Excessive Wealth Disorder: Glen Galaich on the $2 Trillion That Could Save Democracy

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. The tide might be turning for American billionaires. Earlier this week, we did a show with the former New York Times tech reporter, Noam Cohen, whose book, The Know-It-Alls, is a critique of Silicon Valley wealth. He suggested that we should ban billionaires, and he's not a communist or even a socialist. It would seem he's just offended with the idea of individuals having so much money. I don't think Noam Cohen is alone in this. I thought it'd be an interesting way of beginning our conversation today with my guest, Glen Galaich, whose new book, Control, Why Big Giving Falls Short, is already doing extremely well. Glen's day job is running, the Stupski Foundation or Stupski Foundation, a philanthropic group. And Glenn has some interesting ideas in control and, within the foundation of what we should and shouldn't do with, wealth, with money from philanthropy. Glenn, congratulations on the book. So what do you make of, of, Noam Cohen's suggestion that we should ban millionaire billionaires? Would that make your job easier or more challenging?

00:01:56 Glen Galaich: It's a great question. I mean, I think the way you'd have to do that is you'd have to dramatically increase the tax structure, the amount of taxes coming out of the very wealthy people, and that would have a huge impact on our sector. Huge impact. Because the reason you have the institutionalized philanthropy, as we call it, is because these billionaires are getting and millionaires, multimillionaires, are getting significant tax breaks to put their money into these charitable structures. You got rid of those tax breaks, the money would go back into the American coffers to be administered directly by the people.

00:02:33 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it might be a little bit of a pipe dream. Perhaps you might introduce us to the word philanthropy. Of course, it has its own Wikipedia entry. Was it invented like most things by the Greeks?

00:02:48 Glen Galaich: That's a great question. You know, my I'm I'm so shallow in my history that I only go back to Andrew Carnegie, and that was in the late, eighteen hundreds. But, you know, it's we talk about it often. The love of humanity is what it is is what it really gets to.

00:03:04 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And the etymology of the word comes from, ancient Greek love of humanity. So let's leave the Greeks for another show. They always seem to pop up one way or the other, Glenn. Let's go back to Carnegie. Is he a healthy model for philanthropy? You spend half your life making money, sometimes perhaps stealing money, and then the second half giving it away. It's the Bill Gates model, might be the model of people like Mark Zuckerberg too.

00:03:32 Glen Galaich: Yeah. My my doubts about Zuckerberg. But I will say that what you are talking about with Carnegie is very important because this model of the foundation and how it operates goes back to him, and our operating system has not changed or at least the ethos. He actually took a little bit further than as you described it. In Carnegie, you have a man who believed that people who can make lots of money in an economic system are unique people. I don't know if he used the word smartest people, but he certainly gives that impression. And they're going to amass wealth in ways that other people or what you might say, I'll use my words, dumber people are not going to do. And so it's an obligation. It's kind of like a noblesse oblige in the American version to make sure those who are not as sophisticated in the economic system receive funds from those that are. So so that and on the one hand, I think, is a is a great thing that he encourages that kind of giving. He even you know, like you said, he's giving it all away in your lifetime is or at all, giving it away, all of it, is not the going view today. Most foundations and most wealthy people do not have an intention to give it all away. Most wanna be keep the money around for as long as possible, perpetuity as they call it. So Carnegie was good about that. On the other hand, that attitude that the donor, the wealthy person is the all knowing is what I get into in the book.

00:05:04 Andrew Keen: It's a problem. And Carnegie, of course, is and we can judge from people watching this. He has a big white beard. He's certainly a know it all as, Noam Cohen Noam Cohen might have argued. And he wasn't alone in that generation of wealthy philanthropists. One can think of Leland Stanford and so many others.

00:05:24 Glen Galaich: Sloan, Rockefeller. Yeah. So should we should we

00:05:30 Andrew Keen: be impressed by Carnegie? I mean, there's the other model. I guess he could've spent it on wine and women and song. I mean, I guess we should credit Carnegie with some degree of decency. Should we?

