Giving through Proxy Power…and a New Science Fiction Museum

It's the season when many of us sit down and discuss the year's allocations for helping the world… call it giving, tithing, donating, or just joining others in making a better world for our grandchildren, or, as Jonas Salk described our basic duty -- "to be good ancestors."

For those who look ahead, it is self-interest, in its purest form.

Once again, let me tout an approach that might let you be systematic about this, picking among the various topics that raise your passion and using this annual exercise to do a very efficient thing: empowering others (activists) to go save the world for you!

Pass the word about this approach: The Power of Proxy Activism.  It could be your most effective (and comfortably simple) way to make a difference. To be part of the solution, not the problem.

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One forward-looking project you might consider: help crowd-fund the new Museum of Science Fiction -- to be established in Washington D.C.  Interactive exhibits will present the bold vision of Science Fiction, invoking its 'sense of wonder' about the universe --  exploring the intersection of science and the imagination. Right now... they are raising money through Indiegogo for a Preview Location as a first step toward the museum. See this interview with Executive Director Greg Viggiano.

As an added incentive, you can receive a private tour of the museum, a lecture and signed hardcover from Greg Bear. You can also receive a signed hard copy of my latest novel, Existence, or a signed set of five of my hardcovers.

Or…Be immortalized and have a character in my next novel named after you! Die gruesomely on paper and/or onscreen (if you so choose)! Or it makes the perfect holiday gift.

Click here to support the Museum of Science Fiction.

==From the Philippines to the Classroom==

There is urgent and immediate need around the globe: Help rescue and recovery efforts in the Philippines…still reeling from the terrible impact of Super-typhoon Haiyan. Thousands  have died from the storm and its aftermath, and survivors are in desperate need of food and fresh water, as well as medical supplies and sanitation. Groups such as Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), the Red Cross and Oxfam International are sending teams of emergency responders to help with this tragic situation.

Every person’s list of memberships can be uniquely different. For example, I send money every year, selecting among organizations including:

The Planetary Society supports education, advocates for pro-science policy and directly funds innovative research on space exploration -- reminding us to keep looking toward the frontier in space. Now ably led by Bill Nye the Science Guy!

Project Heifer International educates and empowers impoverished farmers overseas to practice sustainable agriculture, setting up community cooperatives -- and working to end cycles of hunger and poverty. Your gift keeps on giving, for families pass on the training they receive -- and they give the first female offspring of their livestock gift to another neighboring family in need.

Habitat for Humanity International is involved in building and repairing simple decent and affordable homes for homeless or displaced people all over the world, using volunteer labor and donations. Families in need can purchase the houses through no-interest loans or other innovative financing solutions.

The Sierra Club, which has a proven track record of rationally negotiating long-term sustainable environmental solutions -- to maintain clean air and water and open spaces for our descendants. Radical environmentalists call then "sell-outs" but they are the ones who have to do the hard dickering in a flawed but real world.

The Ocean Foundation works to protect the health of the world's oceans and coastlines, as well as to conserve our disappearing coral reefs and marine mammals.

Greenpeace, I do not always agree with them. Proxy power involves a weighing of factors. But I am glad they are out there acting as the "bad cops" and thus getting corporations etc. to eagerly negotiate with the Sierra Club!  Think about it.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation fights to resist censorship and advocates for open accountability -- to defend your rights in a an ever-changing digital world. Another case where we disagree on some things… but I am glad they are out there spending my dues  on good fights.

Witness: See It, Film It, Change It. Witness is involved in getting video equipment directly into the hands of pro-freedom elements overseas -- to record and document human rights abuses -- transforming individual stories into powerful calls for justice and change.

The Skeptic Society: Fighting for the Enlightenment, the Skeptics Society promotes science, examining and illuminating all manner of extraordinary claims….and working to debunk a growing tsunami of pseudoscience.

==And a few newer sites==

The Long Now Foundation fosters long-term thinking about humanity's future and our responsibilities to that future.. 

Crowd-it-Forward  enables you to donate to contribute to "Random acts of crowd funding."

Donors Choose enables you to give directly to the classroom. Public school teachers may seek funding for special art, science or literacy projects to benefit their students, particularly in high-poverty neighborhoods. Help purchase microscopes, books, or painting supplies.

Finally, Books for Soldiers allows you to help fulfill specific requests from soldiers -- for books, DVDs or games. Of particular value to those stationed away from family during the holiday season.  I have some titles I'd suggest!

