(2022-03-16) Eghbal Out Of The Valley

Nadia Eghbal: Out of the valley There are stories of all-powerful gods, and those of gods who are flawed. Lazy gods, reluctant gods, petulant gods, hedonistic gods who indulge themselves in the spoilings of the celestial rather than attending to earthly matters below: these stories call to us, because they remind us of ourselves.

Last fall, in a post titled "The Shitposting Gods of Silicon Valley," Pirate Wires' Mike Solana recounted Elon Musk's taunting of the UN World Food Programme, whose director, David Beasley, claimed that 2% of Elon's wealth could help solve world hunger.

Elon's response was widely lauded on Twitter. But while perhaps the UN won't be the one to solve world hunger, Solana challenged Elon to come up with an alternative: "on the other side of the incredible, growing influence of sovereign influencers is duty...In between these truly excellent dunks, we could really use a plan.""

Startups produced an immense amount of wealth in the 2010s, driven by technological advancements, strong public markets, and cheaper upstart costs.

Tech is no longer an industry these days: it's a system of values, a way of interacting with the world.

And yet, with all the resources and all the best talent and all the ideas in the world, tech is notoriously navel-gazing

I've never wanted to live in New York, but I'll concede that the city is a testament to human civilization, its residents a tightly-networked hive mind, flitting among grand feats of urban planning that remind us what we're capable of. San Francisco, by contrast, is a reminder of our shortcomings: its denizens withdrawn, buried in their phones, picking their way amongst the wasteland.

But it's not that tech doesn't care about humanity, and this is where mainstream media (MSM) gets it wrong with its eat-the-rich discourse, weaponizing tech's silence to expound upon the failings of capitalism.

But, as Stewart Brand wryly wrote in the Whole Earth Catalog many years ago: "We are as gods; we might as well get good at it."

I migrated to tech for the same reason I was originally attracted to the social sector: because it seemed like the best way to make interesting things happen in the world. (leverage)

Why are some of the world's most well-resourced, high-agency people utterly disinterested in philanthropy?

Their disconnect isn't with the underlying goals of philanthropy; it's with the philanthropy sector itself, which they perceive to be ineffective at delivering on those goals.

Philanthropy is often conflated with charity, a sort of blank-minded "giving back" to those less fortunate, but these are actually two distinct areas of work.

Charity refers to direct services that assist people in immediate need.

Philanthropy, on the other hand, refers to using private assets to generate public outcomes.

If venture capital is risk capital for private goods, philanthropy is risk capital for public goods.

We take philanthropy for granted in the United States, but it doesn't really exist anywhere else at our scale.

Philanthropy, then, can be understood as a form of self-expression.

Like freedom of expression, philanthropy is inherently pluralistic. (cf Cultural Pluralism)

The failure of philanthropy is its failure to stay relevant, to inspire us with what's possible.

"Using private assets to experiment with public goods" might mean starting a university or media organization, but what about Uber or Facebook, both of which disrupted public markets through private means?

Philanthropy, like tech, is not a single tax designation or asset class, but a way of interacting with the world.

For the first time in recent history, starting an ambitious new project that's not a startup has re-entered tech's thinking.

If that weren't exciting enough, we've also seen the emergence of a new crypto wealth class in parallel, starting in 2017.

while they share similarities with tech in how they're regarded by the rest of the world, on a more granular level, they’re pioneering different theories of change. (Theory of Change)

crypto is trying to develop new ways to fund public goods directly.

Only a handful of founders and executives got massively rich from, say, Standard Oil. Tech expanded access to wealth by popularizing a new innovation: equity compensation for employees (stock options). Crypto took this one step further by making it possible for anyone – not just employees of a firm – to participate in collective ownership of appreciable assets.

While altruism is often thought of as intrinsic to human nature, philanthropy is a manmade system that requires upfront investment, just like startups.

Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller deliberately campaigned to make philanthropy (initially called "scientific giving", to distinguish it from charitable giving) attractive to their peers.

In the past couple years, a number of experiments have already launched in academia, science, media, politics, and the arts; a smattering of examples include Institute for Progress, FROs, CityDAO, Future Fund's regranting program, University of Austin, KlimaDAO. If we're lucky, there will be many more in the years ahead.

So, that's what's been on my mind. I'm not sure what it'll turn into yet, but I've been exploring these ideas in book form

I'm grateful to Tyler Cowen and Emergent Ventures, who've awarded me a grant for this work.