Oligarchy

Philanthropy is not justice. It is often what replaces justice in a system rigged to protect the rich.

Bill Gates wants you to know he’s planning to give away almost all his money within the next 20 years. Warren Buffett, his long-time partner in benevolence, has pledged to do the same. Right on cue, the nattering nabobs of the media are applauding this as a heroic act. 

Gates is transferring more than $5 billion a year to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in an effort to give away all his money in the next twenty years. That may sound generous, but it’s pocket change compared to the benefits he reaped from a system tilted dramatically in his favor. 

And it's too late.

Let’s get real: these billionaires aren’t saviors. They’re symptoms of a broken capitalist system that piles wealth sky-high for a vanishing minority of individuals and corporations while the rest of society fights over scraps.

For decades, Gates and Buffett grew their fortunes through a combination of market domination, anti-competitive practices, and one particularly important strategy: avoiding taxes.

$21 to $32 Trillion: The Hidden Wealth of the Oligarchy 

A damning BBC report, originally published in 2012, estimated that between $21 trillion and $32 trillion in global wealth was hidden in offshore tax havens by the world’s richest individuals. Assuming a 30% tax rate, that's a cool 9 trillion dollars in lost tax revenue.

This lost revenue could have funded hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and climate resilience. Instead, they sit in shell companies and numbered accounts, shielded by armies of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists. 

According to Oxfam, the world's wealthiest 1% of people own nearly 43% of all global financial assets.

This is the hidden wealth ageing oligarchs like Gates later emerge to “give it all away” through private philanthropy after a lifetime of dodging their fair contribution to society.

These numbers, now over a decade old, must be even larger today, given the continued expansion of financial secrecy networks, cryptocurrency masking, and lax global enforcement.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and others of their ilk operate by a simple mantra: evade taxes now, hoard the cash, play savior later.

Meanwhile, some poor kid in rural Texas or sub-Saharan Africa is dead because they couldn't get the life-saving treatment they needed due to inadequate funding of healthcare. For that kid, and millions like them worldwide who are being killed by poverty while billionaires and the corporations they run hoard trillions of dollars, that they colluded with local politicians not to pay taxes on, the Gates Foundation means nothing.

Friedman and Reagan: Lords of Inequality

This billionaire philanthropy circus is a direct result of the neoliberal revolution launched in the late 20th century by Economist Milton Friedman.

Friedman preached that a corporation’s only purpose was to maximize profits. In Friedman’s worldview, public systems are inefficient, and rich individuals are better placed to make social investments. It is one of the dumbest ideas in history, but it was music to the ears of the wealthy.

US President Ronald Reagan put it into practice with massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, union busting, deregulation, and a moral crusade against “big government.”

The Gateses and Buffetts of the world are the ultimate winners of this ideology. They rose to unimaginable wealth not because the system failed, but because it worked exactly as designed: funneling wealth upward while socializing corporate losses and privatizing social responsibility and social investment.

Gates, with his foundation, is the literal embodiment of that logic: after a lifetime of hoarding, we now have a private billionaire deciding which diseases to cure, which educational systems to reshape, which technologies deserve funding, and how much to spend. 

All outside of public debate or accountability.

The problem is not that Gates and Buffett give money away. The problem is that they, and the corporate empires they built, avoided contributing fairly in the first place. 

Microsoft, for example, has used a complex web of subsidiaries to shift profits offshore and minimize its U.S. tax bill. Berkshire Hathaway, meanwhile, is structured to accumulate tax-advantaged wealth across an empire of businesses; everything from railroads and utilities to junk food and credit cards.

And now these billionaires want applause for "giving it all back!"

They’re not giving it back. It wasn't theirs to hoard in the first place. They defrauded society by not paying their fair share of taxes while riding on public infrastructure, public capital, and public labor.

And now they’re purporting to redistribute the illicit earnings on their terms in return for influence and patronage. And they are doing it through private foundations that are tax-exempt, unaccountable to the public, and often used to shape global agendas without democratic oversight. 

It's not charity. It's influence laundering.

What If They Paid Taxes Instead?

Imagine if Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway had paid full taxes on all their earnings over the last 30 years. Imagine if even half of the estimated $30 trillion in offshore accounts were repatriated and taxed at fair rates. 

Those revenues could have funded universal childcare, affordable housing, high-speed rail, or pandemic preparedness.

We don't need billionaire handouts to patch the holes. We need billionaires to pay their full taxes. 

A functioning democracy should not depend on the moral compass of billionaires. Public wealth should be built and distributed through collective investment, not charitable whims.

And let’s not forget: most of these fortunes were built atop workers' labor, public infrastructure, publicly funded research, and government contracts.

The tech boom, for example, was fertilized with taxpayer-funded R&D and rode on technologies built through painstaking research by public universities, as well as massive tax breaks, mostly unwarranted. The financial markets that made Buffett rich are regulated and backstopped by public institutions. 

Barack Obama was right. Billionaires didn’t build it. They extracted it.

We Don’t Need Billionaires to 'Save' Us

The core issue isn’t whether Gates or Buffett are “good people.” It’s that they shouldn’t be allowed to accumulate that much power and wealth in the first place. Extreme wealth concentration undermines democracy, corrodes social cohesion, and warps our moral priorities.

Let’s stop being grateful when billionaires try to cleanse their legacies through charity at the tail end of their lives. Let’s start demanding a fair tax system, stronger regulations, and public institutions that serve everyone, not just the rich.

In a just society, billionaires wouldn't need to 'give it away' because they wouldn't have been allowed to hoard it.

From Bad To Worse

Donald Trump represents the tragic triumph of Neoliberalism. The US government is now under the full control of the oligarchy: Trump's cabinet is made up of billionaires collectively worth more than $200 billion (with the inclusion of Elon Musk, who attends cabinet meetings and effectively operates at cabinet level). 

Guess which policies they are implementing?

The top oligarch, Musk (not Trump), has already used a government appointment by Trump to dismantle or decapitate several government departments and fire hundreds of thousands of civil servants providing critical and needed public services. 

At the same time, his own companies are seizing lucrative government contracts even as he dismantles the government.

Patrick Kariuki is The Editor of the Kenyan Observer.