> I wouldn't call things like the giving pledge "business as usual" in big philanthropy. I can't think of any prior art for it.
Andrew Carnegie, in The Gospel of Wealth, railed against inheritance and said, "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced". He advised fellow millionaires of his era to donate their fortunes during their lifetime to activities that would create greater wealth in the community, such as free libraries for the poor.
It is in many ways a sign of the age - the focus on getting money, and the comparative lack of interest in explaining how to be far better at spending it to attain measurable results than the rest of big philanthropy.
Philanthropy done right looks much more like the Thiel model:
The Gates Foundation would do far more good in the world by splitting itself up into a hundred or a thousand more directed and competing interests, focused on bottom-up change one innovation at a time.
As it is, the majority of its funds will probably eventually evaporate in the grind of top-down existing strategies that have solved nothing permanently - but have instead led to government-bound institutions that do more to perpetuate the problems they allegedly try to solve than generate good in the world, or which have turned into jobs programs for comparatively privileged individuals, disconnected from any need to achieve concrete results.
As it is, the majority of its funds will probably eventually evaporate in the grind of top-down existing strategies that have solved nothing permanently
I agree with much of what you're saying, but my overall outlook isn't that negative. There is a real chance that their work will help completely eradicate malaria. If that's not solving something permanently, I don't know what is.
I wouldn't call things like the giving pledge "business as usual" in big philanthropy. I can't think of any prior art for it.
http://givingpledge.org/