If you want to have the most impact in your secret donations and change the lives of many people in good, then you should finance democratic and peaceful political underdogs in poor and represive countries.
I know it sounds revolting that giving money to politicians is better than fighting malaria or cancer. But at the end of the day, those who are having the most impact in alleviating poverty and disease are not international philanthropists, but the governments of the respective countries. Misery is the result of the lack of institutions or their systemic failure under corrupt, inefficient and incompetent leaders. We have known for decades how to eradicate malaria and provide all people on Earth with basic food, shelter and education, what we lack is world-wide execution of essential state-building and infrastructure that would enable it, and much more.
And money is a fundamental part of politics; politicians are just like any other people: if a decent, respectable living an be made in the field of politics, public office will attract decent and respectable people. If the only way you can get into power is by making trades with the devil, since no one will found politics, then what you get is corrupt and ineffective leaders that oppress rather the serve the public.
This is why, for all his sins, George Soros remains one of the most effective philanthropists in the world. And this is why he's vilified by a whole wagon of authoritarians, from Putin to Orban to Jinping: they know that the most pressing threat to their power is not some foreign country, or a political or military international alliance; they are most afraid of a well funded and cohesive internal political opposition that can properly articulate the public discontent.
I know it sounds revolting that giving money to politicians is better than fighting malaria or cancer. But at the end of the day, those who are having the most impact in alleviating poverty and disease are not international philanthropists, but the governments of the respective countries. Misery is the result of the lack of institutions or their systemic failure under corrupt, inefficient and incompetent leaders. We have known for decades how to eradicate malaria and provide all people on Earth with basic food, shelter and education, what we lack is world-wide execution of essential state-building and infrastructure that would enable it, and much more.
And money is a fundamental part of politics; politicians are just like any other people: if a decent, respectable living an be made in the field of politics, public office will attract decent and respectable people. If the only way you can get into power is by making trades with the devil, since no one will found politics, then what you get is corrupt and ineffective leaders that oppress rather the serve the public.
This is why, for all his sins, George Soros remains one of the most effective philanthropists in the world. And this is why he's vilified by a whole wagon of authoritarians, from Putin to Orban to Jinping: they know that the most pressing threat to their power is not some foreign country, or a political or military international alliance; they are most afraid of a well funded and cohesive internal political opposition that can properly articulate the public discontent.