==Philanthropy on the larger scale==

And if you know someone a bit better-heeled?  Someone with the resources to make a much bigger difference?  Here is my paper on innovative philanthropy that circulated for a while in foundation circles. It proposes a nifty way to engage billionaires in the New Aristocracy… or for a mere millionaire to create a way to influence billionaires! Oh, and also to craft one of the best possible reality TV shows, ever!

Consider a modest institution called the Eye of the Needle Foundation or "EON." Its symbol, a camel sailing easily through a needle's eye, makes biblical reference to helping rich folks "reach heaven" by means of well-targeted altruism. The aim is to offer dramatic, extravagant, altruistic... and possibly historic ways for billionaires to spend their money.

Something for the man or woman who has everything.  (Oh, and did I mention... it would make a spectacular TV series?)

Go thou and be good ancestors.

Things only a zillionaire could do to save America

Mention George Soros anywhere on the far-right and you’ll get fulminations.  To Republicans, Soros is an aristocratic mastermind who swore to “spend whatever it takes” to end the Bush-Neocons’ grip on political power in America... a vile plutocrat, striving to trample the will of plain-folks, along with the populist GOP that protects them. Glenn Beck railed to his audience, calling Soros the "Great Oligarch" and a master manipulator "who toppled eight foreign governments." (The one thing Beck never mentioned, and that - tellingly and symptomatically - not one member of Beck's vast following ever asked, was "which eight foreign governments did George Soros help to topple?" Tune in at the very end for the amazing answer.)

Okay, after wiping away tears of ironic laughter, one is left wondering.  If George Soros - and other rich liberals - are so potent and determined, why have they accomplished so little?

On the right, you see plenty of men and women who have proved ruthlessly effective at translating money into power, directing vast resources toward politically effective ends. There’s Rupert Murdoch, controlling -- along with his Saudi co-owners -- much of the world’s mass media, from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal. His deep-pocket interests have been highly effective, funding everything from "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" (remember them?), to Carl Rove's Super-PAC empire, to the war on science.

David and Charles Koch, a pair of wealthy and politically radical brothers have leveraged millions from likeminded investors, to wrest control over most of the nation’s voting machines and funded (with several hundred million dollars) the campaign to delay, obfuscate and render impotent any determined action to mitigate global climate change.  Not to mention foreign commodities moguls who have used deep fingers of influence to fare best of all, in recent years.  The list goes on and on.

Now, mind you, I am less enraged by all of this than you might think, simply because I view such behavior as the most natural thing imaginable!  We've had at least a million years in which human reproductive success was partly determined by males jockeying for status in tribal settings... followed by 6000 years in which 99% of all agricultural societies wound up being dominated by inheritance oligarchies, who strove above all to keep the masses in their place, ensuring that their sons would own other peoples' daughters and sons.  The chief outcome -- suppression of competition and free-flowing criticism -- resulted in the litany of horrifically awful statecraft that we call "history." 

Adam Smith and the American founders decried the toxic effects of oligarchy, which has always been the chief enemy of markets, enterprise, science, truly-competitive capitalism and freedom. Populist or elected "government" - in sharp contrast - has almost no track record at actually harming those things.

Nevertheless, it is easy to see why we're attracted to tales about kings and wizards and such, and why so many of the rich strive to re-create feudalism. Isn't it what you'd do?

We are, indeed, all descended from the harems of guys who pulled off that trick.  We carry their genes. Wanting all of that is the most natural thing in the world.

No, to me the amazing thing is what a high fraction of the new billionaires actually "get" the enlightenment... the modern civilization that gave them all of their opportunities and to which they owe absolutely everything.  Maybe 50% of them -- the Musk-Gates-Buffett-Bezos-Page-Brin-Soros-types -- grasp the enormous goodness and clever dynamics, based upon relative-equality of opportunity, that brought them their great fortune! Half of them seem to get it; this is wonderful.  It gives me hope there'll be an ambitiously accomplished and exciting civilization for our grand-kids.

Can the Good Billionaires be as effective as the would-be lords? 

I explore this on the pages of Existence, wherein you attend a gathering of rich clans in the year 2048 and view them weighing how much of their gratification to defer, in order not to kill the golden-egg-laying goose.

All right, it’s hard to envision Steven Spielberg pulling shenanigans anywhere as effective -- in the short term -- as the Foxite war on science.  His films are designed to provoke thoughtful conversations, not reinforce bilious hatred of your neighbors.  It's a more wholesome endeavor, but those seeds take time to germinate. The Fox-approach is quicker.

