our society really admires it when rich
people give away huge piles of surplus
money towards the end of their lives
particularly when they donate large sums
of it to the Arts it seems so noble and
so good what nice capitalists they are
how grateful we should be to have them
in our midst
in recognition sometimes these rich
donors have a gallery named after them
where their masterpieces hang dinners
are given in their honor and the odd
title may be thrown their way
take this big capitalists who made lots
of money in construction now he's given
lots of it to preserve beautiful bits of
ceramic in elegant glass cases this
combination of a money-making life an
artistic philanthropy follows in the
footsteps of great plutocrats like
Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick or
Andrew Mellon they made money in
so-called low areas of the economy like
coal maile railways abbatoirs and
packing factories areas where you
squeeze costs as tightly as you can and
are always looking to reduce benefits as
much as possible however once the
money's in the bank these rich people
wholeheartedly turn their attention to
higher causes among which art and all
that it celebrates kindness beauty and
tenderness looms are specially large we
suggest a different path people should
stop being good in the way they
distribute their money they should try
to be good in the way they make it it's
simply absurd to ignore goodness for
many decades while pulling together an
astonishing fortune and then later in
life suddenly to rediscover one's
conscience by an act of immense
generosity toward some localized little
shrine of art like an opera house or a
museum would it not be better and truer
to the values underlying many works of
art to strive throughout the course of
one's life especially within the money
generating day job to make kindness
tenderness sympathy and beauty more
alive and more real in the world
tantalizingly and tragically the
difference between goodness and cruelty
and most businesses is a few percentage
points of profit that's the difference
between paying your workforce well and
abusing them between producing products
that are shoddy in products at a decent
for the sake of just a tiny bit of
surplus wealth wealth that isn't
strictly even needed human life is daily
being degraded and sacrificed would it
not be more humane if rich business
people agree to sacrifice a little of
their surplus wealth in their main area
of activity and in the most vigorous
period of their lives in order to render
the workplace more noble and humane and
then bothered less with dazzling
displays of artistic philanthropy in
their later
what we're asking for is enlightened
investment where a lower return is
sought on capital in the name of
kindness and goodness there would be
less fancy art at the end of it but the
values within works of art would be far
more widely spread across the earth part
of the reason why the present system
survives has to do with the way status
is offered this is a key part of the
jigsaw Wow and we ignore it at our peril
the rich currently get a huge amount of
status from making big philanthropic
donations to the arts however they would
get no respect if they claim to be
limiting their wealth making potential
by running their businesses in ways that
made daily life slightly nicer for
employees in society there is more
status to be found in exploiting mines
rainforests and call centres with
ruthless abandon for three decades and
then your animal energies have run run
dry putting on a black tie jacket and
funding an opera house or Museum of
seventeenth-century still lives from the
proceeds this strategy has to it a
glamour of far greater than the
infinitely more humane and therefore in
a deep sense artistic task of steadily
building a more agreeable world for
people at a modest three percent annual
rate of return which at the end of life
leaves you a little except for the
inherent satisfaction of having done
something worthwhile with your years
enlightened capitalism requires new
kinds of patrons interested in making
money but willing to sacrifice returns
for the sake of higher goals the art is
surely a lovely thing but even more
valuable are the sort of things that the
works of art we love celebrate kindness
empathy goodness beauty at the end of
the day it seems far better to have
these qualities in our offices and
factories than to add yet another museum
or masterpiece to the nation's
collection it's far closer to the real
spirit of art to run a factory that's
attractive to be kind to workers
and to treat colleagues well rather than
bully fight and exploit for a lifetime
and then give a Renoir to the National
Gallery in one's last year's don't buy
the picture and give it to the nation
try to make the sweetness and kindness
in the picture more possible in
day-to-day life
for example by giving workers more time
off to be with their families that's
better than philanthropy it's true
decency
you