Filthy Greedy Rich!
Letemdangle
Published
08/20/2011
There is no doubt there are people in this world who are selfish, narcissistic, greedy psychopaths. Many of them are filthy rich and willing to do what ever it takes to get more control of the world or whatever their goal is.
I would like to make a distinction between this type of person and those who are fabulously rich but are more altruistic than most would realize. I have worked for some very rich people and they are no more self centered or greedy than most people. I cannot identify them, but I can write about others like them that I see a resemblance to in manner and ideas.
One such man is Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay. After making his fortune he spends his time as a full time philanthropist investing his money to help others. I know eh! What a son of a bitch!
The Radical Philanthropist
Quentin Hardy, 05.01.00
Pierre Omidyar, the Frenchman who founded Ebay, had been one of the world's richest men for about a month when he and his wife, Pamela, went to a brunch at Yahoo founder Jerry Yang's home in Los Altos, California, in November 1998. The money did not set him apart from the other guests, however. The 40 couples, who ate wild mushrooms and sushi as they admired Yang's view from the hills of Silicon Valley, were worth about $30 billion total.
They were all under 35 and had gathered to talk money--giving it away, not making it. Omidyar and the others wanted to learn how to do charity as smartly and efficiently as they do business. They listened to experts talk about foundation tax-planning, about big causes like wiring up American schools and helping poor kids overseas.
But as the Omidyars drove their Volkswagen Cabriolet back to their home, furnished with budget brands from a Target store, they felt only more confused--like not a few of the accidental billionaires in the Valley. This much money changes things, he knew, and he yearned to do good, not just live large. But how, and through whom? Just writing bigger checks was not enough. "There were too many good causes," he says. "How do you do it well?"
Omidyar and others among the new superrich share something the rest of us feel about them: a gnawing unease that their massive, newly minted wealth somehow came a little too fast, a little too easily. They have heard the sniping that their own charitable giving hasn't quite kept pace with their rise in wealth. Yet they also feel that passively turning over billions to a foundation of the sort left behind by Rockefeller or Ford is a cop-out. Too many of these self-perpetuating entities are wasteful and inefficient.
"You know, it would be possible to blow $100 billion" and have no impact at all, says Patricia Stonesifer, who manages the $21 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
That's what bothered Omidyar--he could exhaust his fortune and fail to achieve anything. At 32 he had a lifetime ahead of him to figure out how to do it right. This iconoclastic programmer, who had combined one good idea with the right few lines of software to make an overnight fortune, wanted something radical out of the philanthropy business.
Since that brunch with Jerry Yang, the Omidyars' stake in the auction service has grown to $6.6 billion. They decided early on to give away nearly all of it--but by experimenting with a new type of philanthropy. They hope it can be as powerful an agent for social change as Ebay and the web are for commerce.
Like a venture-capital firm, they are seeding a number of small causes in a style that has come to be called venture philanthropy. The Omidyars will give more money to charities that follow solid business plans and meet the Omidyars' benchmarks, such as creating earnings streams that sustain the nonprofit work. Then their Darwinian, unsentimental aim is to drop the flops and expand the successes, forming national organizations.
The couple is also fostering a network of "social entrepreneurs" who share their uneasiness over how few problems are solved by traditional philanthropy. Just as webheads demolished old business models, Pierre and Pam Omidyar strive to demolish old philanthropic models in favor of new ones that deliver on that very elusive goal of all grant givers, accountability.
"When you create wealth in a short time, you think about philanthropy as you think about a business," says Omidyar, a compact, soft-spoken man. "You don't move from saying, 'How can we rationalize an industry?' to 'Where do I sign the big check?'" His charity adviser, Lorna Lathram, puts it even more bluntly: "We have a tremendous amount of product--money. Our problem is, we don't have any decent delivery mechanism--charities."
I would like to make a distinction between this type of person and those who are fabulously rich but are more altruistic than most would realize. I have worked for some very rich people and they are no more self centered or greedy than most people. I cannot identify them, but I can write about others like them that I see a resemblance to in manner and ideas.
One such man is Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay. After making his fortune he spends his time as a full time philanthropist investing his money to help others. I know eh! What a son of a bitch!
The Radical Philanthropist
Quentin Hardy, 05.01.00
Pierre Omidyar, the Frenchman who founded Ebay, had been one of the world's richest men for about a month when he and his wife, Pamela, went to a brunch at Yahoo founder Jerry Yang's home in Los Altos, California, in November 1998. The money did not set him apart from the other guests, however. The 40 couples, who ate wild mushrooms and sushi as they admired Yang's view from the hills of Silicon Valley, were worth about $30 billion total.
They were all under 35 and had gathered to talk money--giving it away, not making it. Omidyar and the others wanted to learn how to do charity as smartly and efficiently as they do business. They listened to experts talk about foundation tax-planning, about big causes like wiring up American schools and helping poor kids overseas.
But as the Omidyars drove their Volkswagen Cabriolet back to their home, furnished with budget brands from a Target store, they felt only more confused--like not a few of the accidental billionaires in the Valley. This much money changes things, he knew, and he yearned to do good, not just live large. But how, and through whom? Just writing bigger checks was not enough. "There were too many good causes," he says. "How do you do it well?"
Omidyar and others among the new superrich share something the rest of us feel about them: a gnawing unease that their massive, newly minted wealth somehow came a little too fast, a little too easily. They have heard the sniping that their own charitable giving hasn't quite kept pace with their rise in wealth. Yet they also feel that passively turning over billions to a foundation of the sort left behind by Rockefeller or Ford is a cop-out. Too many of these self-perpetuating entities are wasteful and inefficient.
"You know, it would be possible to blow $100 billion" and have no impact at all, says Patricia Stonesifer, who manages the $21 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
That's what bothered Omidyar--he could exhaust his fortune and fail to achieve anything. At 32 he had a lifetime ahead of him to figure out how to do it right. This iconoclastic programmer, who had combined one good idea with the right few lines of software to make an overnight fortune, wanted something radical out of the philanthropy business.
Since that brunch with Jerry Yang, the Omidyars' stake in the auction service has grown to $6.6 billion. They decided early on to give away nearly all of it--but by experimenting with a new type of philanthropy. They hope it can be as powerful an agent for social change as Ebay and the web are for commerce.
Like a venture-capital firm, they are seeding a number of small causes in a style that has come to be called venture philanthropy. The Omidyars will give more money to charities that follow solid business plans and meet the Omidyars' benchmarks, such as creating earnings streams that sustain the nonprofit work. Then their Darwinian, unsentimental aim is to drop the flops and expand the successes, forming national organizations.
The couple is also fostering a network of "social entrepreneurs" who share their uneasiness over how few problems are solved by traditional philanthropy. Just as webheads demolished old business models, Pierre and Pam Omidyar strive to demolish old philanthropic models in favor of new ones that deliver on that very elusive goal of all grant givers, accountability.
"When you create wealth in a short time, you think about philanthropy as you think about a business," says Omidyar, a compact, soft-spoken man. "You don't move from saying, 'How can we rationalize an industry?' to 'Where do I sign the big check?'" His charity adviser, Lorna Lathram, puts it even more bluntly: "We have a tremendous amount of product--money. Our problem is, we don't have any decent delivery mechanism--charities."
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