Of course, the top endeavor for a rich person who wants to change the world for the better is simple.  Keep getting rich by delivering excellent goods and services. And when you've reached a certain, sane level of satiability with wealth itself, you can either give a lot of it away (your kids will never starve) -- or else start investing in new endeavors that are risky!  Then riskier still.

For example, several of the tech-wave billionaires have invested heavily in the privatization of space exploration. Prime examples include Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos's mysterious Blue Origin project, Paul Allen's Stratolaunch System, and Sergey Brin's Space Adventures. Recently, Peter Diamandis, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and others have teamed up to launch Planetary Resources aiming to mine resources from asteroids... a topic I happen to know a thing or two about.

Yes, that's the top thing they can do. Innovation.  Risky entrepreneurship.  That and setting an example with real philanthropy, by signing the Gates Pledge.  Nevertheless, given that so much of our future depends upon the political process, can we afford to leave that arena to be meddled in by just the New Feudalists?

Do Friendly Billionaires Matter in Politics?

Let’s be clear.  Our present electoral divide won’t depend on the whim of a few  moguls.  Nor is Culture War all about “rich vs poor” - not yet. Historically, most nations were wracked by class struggle - and we may yet revert to that age-old pattern - which could become an especially dangerous schism, when the poor will be technologically empowered.  (It's an IQ test for the uber-wealthy: do you actually believe you can rebuild lordship in the coming era, when the prols will have smart drones and desktop bio labs and all that stuff? Really?) But such times may be averted.  Indeed, many of today’s affluent are loyal to the mobile, competitive, egalitarian and rather-flat society our parents made, after World War II.  One that rewarded innovative commerce, without entrenching permanent castes.

So, let’s suppose there are a lot of wealthy, frustrated enlightenment fans out there.  With so much hanging in the balance, what’s a rich dude to do? Heck one great option would be to start a competing company to, say, make honest voting machines. Surely you can get that ready in time to win some contracts for 2016? Or else, organizations that perform poll watching and electoral process-checking could absorb large donations, in time to do a lot of good.  Though these groups are officially neutral, we know who would benefit, if elections proceed transparently and fair.

Likewise, the political caste will never rouse itself to do anything about gerrymandering. But a privately funded campaign against that foul practice, even as little as 20 million dollars, could start an avalanche of public anger over this blatant crime. In the short term, this would help both parties to back away from radicalization and elect more rational pragmatists. Kill gerrymandering and you will be well-remembered as a dragon-slayer.

But it's my role to look in directions that are more, well, unconventional.  So let me bring up one idea, from a general compilation of Concepts for Billionaires: Horizons and Hope: The Future of Philanthropy, that's been in circulation for some time.

Obliquely political: Defend Science

Nothing more perfectly manifests the Crisis of the West more than the current "war on science." As President Obama clearly and repeatedly emphasized during his 2013 State of the Union address,  research and technological advancement have been responsible for much of the skyrocketing wealth that then empowered America and other nations to attack ancient evils of poverty, racism and ignorance. Indeed, one thing a mere millionaire could do, that would transform attitudes, would be to set up a second National Debt Clock,  next to the first one Only let this one show what the debt would be if the USG had charged a minimal 5% royalty for inventions we all paid for. Rockets, jets, communications satellites, the Internet, pharmaceuticals, Telecom, boomed... Do you doubt we'd be in the black? An unbeatable polemical zinger that would cost less than a million dollars to erect. 

A more expensive and enduring effort is being set up by veteran lobbyist Jim Lantry -- First in Science -- a new pro-science super-pac that aims to raise $100M in order to support candidates who are enthusiastic about scientific research. It is regrettable that such an unseemly measure should be necessary.  But the war on science - propelled largely by Fox HQ but also by science-hostile elements of the Left - has made it necessary.  Arnold Toynbee said that civilizations collapse when they fail to support their "creative minority." If you are a wealthy person who does not want to see that collapse, consider taking part.

A Henchman's Prize

Here's another item from my big list of possible projects:  Horizons and Hope: The Future of Philanthropy

I've long wondered why some billionaire who is worried about our open society doesn't pony-up and offer truly substantial  whistleblower rewards. One action that could be especially well-targeted, during the next month or so -- while having immense publicity value -- would be to announce a great big prize for proof of massive cheating or dirty tricks, in time for the evidence to matter, before the next round of elections.

