Power

A Brief Taxonomy of Billionaire Philanthropy

I have had a great deal of time to study the various ways in which extremely wealthy people give money away, and I have identified several distinct species. I present them here as a public service.

Type 1: The Naming Opportunity

The billionaire donates a large sum to a university, hospital, or cultural institution. The institution is renamed after the billionaire. The billionaire’s name now appears on a building that serves the public, creating the impression that the public facility is a gift from the billionaire rather than an institution the public funded through taxes for decades before the billionaire’s check arrived.

The System Is Not Broken

I hear the phrase constantly. From journalists, from politicians, from well-meaning advocates. “The system is broken.” They say it about healthcare, about housing, about criminal justice, about education. They say it with frustration and sincerity, and they are wrong.

The system is not broken. It is working.

This is not a semantic distinction. It is a diagnostic one, and getting the diagnosis wrong means getting the treatment wrong.

The Difference

When you say a system is broken, you imply that it was designed to produce a different outcome than the one it is producing. You imply that the current outcome is an error – a malfunction, a deviation from the intended purpose. And the logical response to a malfunction is repair: fix the broken part, and the system will resume its proper function.