Bret Devereaux

I sometimes wonder what kind of impact it would have on American politics if high-visibility euergitism was still something we expected and our elite performed - instead of nothing, political activism or (low visibility) 'effective altruism.'

Of course I know that kind of thing, either in the American past or Greece/Rome was fundamentally self-serving, about converting money into influence and political standing - but that doesn't mean it didn't have potential knock-on effects in terms of elite reputational capital.

And if the COVID pandemic has displayed anything, it seems to me one of those things is that the failure of our current elite to build effective reputational capital (particularly outside of political tribes) makes it almost impossible to organize mass responses to problems.

I would argue that this is still in practice. For "public deeds" you can see the donations of the Sacklers, for "good for society" you get things like the Gates Foundation.

Not that we can see it as a good thing, as most of these guys are using their money either to cover their shameful behaviour, or to bypass the government by setting up parallel control/development structures.

I think the key here is "high visibility". Contributing to a massive foundation to do vague research into helping faraway people isn't visible. "Visible" is more Carnegie bankrolling a library and slapping his name across the front.