For best effectiveness, one would couch the idea in nonpartisan terms.  Offer a million dollars to any conspirator who turns coat and steps forward with - say - solid evidence that either party has engaged in a systematic effort to deny the vote to a thousand or more people in any political constituency.  Plus five million if the evidence leads to rapid, public plea bargains or convictions.

Yes, five million dollars is a lot of money.  But note that the larger sum is paid upon conviction, in which case it's a small amout to buy a scandal-tumult of huge proportions. Perhaps big enough to transform politics in America.

Sure, people will see through couching it in nonpartisan terms.  (Though a Republican co-sponsor could be found.)  But even that implication would be useful, highlighting what everybody knows -- where that kind of cheating is coming from.

Why emphasize "conspirator"?

This is where the word henchman comes in.  Those most likely to have the goods -- real evidence -- will be people already deep inside.  Ironically, a henchman is probably venal and psychologically primed to jump ship, if offered the right combination of inducements -- both cash and introduction to people who can offer some immunity.  (Rep. Henry Waxman has been responsible for recent strengthening of whistleblower protections, for example.)  This qualifier also keeps out a flood of mere rumor-mongers, who have other places to go.

There are many other possible whistleblower prizes.

But there’s a catch.  Any such program must be carefully phrased. A billionaire will have to fight past his or her own attorneys, in order to do something like this.  One doesn’t want to be held liable for enticing unproved or false allegations, or slander.  (There might be a discreet application process and a committee to vet claims, while police and prosecutors are given their full due.)

Still this sort of thing has one advantage -- it could be set up and unleashed quickly.  And it appeals to the avaricious spirit that has driven so many dirty tricks operatives, ever since the days of Nixon and Donald Segretti.  Remember, tempting rats to betray each other ought to be easy, if you use the right cheese.

And all it might take is just one.

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FOLLOWUP:  Have you guessed yet (or looked up) the eight foreign governments that master-mogul-manipulator George Soros "toppled"? How telling that (to my knowledge) none of Glenn Beck's viewers or listeners even roused themselves with God's greatest gift - curiosity - to ask which governments those were.  But you know, by now, what those toppled governments were, right? They were...

... the communist dictatorship of Poland ... the communist dictatorship of Czechoslovakia ... the communist dictatorship of Soros's birthplace Hungary ... the communist dictatorship of Lithuania ... the communist dictatorship of  Estonia ... the communist dictatorship of  Latvia ... the communist dictatorship of Romania ... the communist dictatorship of  Bulgaria...

... and that's erring on the low side. Some credit Soros with having major effects in Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine....  Yep.  It is pretty clear why Glenn Beck never likes to get specific.  Facts kind of interfere with the narrative.

This is a heavily revised version of a posting from  roughly 2004.

Accelerating Change and Horizons

While I work on my big post election essay... suggesting ways that Enlightenment Civilization can endure... let me recommend a few places to visit in the meantime.

An exceptionally cogent appraisal by Stephen Potts can be seen at Armageddon Cafe: Faith-Based vs. Reality-based America. 

Some delicious online comics await you at:
This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow
Spiders on Electric Sheep Comics, by Patrick Farley


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One person posted a comment asking for a transcript of my recent speech at the Accelerating Change conference at Stanford University, where we blissfully looked farther ahead into humanity's future, beyond our nation's present (and hopefully brief) panicky rejection of tomorrow. A partial transcript can be found at the Accelerating Change website.

Some of the ideas can be found however in the transcript of the keynote address I gave before the Libertarian Party's national convention (proof that my political opposition to this administration is not merely based on "liberalism, but on a more broadly ranging belief in modernity). This speech is available on my website: Essences, Orcs and Civilization.

Another place where I explore the idea of "horizons" can be found at: Horizons and Hope: The Future of Philanthropy. Here I explore m 'EON' proposal for a philanthropic foundation, Eye of the Needle:

Is the world improvable by means of human intervention? The question can be debated endlessly on a philosophical level. But there is little argument over this basic premise within the community of those engaged in philanthropic activity. We share a common belief that vigorous investment and intervention in humanity can help humanity as a whole -- and countless individual human beings -- to achieve goals starting with basic necessities but extending to the limits of ambition.

Finally, let me leave you with some quotations:

On July 26, 1920 HL Mencken wrote the following in the Baltimore Evening Sun :

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

And - in light of the unbelievable scandal over touch screen voting systems that lack any audit trail, operating under closed source proprietary software made by companies with blatant GOP connections -

"It's not who votes that counts but who counts the votes" -- Joseph Stalin.