: Without
question. Guilt and PR, not a genuine desire to improve things, are the main
motivators.
Let me clarify something. I don’t care if the things I’ve said outrage
a lot of readers. But I do care if I’m misunderstood. I’m not opposed to the
basic concept of philanthropy or charity. I simply believe it should be
strictly individual and therefore responsible. And recipients should be chosen carefully
based on their character and merits. Delegating somebody else to be charitable for
you is irresponsible. Giving blindly to the benighted regardless of their lack
of character and merit is idiotic and reprehensible.
What I do is find a person who seems
deserving. Most charity recipients are not deserving. Most of them have
character problems that only they can solve. Most of those who are down and out
are that way because of either bad character or bad habits.
I prefer giving to people when I
think it will help them elevate themselves. That’s only possible on an
individual basis. Typically, I do this by making a loan, telling them I’d like
the money back with interest. But I don’t necessarily expect it back, and I
won’t try to get it back.
This has two effects.
Number one, it gives the person
an opportunity to elevate themselves. It makes him feel he’s not being given a
handout. He’s got to earn and improve his status to give it back. If it comes
back to me, that money is then available so I can repeat the process for the
next person.
So, what’s in it for me?
It’s a chance to make a
worthwhile friend who’s of good character, which he demonstrates by paying the
money back. It gives me an opportunity to find out what kind of person I’m
dealing with. If the person never returns the money to me, I know that this is
not a person that I ever want to deal with in the future.
It’s a win-win situation—as
opposed to a situation where you get to play a big shot and actually make the
recipient worse off, not better off.
International Man: Related
to this concept are foundations that engage in supposed charitable and
philanthropic activity. There is the infamous example of the Clinton
Foundation.
How are philanthropy and
foundations used to conceal unscrupulous activity?
Doug Casey:
Charities are considered sacrosanct and almost above the law. You give money to
a foundation, and you can maneuver where it goes in such a way that you can
both disguise and tax deduct your activities.
The main good thing about
charitable foundations is that they deny revenue to the state, because
contributions are tax deductible to the donor.
There’s an immense amount of
corruption that goes on under the aegis of "charity." Charities tend
not to be investigated, simply because they’re charities.
It’s one more argument for the
abolition of the income tax—but that’s not going to happen in today’s world.
We’re stuck with these foundations and charities and the type of people who
inevitably wind up gravitating to them.
I urge readers who are interested in philanthropy not to give any money
to professional charities or foundations, but to find something to do one on
one. If you aren’t willing to do it on that basis, then examine why you’re
interested in it at all.
Almost all charities promote the
wrong values, no matter what their avowed purpose. It’s idiotic, at best, to
distribute money to people just because they’re poor or "in need."
Maybe they deserve to be poor because they’re just lazy. Or prefer to watch TV or
porn or play video games all day. Maybe they’re alcoholics or junkies. Maybe
they’re beggars or criminals. The best way to help humanity is to make the able
more able. It’s not by subsidizing losers.
Universities are among the worst offenders. They’re constantly raising
money and looking for people to bequest their estates. Giving to higher
education today is like buying the enemy a rope he’ll use to hang you—and not
just you but Western civilization as well. Your money goes to hire more
cultural Marxists at fat salaries so they can corrupt the youth.
Leaving money to an educational
institution is absolutely one of the worst things that you can do, at least if
you want to improve the state of mankind.
A lot of people wonder what they
should do with their estates. They’re afraid that if they leave it their
children, the unearned money will corrupt them. To me that’s just evidence that
they’ve done a very bad job of bringing up their children. Instead they
irresponsibly give it to some NGO so the corruption can be spread far and wide.
If you bring your children up
properly, they should understand the value of money, what it’s used for, how to
spend it—so they won’t be corrupted by it. The key is to give your kids a sound
ethical foundation.
You should leave your money to
your children. That capital will hopefully go on to improve the lives of your
grandchildren as well.
I suspect most of the people who
leave money to foundations, as opposed to their children, suspect that their
children are basically worthless. They expect the money will therefore make
their lives even worse. So, they give it to some idiotic foundation that will
go off and ruin society as a whole.
I have little respect for people
who leave their estate to a college, foundation, or charity.
International Man:
Recently, top figures in the world of philanthropy have been linked to Jeffery
Epstein.
In the past, Epstein himself had
even been called a philanthropist for the money he gave to Harvard University
and others.
What does Jeffrey Epstein tell us
about how supposed philanthropy is used to scrub the reputations of some
unsavory people? It seems like rich and powerful criminals use it as a PR
gimmick.
Doug Casey: That’s
exactly the case. Epstein is a
perfect example of all this. Charities and NGOs are often camouflage for people
like Epstein. Charities not only improve their standards of living and act as
disguises for their crimes, but enhance their reputations as well. And do it
all with tax-deductible dollars.
Again, these things are for the benefit of the donors and managers, not
the supposed beneficiaries. Charities can reduce their sentences if they’re
under criminal indictment, and increase their standard of living. The money
opens doors for rich and powerful people and creates valuable political connections.
In my view, Epstein is a perfect example of a charitable giver.
Editor's Note: As Doug Casey mentioned, there’s an immense amount
of corruption that goes on under the aegis of "charity." It's all a
part of the growing decadence in the US, which is contributing to the rise of
misguided socialist ideas and politicians.