SELF-HATING FUNDERS. So that Soros post from earlier today? Ignore it. Folks who know better have written in and convinced me that, contrary to what he told me and various blind sources are saying, he's pumping truly significant amounts into very significant things. Among them, according to my source, are the "Center on Budget, EPI, Center for Economic Policy Research, ACLU, a massive fellowship program for several years, the Brennan Center for Justice, Demos, a bunch of state-level progressive think tanks, the Institute for America's Future (c3 arm of Campaign for America's Future), US Action, Center for Community Change, [and] Public Campaign...He does all the things in the world of ideas that Olin did (though not as much in academia), as well as a lot to support on the ground organizing." Alrighty then. Mea culpa. This is all on my mind today as I went to a lunch on the different funding structures on the left and the right. I need to take some time and organize my thoughts on this, but among the worries I have about big billionaires funding the left, the first and foremost is that it's unlikely billionaires will fund the left. They may fund the Democratic Party, insofar as it's the more managerial, empirical, technocratic, educated, and competent of the two, but to really get into funding progressivism -- what with its skepticism of corporate intentions, its meddling in the market, its willingness to seriously redistribute from the rich to the poor, etc -- would require, for most, a partial rejection of precisely the system that benefitted and benefits them. In other words, for the right's big funders, channeling their money to the defense of free market capitalism was a natural, even selfish, thing to do. John Olin reportedly said he saw his role as "using my fortune to protect the system that made it possible." For the left, though, it would be quite the opposite: It would mean recognizing the inequities in the system that aided them, and possibly even in the precise elements or industries that enriched them. And psychologically, it's much harder to use your wealth in a way that implicitly disapproves of its existence (or at least size, or relative rarity) rather than to defend, promote, and pretend that this track is open to everyone, if only we make the sort of policy changes that benefit, well, you and people like you.
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Ezra Klein
