No Such Thing as a Free Gift
The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big business
The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before.
In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope—paying particular attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As large charitable organizations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve. We are entering an age when the ideals of social justice are dependent on the strained rectitude and questionable generosity of the mega-rich.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This debut from University of Essex lecturer McGoey is a scathing but overly one-sided indictment of contemporary global philanthropy, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the primary target. McGoey claims that the charitable sector's rapid growth is being driven more by greed, ego, and the pursuit of good PR than a commitment to lasting change. She devotes considerable time to tracing the roots of American philanthropy, evoking figures such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, before launching a critique of the "international architecture of celebrities and policy-makers" that includes Bill Clinton and his Clinton Global Initiative as well as elite conferences such as TED, Davos, and Skoll. Turning to the Gates Foundation, she skewers their initiatives in education and health, concluding that philanthropy is "a mode of giving that is not imperiled by its own ineffectiveness" but instead "thrives upon it." It is clear that McGoey has done considerable research on global philanthropy. However, her unwavering attack on the Gates Foundation and a generation of global philanthropists comes across as tedious, and she neglects to consider other perspectives. Despite the abundance of interesting information, the nonstop harsh negativity may lose the reader's interest.
