On the 1 December, I woke up to a slew of images congratulating Mark Zuckerberg on his “giving away 99% of his Facebook shares”. I was an early sceptic, because from what I remember Zuckerberg isn’t the nicest of guys. His new sentiment may have been brought on by the birth of his daughter, but someone in his position is unlikely to pen a 2 200 word  letter to the public announcing such a radical decision on a whim. There must have been a plan from the beginning basically using Max – his daughter – as a cover up to soften the announcement, allowing people to assume it’s for a good cause. What a dick.

Now that the letter has been read and looked over and devoured by those in the know without just taking it for what it is, it seems it isn’t all that. Instead, it’s got to do with this thing called philanthrocapitalism. As Linsey McGoey explains, “it’s what happens to charity after capitalists swallow it.”

The most eloquent scribe of the philanthrocapitalism movement is Felix Salmon, a once-sceptic turned believer who offered this homage to Zuckerberg’s new investment vehicle: “Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to be satisfied with small, visible interventions which don’t scale – feeding the hungry, say, or giving to the poor. Such activities improve the world, but they don’t change the world.” Zuckerberg, Salmon insists, wants radical change – and giving to the poor won’t achieve that.

Basically, Zuckerberg isn’t giving away the 99%, but rather, he is moving it from one pocket to another. He set up a new investment company under the name Chan Zuckerberg and transferred $1-billion in Facebook shares to it. The money is still his.

Three trends exemplify the philanthrocapitalist turn: the rise of microfinance; the growth of impact investing; and the rise of new investment vehicles such as Zuckerberg’s new limited liability, which structure themselves as for-profits so that they can offer financial grants and investments to for-profit recipients without the same disclosure and transparency requirements that non-profits face.

In each of these cases – microfinance; impact investing; and growing grants to corporations – there is little direct evidence of positive outcomes for the global poor and considerable evidence that such trends tend to enrich the wealthy at the poor’s expense.

This sacrifice has nothing to do with the poor, but rather making the rich richer. So yeah, that tingling feeling I had when the letter first came out, the one which made me a sceptic because of Zuckerberg’s questionable past – so on point. #QuestionEverything

[source: m&g]