00:05:44 Glen Galaich: Absolutely. That's what I'm saying. Like, the fact that he went to that place, we need to support those around us who haven't been successful, again, you know, his words, not mine, is impressive. You know, a lot of people don't. I mean, arguably, if we didn't have the tax structure we have, I don't know how many wealthy people would give, honestly. You know? the amount of philanthropy that occurs in The United States, we just look at it in a on a financial basis. Annually, it's about $600,000,000,000 in philanthropic giving to nonprofit organizations. That doesn't count. You know, our entire caregiving system is pretty much built on the volunteerism of family members taking care of other family members. That doesn't get quantified. Stuff like that. Of that 600,000,000,000, you know, somewhere between 150 and 200,000,000,000 is coming from the ultra wealthy. And most of the people who are getting the giving the remaining 400 to 450,000,000,000 do not get the kind of tax benefits that wealthy do. In any attempt to change those tax laws, the wealthy basically threaten that they won't give if they don't get the benefit.

00:06:49 Andrew Keen: And, of course, earlier this week, there was this news story suggesting that some wealthy people, including, I think, Peter Thiel, everyone's, least favorite billionaire, have decided that they're pulling out of their pledge to give whatever it is, I mean, 50% of their wealth away before the end of their lives. Is there a shift in the zeitgeist, Glen when it comes to the moral or other obligation for better-off billionaires like Peter Thiel to give their cash away?

00:07:22 Glen Galaich: Well, you know, let me come back to your prior question, which was the other way, which is Peter Thiel. Thiel isn't actually coming out against the pledge alone. Marc Andreessen, who you may be familiar with, the invention

00:07:36 Andrew Keen: We're all familiar. Another another one of Silicon Valley's bad boys.

00:07:40 Glen Galaich: Yeah. And he is he makes the argument that the work they do, the technologies they build, the investments they make, that's their love of humanity. That's what they do for humanity. I just happened to come across an Andreessen investment last night, which is an AI military technology, which we which they argue will be the greatest targeting killer of, in our military once it all comes to fruition. So I don't know if that's philanthropy. But that is Andreessen's view, and that is the counter to Carnegie. So is there a sea change? I don't think they're winning that argument. the re the reality, the reality is that it's somewhere in between. You know? It's there are there are people that are, you know, absolutely opposed to, giving like you hear like you just referenced. There are people that live their lives giving. But for most donors who create these structures, these foundation structures, it's more like a hobby, I'd say. It's a way to keep the family together.

00:08:41 Andrew Keen: And what about a a virtue signaling hobby? Makes them feel better about themselves. They can boast about it to their friends and relatives.

00:08:49 Glen Galaich: Of course, that's going on. And you've got that darker edge. You know, if you've ever read the book Winners Take All, he documents the evils of the Sackler family who were out there violently ruining lives with, with, OxyContin and giving money to all kinds of causes to, you know

00:09:05 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I mean, they're the worst argument, I guess, for philanthropy, as you say. I mean, killing thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans at the same time as giving money to art galleries and having their name put up. What about that you say the reality is somewhere in between? That's a boring reality, Glenn, but perhaps a self evident truth. Would Bill Gates be somewhere in between? He seems certainly more like Andrew Carnegie than Peter Thiel or Marc Andreessen.

00:09:35 Glen Galaich: Absolutely. But

00:09:36 Andrew Keen: on the other hand, of course, he's involved now in the Epstein scandal. We did a show last year about how some of his money in Africa is ending up in the coffers of very nasty autocracies. What do you make of of Gates? Is he an argument against, or for or against control?

00:09:57 Glen Galaich: Well, so I'm glad you went there. And, really, what I try to get into with control is about the basic piece that I just wanna bring to everyone's attention is that most of what you see in what we call private philanthropy or what others refer to as family foundation giving, things like that, these entities are actually not private by the nature of how they're constructed. These foundations are benefits beneficial to the donor in the sense that you as a donor to a private foundation, you would be the only donor. That's what makes it private. You are the only person giving to the structure, and you are going to receive up to a 70% tax exemption for doing that. It's the American people saying to the donor, if you put it in this structure, we will forego taxation in return for you being a public steward of these assets. And I can't emphasize public steward enough. In the first chapter of the book, first or second chapter of the book, I talk about how my own the donor I work for, Joyce Stupski, who passed away about five years ago, Joyce, when she would get kind of cornered on something, she was extremely giving. She was very, very flexible with the staff. We were very, very benefit we benefited greatly from working with Joyce. I miss her deeply. However, when Joyce would get kind of cornered, she would say, hey. It's my money after all. And that is the viewpoint of these donors. They think it's their money still even though the what they've done is they put money in a separate organization. It's now a public entity, and they're really, required to give in a public way. That's the control part. They don't they wanna give the way they wanna give. They wanna give the way they believe they built their businesses. There's any number of reasons for why they wanna give. And in many cases, it's not for public benefit. It's for their benefit.

