Gift Hub Phil Cubeta

Recombinant Records on Huxley versus Orwell's vision of Dystopia. The piece is a short comic. And it's moral is that Huxley was right; we are amusing ourselves to death. Given my attention span, I would have prefered a tweet rather than a one page comic. But I did like the pictures.

Just because it falls on your property does not mean the rain water belongs to you. Before leaving an empty bucket outside, please check your local statutes. (A Public Service Announcement from the Wealth Bondage Public-Private Water Initiative.)

In the WSJ,If your children are competent they don't need a big inheritance, if they are not competent, the money may only hurt them.

Yes, but what if bluer blood, raised well, and bred up to the responsibilities of wealth, could help create a wiser, more cultured, and more urbane America? Don't we all need a class of dynasts, well educated in the best prep schools, and members of all the best clubs to run our country? Might they not be a good offset to the pushing vulgarians with their MBAs, and the grasping entrepreneurs with their tacky metrics? Those of us born to wealth and privilege can rise above self interest. Rather than pillaging the country and abusing the public trust, or devoting our lives to merely pecuniary considerations, we can and will act as stewards of the greater good. I am eternally grateful to Mummy, for her moral teaching, and to Great, Great Grandfather Minim, who invented canned dog food, for having the wisdom and foresight to leave the money in trust for all succeeding Minims, yours truly, of course included. That people take advice in parenting from the Wall Street Journal, is quite appalling. May Rupert Murdoch's children inherit enough so that they can be better educted, and more refined than their grotesque progenitor. It may take at least three generations of Murdochs to purify the taint of their mucky pelf. Dick Minim, Senator (D) MA. (Overheard in the Porcellian Club today, as he ate his crumpet and read the papers. I was there in my role as serving professional, Senior Bus Boy, my dayjob, as I see if my calling as Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families works out as planned. Dick would be a good prospect. He has more money than God, but it is hard to segue from serving Mr. Minim's coffee to improving his morals, which judging by his tips are pretty crappy.)

Doing well by doing good is my goal. With my mentor, the Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage, I, as a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, will set up an Executive Moral Rehabilitation Center (Dungeon) to modify the behavior of those MBA's who, through weakness of the will, fail to keep the MBA Oath ("I will refrain from corruption....") These beatings  will give real meaning to the Oath, and will help keep the backsliding MBAs on the straight and narrow. Now, for the business model. For-profit? Or, nonprofit? Would a foundation pay for such a public service? Would Bill Gates fund it? Could we take up a collection from the general populace? Would many people give say $5 a year to have corrupt MBAs beaten half to death? I would. Were the spectacle public, we could charge admission, or go pay per view.

Social Actions,

...we're requesting formal Letters of Interest from those who have an interest in stewarding all or some of Social Actions' programs. We're posting that request here not just as an update but to encourage everyone to share it and chime in with ideas and proposals.

From a 2002 article by Robert Locke,

The first thing big business has in common with big government is managerialism. The technocratic manager, who deals in impersonal mass aggregates, organizes through bureaucracy, and rules through expertise without assuming personal responsibility, is common to both.

To that we might add that the first thing Gates, Ford, and Hewlett Foundations have in common is managerialism (called social venture philanthropy, or strategic philanthropy, or high impact philanthropy). The technocratic grantmater, who deals in impersonal mass aggregates, organizes through bureaucracy, and rules through expertise and metrics, without assuming personal responsibility, is common to all three - big business, big government, and big business funded big foundations.

In return for a generous grant, or as she calls it, "a robust social investment," from Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage, I am supposed to Save Capitalism by 2015. Annually, I must report on progress against plan. I can measure and manage my outputs (posts, word count) and my outcomes (subscribers, page reads, incoming links, and comments), but now Candidia is also asking for objective proof of impact. How much Capitalism have I actually saved? And, in investment terms, how much Capitalism is she saving for every dollar she invests in Gifthub? "Sweetie, I can't manage what I can't measure," as she so well puts it.

Any thoughts? The general populace is as mystified, bestial, and stupified as ever. Does that count as postive social impact? I will go with that I guess and argue that a stupified and supine electorate saves Wealth Bondage by boosting sales, reducing pushback, and postponing the inevitable. She'll buy that. That is a lot of benefit she gets for a generous grant of $1,000 a year. A better social investment than The Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society at Hudson. Cheaper, better, faster. Well, cheaper, anyway, Bill Schambra is better. But in this bipartisan work of saving capitalism there are no competitors. We all must do our bit!

