SPIEGEL: But doesn't the money that is donated serve the common good?
Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?
SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day.
Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.He's worried about tax write-offs, which of course are there for the express purpose of encouraging charity, but never mind. Very tempting to say something about an unhealthy historical affinity between German capitalists and the state, for which a tacked-on modifier like "democratically" doesn't help much. But that would be stereotyping, and this is probably just this particular specimen, Krämer with an umlaut. The sad fact is that there's an unhealthy affinity between some capitalists and the state everywhere.
Thanks to Freakonomics
So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad.
ReplyDeleteKramer with the umlaut (in mod. gr. probably "Kraemer") does not seem that off the mark, at least in principle. The State should not be controlled by the wealthy, even in regard to philanthropy. At some point the State might have the right to intervene in the affairs of a Gates or Forbes-list capitalist barons, or global corporations for that matter. What were the US monopoly and anti-trust laws about, if not intervention of a sort?? Standard Oil, Carnegie, JP Morgan, Chase etc. loved pure libertarianism. It was the trust busters (even some repubs, initially, such as Ted Roosevelt) who put the brakes on robber baron capitalism. The history of Germany may be slightly relevant--yet the nazis were really only socialists in name. The wealthy german industrialists in fact wanted the somewhat labor-oriented brownshirts ...purged in the 20s and 30s (and purged they were..the Night of the Long Knives arguably the end of the quasi-socialist nazis).
Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Google execs might be viewed as the Carnegies and JP Morgans of the present era. They have much cleverer schemes to avoid the anti-trust laws, however and the current DoJ people haven't really pushed the issue (Bill Clinton at least attempted some anti-trust measures against Microsoft--to little avail). I read some scuttlebutt a few months back that one of Clinton's people in the BO DoJ were considering anti-trust against Google--but ...that's been quieted down (or...settled out of court as they say).
J: The State should not be controlled by the wealthy, even in regard to philanthropy.
ReplyDeleteI don't see anyone saying that it should be. They're just giving away money.
Kraemer was pointing out the differences between US and Germany really. I suspect tycoons pay more in taxes in Gr. anyway. So he seems to be saying (not that obvious)...he's already paid his contribution, and the State now can dole it out where it sees fit. No need for the favoritism implied by having the billionaire select his favorite hip charity.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure Gates or Buffett-style uber-charity is that benign. Gates/Microsoft for instance offer scholarships of various sorts to students. The naive demopublican may think...how nice of Chairman Bill or something. Granted, the scholarships probably do help out some. But they are geared to computer programming or networking. Many young students are thereby immediately converted into techie-apprentices, probably early in high school, and forget about other subjects. Hey, Bill Gates is your aeroplane. A few may succeed via MSN Inc. Most won't (same for the MS certification hype).