We need a better class of billionaire

Andrew Carnegie was the godfather of modern philanthropy. His greatest gift to the world was the Carnegie library: thousands of them, many still standing today. I’ve been to several, dotted across Southwestern Ontario, where I grew up. I’ve seen his portrait still hanging.

Carnegie was also one of the modern world’s first billionaires, a ruthless steel tycoon whose company used armed guards and state militias to break striking workers. And yet his civic legacy is one you can physically stand in.

Compare that with men like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, representatives of today’s billionaire class. Their vision for humanity is grand and cosmic: the settlement of space, the survival of the species, the destiny of humanity. But they leave little room for the scale of everyday life.

A new generation of AI billionaires is coming. Nan Ransohoff argues that the technology could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital, perhaps $37–100B per year if current trends hold. That is a lot of money to give away.

Most of this money will come from a milieu infused with rationalism and effective altruism. It is natural to be skeptical of a movement that treats personally accumulating as much wealth as possible as an optimal way to do good in the world. “Earning to give” is an awkward philosophy for a world where private fortunes have already achieved escape velocity. It also does not help that the figure most people now associate with EA is Sam Bankman-Fried.

But I do have more sympathy for EA than a lot of people. I donate to GiveWell. The basic instinct is correct: actually doing good is hard, resources are limited, and sentiment is a poor substitute for effectiveness. Philanthropy should have to count.

The Carnegie libraries pass a different test. They are still standing more than a century later. People still walk through the doors. Today’s billionaires dream bigger than Carnegie ever did, but you rarely get the sense that people figure into these dreams so much as humanity.

Carnegie was not a better man than today’s billionaires. He was a more useful one.

We need a better class of billionaire: not nicer, not saintly, not even less eccentric. Just one with enough civic vanity to want to be remembered for something the public can actually use.

A library, for example.