00:11:53 Andrew Keen: But often, their view of the public benefit is itself controversial. I mean, you mentioned that, at the Stupski, Foundation, Larry and Joyce Stupski are the founders of of of the foundation. Right. Larry, would it be fair to say that he made the money and then he died and Joyce took over? What about the Mackenzie Scott model? She's been in the news recently. There was a Wall Street Journal piece about how she gives away billions with cryptic emails and no strings attached. She is, of course, the former wife of Jeff Bezos worth many billions of dollars herself, which is almost accidental for better or worse. Is this a a better or worse model? Is Mackenzie Scott again your exhibit a for or against control?

00:12:52 Glen Galaich: You know, I like it when they use control in good ways. And that's really what I'm asking for.

00:12:56 Andrew Keen: Well, control but jumping in here, Glenn, and you I'm sure you're expecting me to say this. Everyone has different definitions of what a good way is. Isn't that the whole point of philanthropy?

00:13:08 Glen Galaich: Totally true. Totally true. So I try to pivot our orientation toward what do communities really need. And if I think the real benefit of philanthropy, the part I love about philanthropy is that it it is that quasi world between government, large government, as we know it, small government in the local level, and individual, or even group, engagement in, you know, kind of the disbursement process. It's an opportunity to redistribute wealth. It's an opportunity to try new ideas. Great philanthropy, in my opinion, is philanthropy that beats the market, if you will, that beats what government can do, delivers services, delivers products, delivers policy better than the government can do it. Otherwise, why give it to anybody

00:13:56 Andrew Keen: to do it? Isn't that wouldn't that be the Andreessen argument too?

00:14:00 Glen Galaich: The Andreessen argument is, in a in a way it is except for I the Andreessen argument would say, I don't actually have to care at all what the community thinks. I, Marc Andreessen, think that this is the technology the community needs, and I'm gonna give it to them. And, you know, they're gonna buy it or not buy it. So there's your market response. Right? But with philanthropy and, also, you know, the key point there is he's talking about it from a market economic market standpoint. And, of course, I'm gonna walk into a whole economic, debate here, but our system does not distribute goods effectively to the people who are least able to purchase them. And that's really what the role of government has been. And where the government falls short, I think philanthropy can help. But an Andreessen doesn't care about that stuff, I don't think.

00:14:49 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what Andreessen cares about. So your book, Control, Why Big Giving Fall Short, strikes me as in some ways you're you're using your experience at your own foundation as a model for how to reform big giving. Is that fair that, at, at Stupski, you are, quote, unquote, giving some of the money back. You boast on your website about $374,000,000 has been returned to communities, and then you have a $134,000,000 in what you call flexible funding. Is Stupski your model for reforming, big giving?

00:15:33 Glen Galaich: I'll tell you. What I'm really after is a change in mindset. So, again, we're going for that public stewardship mindset. That's what I'm hoping to achieve. So is Stupski a version of that? We think so. We've tried. But the story in the book, there is a narrative arc about my own conversion. The one of the forward writers, Ibram Kendi, who has been He's been on this show actually before now. He's a tremendous person, been a real mentor to me as a writer, and he encouraged me to to put in the my own story to the book. And I've heard from many that's been helpful. It's really helpful for donors to see. I was a strong advocate for, trainer of, advisor for strategic giving, as it's been called, which is really about centering your giving on strategies that you think work best for the communities you serve. That is really kind of the going way that strategies are developed in the foundation and donor sectors. And, for reasons I go into in the book, I won't take up the time now, I kinda went through my own reflection on that and came to realize that we were doing things that were not necessarily a benefit to communities. We kinda did our best to develop a program where we have board members and staff members and input from the places we care about and really started making grants and working on projects that supported what local people were coming up with, not us, using consultants and hypothesis trees and other things we put together. The money wasn't flowing, and I became very concerned we weren't gonna get impact. And that, at the end of the day, is the key argument. If you go to a public stewardship mindset, you engage community in your giving, you're gonna get more impact. That's really what we're after in this work.

