Gift Hub

Of Wealth and Virtue: The Instructive Story of Cornelius Vanderbilt

From History News Network comes this fascinating look by Edward Renehan at the culture of philanthropy in the time of Cornelius Vanderbilt. As we have Think Tanks, so in his day the strikingly named London Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor promoted the belief that giving to the poor was generally bad because it encourages vice and indolence.  In America the same analysis was made by The Society for the Prevention of Pauperism:  The poor are mostly undeserving and are best served or contained in workhouses and debtor prisons. The strong survive, the weak perish, and the race is purified of its weak beings and its cultures of failure.  The article shows how this strain of Social Darwinism influenced Vanderbilt and others, reducing or squelching their commitment to giving to the poor.  And, the article traces the "tough love" philosophy down to Ayn Rand and our contemporary conservative thinkers.

When, at Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, Bill Schambra calls for less welfare for the poor and more help from private philanthropy, one can only wonder.  Once welfare is dismantled, and the tax breaks given, will wealthy conservatives step up their giving to the poor? Or, will the arguments and alibis used to make welfare seem a corrupting influence on the poor be recycled and returned to their earlier context, becoming once again a critique of charitable giving to the undeserving poor? Will the rich man who disdains having his tax money go to the indigent, step in to give his money through a nonprofit intermediary, or will he simply walk off, his heart hardened, and his conscience clear, to spend the money on his own deserving self and his own deserving heirs? Sadly, that is mostly what Cornelius Vanderbilt did. His heir, though, the one to whom he gave almost all his fortune, did little to preserve it, and the family, once (in inflation adjusted terms) three times richer than Bill Gates, has seen its dynasty crumble.  Several of the heirs, it seems, contested the  patriarch's will, accusing him of being insane.  The case dragged on; the chosen son, the one who was to inherit almost all, committed suicide.

In the dialogue of Virtue and Wealth, Dame Fortune may have the final word.  Had Vanderbilt listened to the Christ of the Gospels, or to Maimonides with his ladder of giving (or justice), or to the Stoics who counsel detachment from worldly passion, rather than listening to the think tanks of his era, might Vanderbilt's family have been better and done better, not only for society, but for themselves? Unwisdom, selfishness, and sophistry are like vipers we breed in our hearts at our own peril.

Who Owns Garbage?

Citizen Shift via Dialogic:

The city of Buenos Aires, Argentina is the battle ground in a fight over     garbage. The Cartoneros are recyclers; they operate in cooperatives,     collecting and recycling the city’s waste for money. Cartoneros     cooperatives like Nuevos Rumbos have been operating for decades. But since     Argentina’s latest economic collapse, the cartoneros find themselves     engaged in a fight with some of the city’s richest and most powerful     people -- a fight over "ownership" of garbage and the right to make a     living from recycling.

See 4 minutes film.
 

Albert on Philanthropy, Power, and Persistent Poverty

Among his root causes I note that Albert has left out shiftlessness, stupidity, and a culture of failure. Rebuttal expected from Bradley Foundation.  Don't blame the rich for Welfare Queens, Albert. They are the problem, not the victim. Moral approbium directed to the poor is the proper response. The poor need only model themselves on the mores of the rich and they will be rich too. In a flat world the losers get flattened. Get used to it. It can't be helped. You want to help the poor, lower taxes on the rich, that will create jobs in India where people are very poor.

Holden on Why He Helps the Poor

One of the most interesting and satisfying things about working with givers is that no matter how we disagree at the level of theory or vocabulary, often we are moved by what moves another.  When Holden writes likes this, all I can say is "Bravo!"

Every poor minority student who grows up to be a successful businessman/politician/writer is one more slap in the face of people who think the world as of 2007 is a reflection of justice.

.... I shouldn’t care about proving jerks wrong...; I should just care about helping people. But I’m human, and what motivates me isn’t quite that simple, and I can be honest about that and still do my job well.

Proving jerks wrong motivates the heck out of me too.  How would you feel, Holden, if you discovered that some funders actually hire think thank thinkers to create the ideology that jerks use to justify their prejudices? The Bell Curve comes to mind.

My Favorite Cause

Holden hosts a Giving Carnival in which participants are asked to say what moves them most to give and why.  The world I want is one in which each person is treated as a means, not an end. Each person is treated as precious, as a human being or soul. Each person is able and willing to interact in adulthood as a citizen among citizens, not just as a consumer or producer or salesperson.  Each citizen passionately pursues his or her vision of the good, while honoring others for doing the same.  The world I want is held open by a Constitution to which all adhere, in which all have within broad limits, the right to pursue their own concept of the good, their own happiness, even if others find it distasteful. What stands in the way of this vision are economic disparities, educational deficits, a mentality that those who are dupes deserve to be duped, those who are weak deserve to be exploited, and the to the victor go the spoils. What also threatens the world I want is fear. Those who are afraid may trade the safety of a security state for the freedoms and liberties of open society.

How to advance the world I want?

