Can We Trust the Hacker Philanthropists?
We now rely on tech billionaires to solve our most pressing problems. That’s a problem, too—and it’s our fault.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair, Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images, ravl/Shutterstock (http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-55346263).
he billionaires are here to save us. As the governments of the world twiddle their thumbs in Paris over carbon emissions, on Monday Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg announced an ambitious philanthropic undertaking to fight climate change. That was followed by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan’sannouncement Tuesday that he plans to donate nearly all of his money to philanthropic efforts. In a letter to his newborn daughter Max, Zuckerberg poured out the milk of human kindness:
The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created … If our generation connects them, we can lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. We can also help hundreds of millions of children get an education and save millions of lives by helping people avoid disease.This magnificent magnanimity provokes two inevitable reactions: 1) What great guys! and 2) Wait—are they really so great? As much as we might appreciate the generosity of our software billionaires, their raining of money over good causes also highlights the direness of a world in which a handful of individuals, through a combination of skill and luck, end up with monetary resources beyond that of most small nations. There but for the grace of Zuckerberg go we.
This reaction is natural. Zuckerberg’s announcement is the closest thing we can see to the unconstrained action of a single person shaping the world. President Obama is hamstrung by Congress. Pope Francis exerts indirect influence instead of direct power. Xi Jinping works within the apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. Mario Draghi spends his time trying to mop up Europe’s messes. But a Gates or a Zuckerberg doesn’t face such impediments. When Zuckerberg decides to donate his money after the birth of his child, it feels as though he’s casting himself as the protagonist and the entire world as his philanthropic canvas. It’s natural for the rest of us, who have no say in how he spends his billions, to feel a bit slighted.
Spurred by Sean Parker’s exhortations for “hacker philanthropy” in the Wall Street Journal, Michael Massing recently wrote in the Intercept about the problems with a philosophy that calls for “hacking” the world’s problems using money instead of code. Massing is scathing, and rightly so, on Gates’ philanthropic efforts in education. Thanks to a top-down, results-oriented approach but little attention to details, the Gates Foundation’s efforts have exacerbated the worst instincts of the school-reform movement, embodied in figures like Michelle Rhee and outgoing Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan (whose agency has helped push pseudoscience into public schools). The problem isn’t the intentions, but the belief that the unilateral throwing of money at a problem alongside performance-based metrics can solve any problem just as easily as they once enabled Windows to crush its competition.
In contrast, efforts in public health and research have gone better. The Gates Foundation’s programs in Africa have helped to reduce measles by 90 percent in the past 15 years, among other successes. In realms where a functioning infrastructure already exists—such as medicine—an influx of cash can bolster existing projects and help organizations see them through more quickly and effectively. Where theMark Zuckerberg’s hacker philanthropy: Can we trust it?:
