Last night, I came across a piece about Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, putting out a request to his Twitter followers on what kind of philanthropic work he should go into.

You can find the piece here.

I began thinking about the recent trend of our society to expect that wealthy individuals need to give away their money, or at least re-distribute it. I’m not against it, but find it fascinating that it has become the expectation: billionaires now choose causes of their interest to take the place of governments that are failing to act of these issues.

As discussed in class, non-profits have offered members of society the ability to own a piece an issue — what the non-profit is fighting for. It creates a democratization of the issues non-profits fight for, instead of allowing billionaires to choose the causes they care about.

We see this with organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, that have selected medical causes that they believe are most beneficial to society.

Bezos, by opening this up to the public, is bringing back the democratization of this process — allowing the public to choose the issues that are worth fighting for.