The Fatal Conceit of Big Philanthropy

The hazardous intersection of hubris and wealth

There is more in the Education Week article cited by Will Richardson than is addressed in his commentary. There may be several things wrong or at least worrisome about Zuckerberg’s initiative. But the potential involvement of ‘corporations’ and ‘profit’ is not necessarily one of them.

One phrase I found troublesome was “… there is little large-scale evidence that the approach can improve teaching and learning or narrow gaps in academic achievement.” In other words, only innovations that result in better schooling can be considered worthy. And if they maybe improve learning without or in spite of teaching, that counts as a failure.

But if you recognize — as Ivan Illich, myself, and many others, maybe including Will Richardson, have — that schooling itself is the problem, you view that complaint as at least irrelevant, and maybe even as a backhanded endorsement of sorts.

For similar reasons, I find AltSchool — another Silicon Valley tycoon initiative aimed to promote “personalized learning” — as a poor, deceptive substitute for what is really needed, which might be labeled Alt2School.

Let’s stipulate that Zuckerberg and Chan have good intentions. And let’s also recall what ancient wisdom says paves the road to hell.

What may be problematic here is not the prospect of commercial enterprise and profit motives. Rather it is the sheer concentration of wealth and attendant power in so few, quite possibly inadequate hands. Banks are not the only institutions that, being “too big to fail” are thus just too big. And excessive concentration of power in monopolies or oligopolies is not a hazard only in the commercial sphere. The time is past due to apply the same skeptical lenses to philanthropy.

Zuckerberg has already bungled once in Newark. How many times does he get to repeat that?

Bill Gates has devoted an even larger fortune to his foundation, which is destined to bloat even bigger when the bulk of Warren Buffett’s prodigious estate is given to its administration. The discouraging mission of the Gates Foundation’s mission regarding education seems to be “more of the same” reform tinkering, even as critics view it as disruptive of the comfortable status quo. (In reality, perpetual reform is education’s status quo.)

Lord Acton warned long ago that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Again, I’m not against either philanthropy or free enterprise or profits. Really, I’m all for them. It is the dangerous amalgam of concentration and elitist hubris that concerns me.

Writer Joanne Barkan has made a detailed case that “big philanthropy is overdue for reform.” I don’t entirely agree with her conclusion that “the goal should be to reduce its leverage in civil society and public policymaking while increasing government revenue.” Transferring hubris from the private to the public sector is not an improvement. But the detail of her arguments at least illustrates why the role and impact of highly concentrated philanthropy deserves more serious attention than it gets.

Friedrich Hayek explained the threat as “The Fatal Conceit”:

It may be admitted that, so far as scientific knowledge is concerned, a body of suitably chosen experts may be in the best position to command all the best knowledge available… [Yet] scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge… [A] little reflection will show that there is … the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others in that he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation.

In other words, when a small cadre of would-be experts decide that they know better how everyone else should live than individuals can discover for themselves, and command great and resources to implement their schemes, costly and often destructive failures follow. Hayek aimed his critique at socialism but it is also applicable to the emerging wave of “social philanthropy” — at least when the latter steers enormous piles of wealth.