Carnegie was no saint either

Good news everybody! Forty modern day robber barons have decided they can miss fifty percent of their vast wealth:

The world of philanthropy got a huge financial boost today as more than 30 American billionaires pledged to give away at least half of their fortunes to charitable causes, signing up to a campaign launched by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

In an unprecedented mass commitment, top figures including New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg, the hotel heir Barron Hilton, CNN media mogul Ted Turner, and the Star Wars director George Lucas lent their names to the “giving pledge”, an initiative founded last month to encourage America’s richest families to commit money to “society’s most pressing problems”.

The pledge is not a legally binding contract but is described as a moral commitment. Buffett, the legendary Nebraska-based financier known as the “sage of Omaha”, welcomed the influx of support: “At its core, the giving pledge is about asking wealthy families to have important conversations about their wealth and how it will be used. We’re delighted that so many people are doing that.”

He added that many of those involved were committing sums far greater than the 50% minimum. Buffett himself is handing the vast bulk of his $47bn fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is largely orientated towards tackling disease in developing countries.

Nick Mamatas, talking about something else entirely:

So when I hear of an organization that’s very unsavory, but that certainly hands out some money to nice very savory people, and sends out limos for them to ride in just like successful people supposedly do, and really only recruits a teeeensy bit, and didn’t didn’t the association just a few years ago rejig its corporate holdings to separate its limo-riding parties and legitimate business from that less savory stuff…call me unmoved. It’s still a mob sausage and pepper sandwich in your hand, even if the guy who handed it to you didn’t say, “If you take a bite, that means you love the Bonnano crime family!” You’re still chilling with mobsters even if you’re not there with your fist in the air, chanting, “Lou! Lou! Lou!” as some of your neighbors are when the guy you knew as the pizzeria man takes the stage, says a few lines in a dialect you don’t understand, and is suddenly and inexplicably very popular.

That some billionaires and multimillionaires decided to play philantrope does not excuse their wealth, nor the way they amassed it. That some lucky causes will get millions showered on them is great, but it’s still fundamentally undemocratic and wrong that a small group of people can decide which problems are sexy enough to deserve their support. Their charity does not change the system under which most people live lives of quiet desperation so a few lucky people can grandstand. Of course, had their wealth been taxed appropriately we wouldn’t have this problem, but on the other hand I don’t trust the US government not to buy more wartoys for that money….