Conquering Fake Philanthropy

I don't have any problem with philanthropy in itself; I think it's wonderful that people care about other human beings and think it's something that needs to be encouraged. On the other hand, it obscures the need to fundamentally change the circumstances that necessitates financial aid in the first place.

_{source: Picpedia.org}

Back in 2015 Bill and Melinda Gates made a prediction, a bet even, that hunger in Africa will be overcome within 15 years, and they pledged that their Foundation would be at the forefront in the battle to meet the 2030 deadline. This is great in itself; who wouldn't want to end hunger in Africa? All those who blame immigrants for the demise of their country and culture should embrace the Gates' as their heroes, as ending hunger in the Third World would drastically reduce immigration from those countries.

"We're putting our credibility, time, and money behind this bet - and asking others to join us - because we think there has never been a better time to accelerate progress and have a big impact around the world," is what they wrote in their plan, which got immediate support from several other foundations and celebrities. In the plan we read a comprehensive set of ideas and initiatives to make Africa "feed itself", a lot of which entail ways to produce more food, and in a sustainable fashion too. Part of the plan is that "poor rural farmers will be getting loans via cellphone." Africa won't just feed itself, no, it will export some of it, so it can generate income, and therefore the loans will be a win-win scenario.

By growing more varied and nutritious food and getting it to the people who need it at the right time, Africa can achieve food security by 2030. It will still import food when it makes sense to do so, but it will also export much more, eventually achieving a net positive trade balance. Famine will strike less often — and when it does, it will be African countries that take care of the response.
_{source: GRIST}

_{Image by Steven Depolo - source: Flickr}

This all sounds so good on the surface, but all I see is a rich man defending an unjustifiably unbalanced system. We already produce more than enough food to feed 10 billion people; hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. And contrary to the wording in the Gates-plan, capitalism ultimately isn't about adding value, but about extracting value, mostly from labor. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple are at the forefront of propagating and defending so called "shareholder-capitalism", where everything is focused around shareholder value; Gates is part of a small but powerful clique that in the past decades has done everything in its power to grow the inequality by lobbying for laws and regulations that benefit themselves at the expense of what we used to call "the common good".

People often confuse "innovation" with "progress"; innovation is only progress when that innovation benefits the society as a whole. The past couple of decades we've seen a heap of innovation, yet we've seen little to no progress for the societies in which the innovations were made, courtesy of Gates and his cohorts, who have managed to expand shareholder capitalism on a global scale. For decades the owners of the means of production have warned us not to raise their taxes, because that would handicap their ability to create jobs... The success of this non-argument still boggles my mind... But we bought it, and now the income-gap is back to where it was during the height of the Roman Empire, or worse.

So, while it's probably true that the Gates family gives away more on charity than most countries, as does George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg and so on, they don't deserve our adulation or applause; they deserve to be questioned about how they're even able to give away such amounts of money. How is it possible that one corporation dare make a prediction too big, too bold for any government to make? And why do you think the solution is to produce even more food, when we already produce too much, especially when you proclaim to be concerned with sustainability? What about the PR value gained from plastering your name on some school or hospital, what does it do for your brand? This are strange times indeed, when the world's largest sharks can re-brand themselves as do-gooders...

_{Anand Giridharadas interview on Bloomberg}

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