Gift Hub Phil Cubeta

Can Philanthropy save capitalism as we know it in the West? Four Scenarios from Rockefeller and GBN would indicate that Foundation Philanthropy will do well to save itself over the next couple of decades. Via. Under one scenario, involving a breakdown in law and order, and the rise of hackers, scammers, and criminal networks, the Philanthropists hire Black Ops professionals to research grantmaking opportunities. Walter Mitty, working for Rockefeller, imagines himself as Trent, ex-undercover government agent, air lifted into Botswana, moving down streets crowded with mothers and children waving AK47's, then pushing deep into the Chobe Forest, to meet with kids running a lab to manufacture genetically modified seeds and new vaccines, under the protection of a local militarized gang. Lord help us! Saving Capitalism may be a job best left to the Chinese, or maybe to the Russian mafia.

CNN: 40 Billionaries Pledge to Give Half of Net Worth. As a percentage of billionaires, what is 40? What can be done to get a 100% compliance rate, so that we have no free riders? If an estate tax is not the answer what would be? Moral suasion? Is it fair that some billionaires give generously to save capitalism and the others just go along for the ride? I consider that a social injustice to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They are being played for suckers by their skinflint peers.

Via Solari blog, an interesting article on how both the CIA and Google are investing in a forprofit company doing massive online surveillance. Wealth Bondage is running a similar poke, peep, and snoop operation but its business model is different: blackmail. Either you pay WB for protection, or they (we) turn your dossier over to the guys who snatch suspects from the streets and put them in diapers. I have no objection to what is done to others, though I admit some lingering concern over what is done to me. So, I pay the ever-escalating tab for protection and keep on smiling. It is all good! We are all trying to save Capitalism. We just go about it in our own ways.

Phil, your points are valid, but for your own sake, dial it down a bit!  So, I hear, almost daily now, by private communications from close friends. Such advice was old when satire was written on scrolls or tablets, by a slave taking dictation. Yet, Pope lived a full life, and his Master Horace had a state pension, at the order of the Emperor himself. I expect no less. You, my closest readers, the guys in the blacked out van across the street, carry the word to your boss: I will dial it back, for a price! I want a farm, a slave, fruit trees, a grape arbor, and several goats fit for sacrifice. Then will I sing the Praises of Empire, hinting at the deification of whomever is then in charge. Give me the name of the one in charge, the one whom we all fear. Him or her will I praise! For what? For keeping us Free!

Glenn Greenwald:

Project Vigilant is but one manifestation of a booming and unaccountable industry:  groups which collect vast amounts of highly informative data about American citizens -- particularly their Internet activities -- and then sell it or otherwise furnish it to the U.S. Government. 

Say, didn't I see you in Wealth Bondage last night?

Jim Kunstler on the slow-motion economic emergency and its likely outcome:

This failure of credentialed and elected authorities will surely unleash the crazies as we skid toward fall. Legitimacy hates a vacuum. The absence of a reality-based consensus for action will invite a consensus based on other things such as the lust for vengeance, the labeling of scapegoats, patriotic gore, and all the alternate trappings of a politics-gone-mad. Enjoy the heat and the clam rolls wherever you are in the meantime, and when you come home don't be surprised if you no longer recognize the country you're in.

What literary, philosophical, and religious traditions tell us over and over again is that blindness is a moral disease. The cure for blindness is metanoia, a change of paradigm, a change of heart, translated as repentance. Our blindness as educated people is culpable.  Into the vacuum we have created, by feeding the heart on fantasy, will come the demogogues. Wealth Bondage is that of which we must not speak, precisely because we are prisoners of it, or its factotums, speechwriters, teachers, fundraisers, and media personalities. Until we acknowledge our sickness, we cannot be cured. And until we are cured we are contagious.

Daniel Pink on humans, even employees, as "purpose maximizers." An animated 10 minute lecture at RSA. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose trump money, he finds, once we have enough money so that money as an issue is off the table. Still few businesses and few financial and estate planners have caught on to this.

"First as Tragedy, then as Farce," brilliant 10 minute animated lecture. Should be taught in every business school that teaches philanthropy.

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.