John Robb,

No big surprises at the Aspen Institute conference:  the big money is still flowing towards huge, global-scale projects and schemes that aren't likely to work.  In stark contrast, Marcin and his team of farmer scientists working on post-scarcity economics is making lots of progress (see Marcin's economy in a box presentation for context).  They are doing this on a shoestring, which is a shame.  Here are some highlights:

• The CEB (compressed earth brick) press called the Liberator.  The team has completed its first product (the design is open source, of course).  It allows the rapid manufacturing of construction materials from nearly ubiquitously available resources.  
• They've built a working prototype of an open source drill press they are currently using in their fabrication processes.
• They are building the second prototype their soil pulverizer.  

Officially, Gifthub, the nonprofit arm of Wealth Bondage, has as its goal, Saving Capitalism. The way it is going, though, my secret agenda is saving my own ass when things fall apart. Hence my interest in The Liberator, open source compressed earth brick press. I could build a real house, in the country, live like a king selling bricks to my neighbors. I guess that would be saving capitalism too. I could be the Bill Gates of compressed dirt, and even give away some bricks as a public service.

Mazarine on unionizing fundraisers to combat bullying bosses:

You may not be able to ban bullying in your state YET, but you can organize to make sure that you and people you work with have more power to stand up to bad management practices. Here is a union that you can join for public service workers, UFCW.

The MBA Oath developed by recent graduates of Harvard Business School is harmless enough though it does contain one hilariously tone-deaf statement: "I will refrain from corruption..." It makes it sound like taking the oath makes you some kind of teetotaler in a brewery, or virgin in the Bordello. Maybe the Catholic Church in the light of recent scandals should have priests take an Oath, "I will refrain from seducing minors on Church property." That might reassure a troubled public.

Richard (Dick) Minim is an advisor to R. Rump, the R. Rump, of Rump Consolidated Enterprises, the double bottom line social venture division of Wealth Bondage International: Let Freedom Reign! Dick is friends with Miranda Chase, a fundraiser for the University of Wealth Bondage's Cruikshanks School of Business, to which R. Rump is a distinguished Board Member and Significant Donor. Miranda has just now confided to Dick that R. Rump has made persistent and undesired sexual advances upon her, and that she knows of several other instances of similar behavior. She says that she is unable to talk to those above her about this issue since she knows of several other women who have been victim blamed for making accusations agains R. Rump, the R. Rump.

Dick's game plan is to conduct a Values-Based Interview with R. Rump to determine the Esteemed Philanthropist's Vision and Values, so as to help Mr. Rump project those values down through the generations of his family, and The Cruikshanks School of Wealth Bondage University. Dick's modus operandi is to have High Net Worth Clients sort a Deck of Values Cards to determine the client's Moral Compass so as to align the Client's Financial Capacity with that Compass.

Questions

Should Dick in the light of Miranda's unsubstantiated accusations, deviate from his modus operandi?

Answer

No. (I will spot you to the obvious.)

Explanation

To be faked in by anyone who chooses to do so. In Wealth Bondage we do what we must to keep the game going. Harmlessly sorting Values Cards is the least of our sins.

Chronicle of Philanthropy on the sexual harassment of fundraisers by donors and board members. The abuse of power in philanthropy is a topic for broader discussion.  Strikingly, in the Chronicle article most of those who said they have been sexually harassed had not reported it and asked to remain anonymous. That speaks volumes for where we are in Wealth Bondage Generally.

Philanthropist Conrad Black, formerly on the Board at Hudson Institute, is out on bail.

The Financial Times on how Business Schools are now teaching philanthropy. Students are assigned to live in Dumpsters in burned out neighbhorhoods and survive by their wits on handouts. Actually, no, it is a more businesslike curriculum than that.

Pablo Eisenberg, Oxford educated, and hence who should know better, moans in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that the Gates Challenge will likely add to social inequity as the rich give to causes favoring the rich. How else, Pablo, did European Aristocracy flourish? How else did you get to Princeton and the Marshall Scholarship that lifted you from well-deserved obscurity? Be grateful for all your betters have done for you. You may be the finest flower of elitism, but it is elitism of which you are the finest flower. So railed the Happy Tutor from his Dumpster, his street cred undiminished by his fine education.

