{"id":166787,"date":"2020-08-17T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=166787"},"modified":"2020-09-21T10:14:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T09:14:09","slug":"bill-gates-charity-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/bill-gates-charity-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates\u2019 Charity Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Nation investigation illustrates the moral hazards surrounding the Gates Foundation\u2019s $50 billion charitable enterprise.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Bill & Melinda Gates. Photo: Oli Scarff\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

L<\/span>ast fall, Netflix premiered a three-part documentary that promises viewers a rare look at the inner life of one of history\u2019s most controversial businessmen. Over three hours, Inside Bill\u2019s Brain<\/em> shows us a rare emotional side to Bill Gates as he processes the loss of his mother and the death of his estranged<\/a> best friend and Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen.<\/p>\n

Mostly, though, the film reinforces the image many of us already had of the ambitious technologist, insatiable brainiac, and heroic philanthropist. Inside Bill\u2019s Brain<\/em> falls into a common trap: attempting to understand the world\u2019s second-richest human by interviewing people in his sphere of financial influence.<\/p>\n

In the first episode, director Davis Guggenheim underlines Gates\u2019s expansive intellect by interviewing Bernie Noe, described as a friend of Gates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a gift, to read 150 pages an hour,\u201d says Noe. \u201cI\u2019m going to say it\u2019s 90 percent retention. Kind of extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guggenheim doesn\u2019t tell audiences that Noe is the principal of Lakeside School<\/a>, a private institution to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $80 million. The filmmaker also doesn\u2019t mention the extraordinary conflict of interest this presents: The Gateses used their charitable foundation to enrich the private school their children attend<\/a>, which charges students $35,000 a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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by Jason Seiler<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The documentary\u2019s blind spots are all the more striking in light of the timing of its release, just as news was trickling<\/a> out that Bill Gates met multiple times with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to discuss collaborating on charitable activities, from which Epstein stood to generate millions of dollars in management fees. Though the collaboration never materialized, it nonetheless illustrates the moral hazards surrounding the Gates Foundation\u2019s $50 billion charitable enterprise, whose sprawling activities over the last two decades have been subject to remarkably little government oversight or public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

While the efforts of fellow billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg to use his wealth to win the presidency foundered amid intense media criticism, Gates has proved there is a far easier path to political power, one that allows unelected billionaires to shape public policy in ways that almost always generate favorable headlines: charity.<\/p>\n

W<\/span>hen Gates announced<\/a> in 2008 that he would step away from Microsoft to focus his efforts on philanthropy, he described his intention to work with and through the private sector to deliver public-goods products and technologies, in the same way that Microsoft\u2019s computer software expanded horizons and created economic opportunities. Describing his approach by turns as \u201ccreative capitalism<\/a>\u201d and \u201ccatalytic philanthropy<\/a>,\u201d Gates oversaw a shift at his foundation to leverage \u201call the tools of capitalism\u201d to \u201cconnect the promise of philanthropy with the power of private enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result has been a new model of charity in which the most direct beneficiaries are sometimes not the world\u2019s poor but the world\u2019s wealthiest, in which the goal is not to help the needy but to help the rich help the needy.<\/p>\n

Through an investigation of more than 19,000 charitable grants the Gates Foundation has made over the last two decades, The Nation<\/em> has uncovered close to $2\u00a0billion in tax-deductible charitable donations to private companies\u2014including some of the largest businesses in the world, such as GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, IBM, and NBC Universal Media\u2014which are tasked with developing new drugs, improving sanitation in the developing world, developing financial products for Muslim consumers, and spreading the good news about this work.<\/p>\n

The Gates Foundation even gave $2 million to Participant Media to promote Davis Guggenheim\u2019s previous documentary film Waiting for Superman<\/em>, which pushes one of the foundation\u2019s signature charity efforts, charter schools\u2014privately managed public schools. This charitable donation is a small part of the $250 million the foundation has given to media companies and other groups to influence the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a quite unprecedented development, the amount that the Gates Foundation is gifting to corporations\u2026. I find that flabbergasting, frankly,\u201d says Linsey McGoey, a professor of sociology at the University of Essex and author of the book No Such Thing as a Free Gift<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019ve created one of the most problematic precedents in the history of foundation giving by essentially opening the door for corporations to see themselves as deserving charity claimants at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGoey\u2019s research has anecdotally highlighted charitable grants the Gates Foundation has made to private companies, such as a $19 million donation to a Mastercard affiliate<\/a> in 2014 to \u201cincrease usage of digital financial products by poor adults\u201d in Kenya. The credit card giant had already articulated its keen business interest in cultivating new clients from the developing world\u2019s 2.5 billion unbanked people, McGoey says, so why did it need a wealthy philanthropist to subsidize its work? And why are Bill and Melinda Gates getting a tax break for this donation?<\/p>\n

These questions seem especially pertinent in light of the fact that the donation to Mastercard may have delivered financial benefits to the Gates Foundation; at the time of the donation, in November 2014, the foundation\u2019s endowment had substantial financial investments in Mastercard through its holdings in Warren Buffett\u2019s investment company, Berkshire Hathaway. (Buffett himself has pledged $30 billion to the Gates Foundation. )<\/p>\n

The Nation<\/em> found close to $250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds: Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi, Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva, and numerous start-ups\u2014with the grants directed at projects like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services.<\/p>\n