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so many profound failures of policy and political imagination led us to MacKenzie Scott personally dictating the allocation of >$5 billion in tax-subsidized private spending for public good this year while her net worth still increased a net $20 billion
symptomatic of a serious, potentially fatal disease in our democracy imo
there really do exist ppl who see this as a happy by-product of late capitalism (the tech mega donor apologists are particularly rowdy in my experience) and i just wanna know from those ppl: what is the long term prognosis for civil society here from your perspective?
let's say there continue to exist super rich ppl who also super don't wanna die buried in a pile of gold coins (Scott, the Buffetts sometimes, et al). ok. but what does civil society look like in 10 years if a handful of donors are giving tens of billions in aggregate each year?
but i say "let's say.." bc i'm not sure it will continue to be true! Scott herself has demonstrated (in no small part bc of how transparent she's been) how hard it is to make a dent in a fortune of that size! what if the more publicly spirited robber barons start to give up?
for reference, in 2018 foundations gave about $6 billion TOTAL for all community and economic development work in the US. Scott ~~~alone~~~ decided how to distribute a comparable sum this year.
( @CandidDotOrg data)
( @CandidDotOrg data)
whether u think Scott's influence on civil society is benevolent or not, it does seem like a pretty obvious challenge to democracy to me !!!