"I don't sort values cards; I have people who do that for me."  The voice of the successful dynastic family wealth client. I can't tell you how often I, as a hotsie totsie serving professional in Wealth Bondage Private Client Services Group, have sorted the values cards, over and over, for Ultra High Net Worth Clients (UHNWCs) until they feel I have done them justice. It is like playing Go Fish! only infinitely more boring. But no one has ever gotten a social disease sorting values cards, as far as I know. I do wear rubber gloves, though, just in case. They call it filthy lucre for a reason. Still, it pays well.

In values based planning we align financial capacity with moral compass, or the client's values. To arrive at values we sort values cards, check boxes on lists of values, or take psychological tests whose outputs are a map of client values. Given, though, that values are most often honored in the breach and that most human behavior is determined by delusion, obsession, bad habits, foibles, eccentricities, temptations, besetting sins, moral cowardice, vanity, and addiction, it seems the values exercises are incomplete. Why not give clients vice cards and ask them to sort by their own besetting sins? Then, as a cross check against hypocrisy, have the family and employees of the philanthropist do a 360 degree analysis, in strict confidence, to make sure we have a complete map of the client's vice, blindness, spiritual pride and corruption. "Which of the Ten Commandments do you most frequently break? Are there any you have kept? If you were going to observe just one Commandment, which would it be? Which if of the Ten Commandments is right for you?"

Wouldn't you guess, wouldn't we all guess, that more behavior in all echelons of society  is determined by vice and folly than by wisdom and virtue? Why then in our efforts to best serve clients do we leave out of our fact-finding and goal setting their operative motives? 

I think it is because buying decisions are, like the values cards themselves, an exercise in social identity construction. Knowing who the person wants to pass himself or herself off as is an excellent predictor of the props he or she will purchase to round out the act. Since we are all in sales in one way or another this serves our purpose perfectly. That this is itself blind, manipulative, and vicious is my point. That is to say it works, And how can that be bad? 

Still, knowing the client's operative motives, as well as the self-avowed moral ones is good for business. If your client's moral compass points due north, and he is traveling due South, towards the Tropics, I would suggest you not try to sell him a parka and mukluks, instead tell him that the North Pole is unseasonably warm and sell him the swimwear.

Recently, I had a chance to listen in on a conversation among grantmakers and those who counsel grantmakers. The subject turned to international grantmaking, which was said to be rapidly on the rise, particularly among younger grantmakers. The reasons given were these:

• Younger people are more international in their outlook
• They travel more on business
• They do philanthropic travel vacations and form bonds abroad

All that didn't not catch my attention. These points did:

• Young people have a sense of community, but it is now increasingly international
• In Africa you can save a baby for much less an in the US. ("Your money just goes so much farther there.")

In other words, Detroit will become a third world polity; state grants down, federal grants down; tax base eroding; and the philanthropists? Saving babies in the Sudan for less than a baby can be saved in Detroit.

Utilitarianism teaches that a baby saved here or there is a baby saved. But another logic runs this way, "Home is where when you go there, they have to take you in," an old Yankee saying cited by Robert Frost in "Death of the Hired Man".  That is, certain obligations start with self, then family, then neighborhood, then town, state, and country, and other bonds of tradition (school, religious organization). There may be even be a moral bond between employer and hired hand. When we apply cost/benefit logic in business and in philanthropy to the exclusion of the obligations of "particularism," (rooted communities in which we were born and bred), what becomes of America?

My views are slanted. From the Dumpster on the Corner of Wealth and Bondage, I listen to such conversations and wonder if I too will be left to die by my Fellow Americans. We have change - for the worse. And we have hope - betrayed. But what have we to lift us up but our servile identification with the Winners who leave us for dead? Why should I hold holy the life of those who have written me down to zero? Human life is very cheap. Mine, yours. Propaganda, and demogoguery work like anesthetic up to a point on a middle class betrayed. Beyond that is anger, disorder, and violence. Direct it towards "illegals" as long as you can. Then it will be right here, right next door. Every polity depends on the consent of the governed, on legitimation. When the hungry in America see relief planes headed for the Sudan - what reason have they to respect the rules of the game?

Philanthropy News Digest:

In conjunction with the twentieth anniversary of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has announced that he will leave the majority of his multibillion-dollar estate to charity.

Not in my Dumpster! That NYC is converting Dumpsters to pools may seem a good thing, but not when it is your Dumpster. Now where am I supposed to sleep? An inflatable air matress maybe, or an inner tube tire. The gentrification of Dumpsters must end.