• Blog as a peer among peers.
• Volunteer for grassroots organizations devoted to citizen engagement or social justice.
• Promote giving and giving circles.
• Speak out against (dispute and satirize) conceptual systems that provide alibis for those committed to a winner take all approach.
• Honor in others their gifts, even if the giver has a vision or values quite at odds with my own.
• Trust that in helping others bring their gifts to fruition I help advance the world I want too, since the world I want is open, tolerant, and pluralist.
• Speak out against the erosion of Constitutional rules, rights, and protections.
• In the spirit of "serio ludere" (serious fun) lighten fear with frolic and so defeat the enemies of open society at home and abroad who would terrify that they might subjugate.

Where are The Shareholders' Mansions? By David Yermack

David Yermack, Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, March 2007, 40 page paper in pdf. This gist is this: When CEOs cash in their corporate stock or exercise their stock options to buy themselves a mansion, the stock will likely decline.  They win. Shareholders lose.

There are times as I read this stuff when, as with Veblen,  I just can't tell if it is satire.  We have reached a point in America where the corruption among the Plutocrat-Elite is so extensive and so threatens the polity that we have to expand our definitions of philanthropy and civic engagement to include the Public Pillory.  When those in power fail us, and do so egregiously, and as a matter of course, in connivance with their equally corrupt peers in adjacent sectors, we the people revert to our primitive condition, outside the shattered social compact. We become what we always were, joyous full throated satirists,  ever willing and ever able to denounce and humiliate those who have betrayed our public trust.  Satire is rough justice, vigilante justice, but none of us is above the law, and no one is above a bare bottom thrashing by a good self-appointed Morals Tutor to the Stars.  At least satire is all in good fun.  The goal is not to injure but to reform those who need it most.  We can all agree that maintaining public morals is a key national concern.  Generally, those beaten kiss the rod. 

Then again, the Yermack study may well be just a factual account of capitalist dysfunction.

A Classless Society or a Society without Class?

White Courtesy Telephone:

How do we incorporate class-talk into nonprofit work in a way that doesn’t elide hundreds of years of racial oppression?  How do we bring the lived experience of the poor and working poor into institutions governed by middle class values and norms?  How do we dispel the myth that America is essentially a classless society?

Let us Again Praise Famous Men

Bellsmyre.com:

Photographer Mathias Braschler spent six months last year travelling across more than 40 states in a bid to find out what American citizens think of their country. From a marine in South Carolina to a Wal-Mart employee in Pennsylvania, from a Mississippi cotton picker to a cowboy in Wyoming, it is a visually stunning social document that provides a rare insight into the many faces of modern-day US. Interviews by Monika Fischer -''What do I expect from the future?  To retire rich' - Pat Bertha, Wal-Mart employee, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Someone who will retire rich as a Wall Mart Greeter, or win the lottery, or marrying a billionaire, won't be told that their delusions are symptoms and that the root causes are laughing at them. The modern Willie Lomans would rather be told that their virtues will get them ahead, that they are not part of the underclass, that the ones trodden under foot deserve it. I don't believe the right wing think tanks and Fox News or Limbaugh and Coulter  have "brainwashed" the lower middle classes, where it butts up against the dispossessed. I believe the propagandists have listened carefully to age  old ideals and prejudices too and have played their message to evoke visceral emotions. "Down with The Estate Tax," cries our Greeter, for she too will someday be rich. 

Ivy-Educated Americans in Wealth Bondage - The Dawning Recognition

Rick Pearlstein, "No, conservativism kills freedom."  False. I asked the Booted One, the Social Venture Philanthropist who funds my blog. She said that killing the Cubicle Slaves would be cost-prohibitive, when you factor in the price of recruting replacements.  Better to work us to death. "Flat world, Sweetie,  why should an MBA in Dallas or New York make more than one in Calcutta? If you don't like it you are free to starve."  She has a point.  If you want to be idealistic, as so many young people do, you can always be a Fool. Start with amusing your own Boss, and go from there.

Why The Rich Care About Inequality Up to A Point

Bill Gates via WSJ: Why the Rich Care About Inequality.  You could say that the article is at odds with the (alleged) creation by Microsoft of a backdoor into Windows for the National Security Administration. When none of us has privacy, including financial privacy, we are equal only as are prisoners who are montitored 24/7 by the unseen guards from behind smoked glass.  Hard to call markets free when the political authorities  can monitor the private conversations of all market players and then act upon that information in secret, preserved from public scrutiny by a rubic (figthing Terror) so all-emcompassing as to deny the right of citizens even to ask questions.  Yet, in reality, the Gates pieces does not contradit his practice:  The piece is all about maintaining social order, appeasing and co-opting dissent, that wealth might be preserved, not about freedom or equality.  Gates does much good, but the river of life as it wends its way from Eden is turbulent and muddy, with many a garbage bag, tree limb, and here and there, a floating body.  We should be glad that our betters, the wise and the good, are handling this for us.  I for one would like to see more cooperation between business and the state security apparatus. We're all in this together.