Bill Gates’ plutocratic philanthropy

This video from the USA says about itself:

27 August 2010

Gates Foundation Criticized for Increasing Monsanto Investment

And the charity of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda is under criticism following the disclosure it’s substantially increased its holdings in the agribusiness giant Monsanto to over $23 million. Critics say the investment in Monsanto contradicts the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation‘s stated commitment to helping farmers and sustainable development in Africa. In 2007, the Gates Foundation said it would review its holdings after a lengthy exposé in the Los Angeles Times revealed it had invested nearly $9 billion in companies whose practices run counter to the foundation’s charitable goals.

By Nick Dearden in Britain:

How the Gates foundation buys its critics’ silence

Monday 25th January 2016

by Nick Dearden

IN A plutocracy, it’s no surprise that the world’s richest man is one of the most influential voices on the future of global agriculture and healthcare. What’s surprising is how little that influence is questioned.

But if you’re Bill Gates, you can afford to put most potential opponents on the payroll too. Bill Gates’s charitable foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is the 12th biggest contributor to aid in the world, spending more than Canada, Belgium, Denmark or Italy.

No donor contributes more aid to healthcare, while only four countries give more aid to agriculture. No wonder Gates has a loud voice. Shouldn’t we celebrate his largesse, especially given rich countries’ governments are failing to redistribute the world’s wealth in a more radical fashion? Leaving aside whether it’s right for one person to have such wealth and power, the problem is that Gates’s solutions are not neutral.

In fact, as we’ve laid out in our new report Gated Development, they’re deeply political. They put big business interests right at the heart of “solving” poverty in the world.

As such, they actually risk exacerbating some of the world’s most pressing problems. Take agriculture. Gates is a major fan of high technology solutions. His foundation is the biggest funder of research into genetic modification in the world.

Initiatives that Gates funds push intensive farming methods involving plenty of chemicals and privatisation of seed distribution. Time and again, these “solutions” have proved disastrous for small farmers, allowing big players to effectively control the whole food system.

They also ramp up global carbon emissions and fuel global warming. But they are exactly what big business wants. In fact, Gates’s aid sometimes looks designed to help agribusiness develop new markets — like a project with agrogiant Cargill which helped it develop soya “value chains” in Africa.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s simply how Gates, like so many of his fellow plutocrats, believes the world works. Big business invents useful stuff and drives growth. Let’s help them and everyone will be better off. In health, Gates’s schemes follow the same path, developing private “solutions” which marginalise public-sector healthcare.

Gates works with big pharma, for instance supporting Glaxo Smith Klein to develop an Ebola vaccine. Of course, a new vaccine might be very useful, just as a new farming method might. But when those developments also help secure corporate control over the world’s resources, they are at the same time reinforcing the structures that create poverty and inequality in the first place.

They sweep real solutions — challenging the power of corporations and creating more democratic solutions — under the carpet. Development is no longer about those with too little taking power over their lives. It is a question of reining in those who already have too much power.

So why so much silence, even acquiescence, from that part of society which “advocates” for “the poor,” such as international charities? Well, many seem to have made their peace with Gates’s vision of the future, themselves seeing big business as essential “partners” in improving the lives of the poor and fixating on technologies rather than questioning power. Surely the funds of the Gates Foundation must help their conversion?

Senior members of staff in large development charities regularly say (off the record) that their organisations have become unable to criticise the likes of Gates. For instance, Save the Children UK has received $35 million since 2010, with Save the Children globally receiving much more than that.

Meanwhile Bond, the umbrella group for development charities which should be the political mouthpiece for the sector, has received $4.7m since 2010. However well that money may be spent, it is difficult to imagine it has no influence on the willingness of such organisations to speak out and challenge the paradigm which Gates represents.

In other words, Gates has been a key part, as has Britain’s Conservative government, of redefining “development” as “capitalism.” He also seems to have converted many of those who should otherwise criticise him.

The ultimate power of the superwealthy in our world derives not simply from making something happen — from supporting this initiative rather than that one — but in changing our very language and the way people see the world.

The real power of the world’s richest man lies in his ability to co-opt and marginalise any accountability.

You can play the video game Save us Bill Gates! at www.globaljustice. org.uk/infographics/saveusbillgates.

A version of this article was first published by Global Justice Now. Read the report Gated Development — is the Gates Foundation always a force for good? here.