00:17:21 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it's the opposite of of of the Gates model, isn't it? the know it all model. Gates always knew it all, whether he was a tech entrepreneur or a philanthropist, and that may be the problem. So it's relinquishing control. I mean, your book's called

00:17:38 Glen Galaich: Yep.

00:17:38 Andrew Keen: Control, but, really, what you're arguing is that big giving needs to relinquish control. Is that fair?

00:17:45 Glen Galaich: Yeah. I mean, I feel that way about a lot of things in the world. I think where things are where decision making and power are concentrated, you tend to see, I think the outcomes are not as, as fruitful and, innovative as they are when you let go. You know, even running my own team. As a CEO of Stupski, I greatly reduce the amount of power I have over grant making, It's really the most grant making happens in the program officer level of the foundation. We're amongst people who are coming right out of these communities and know people, have relationships. They're far more skilled at making these grants. Or up to me, I don't know where I would put them. You know? So what

00:18:25 Andrew Keen: are the examples? I mean, you know, some people are gonna think this is insane. Why would why would a community why would you give all the money to a community, which itself will come up with its own biases and interests of one kind or another. What are the real, models, examples, Glenn, to make your point in control?

00:18:47 Glen Galaich: Well, I'll give you a good one. I'll just go to Hawaii. We work in Hawaii, have worked there for about ten years. For a long time, we moved, the capital that we moved over there through first of all, we moved what we wanted to give. So we were moving about 10% of our giving annually over to Hawaii to projects that Joyce pretty much liked. They're good ones. I'm not gonna say nothing. Giving money to anything, frankly, if it's if they're trying to help

00:19:16 Andrew Keen: people is not you're not gonna, you know, you're not So on your website, you break down some of your areas, early brain development, field justice, serious illness care Right.

00:19:25 Glen Galaich: Post

00:19:25 Andrew Keen: secondary success. I mean, no one's gonna argue. It's that argument against apple pie, isn't it? Yeah.

00:19:30 Glen Galaich: No. I mean, you're not It's a question again of impact and who's getting the capital and who's most impacted by what you're doing. So, anyway, to cut to the chase, we eventually brought people in from Hawaii who were living there, work there. Let's go to health care. We were working in health care. And right away, people from who who had access to these resources said, we need to move the money outside of Oahu and get it out to the neighboring islands. They're simply not getting any of this money. They're not getting medical attention like they are on Oahu. That was the first thing we learned. We gave you know, we created budgets for them. The time is about 15, roughly $15,000,000, and they moved all of the $15,000,000 within about five months to different federally, registered health facilities on these islands. It's the first time any of these facilities ever had discretionary money. Their whole purpose was just to play an intermediary role in the Medi-Cal system there or Medicaid system there. And so what came of that, without going into a lot more detail, was short of it is all these different, clinics started doing much more doing things that they couldn't do as required by Medi-Cal Medicaid. They were able to do much more outreach community in, medical services. They went out to different communities, went to different homes, caring for people, advanced palliative cares, things like that they just didn't get to do and that were dictated to them by on high. This gave them a chance to be responsive to what the community they represented needed with resources they had never had before. That's just one example. We have examples of that in many of our places. And there are many other foundations, by the way, that are doing it this way. And giving getting resources to communities that have been historically either marginalized, ignored, or undone by trade and other, changes to our economic system.

00:21:27 Andrew Keen: You have an interesting substack also called who gives in one of your recent posts from, earlier this month was asking whether philanthropy can save democracy.

00:21:40 Glen Galaich: Mhmm.

00:21:41 Andrew Keen: We do a lot of shows on not philanthropy saving democracy, but everything else saving democracy. We did one recently with Helene Landemore, who's a theorist of direct democracy and citizen assemblies who's based in Connecticut. She teaches at Yale. I wonder whether what you're arguing, in control is part of a growing movement to take power away from central organizations, whether they're economic or political.

00:22:16 Glen Galaich: I am definitely calling for more of that. I am I recognize, you know, it is these the law I'm really focused in the democracy conversation on some of our larger foundations. You mentioned Gates, but there are some other pretty big ones here in the Bay Area, in fact. Right? You've got you already mentioned, Chan Zuckerberg. You've got the Moore Foundation, which, you know, is Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. You've got Hewlett and Packard and on and on, a lot of them. And they are all well over billions of dollars. You know, they're in the high, high end of the institutional side. And what I why I feel that philanthropy in its current form will not save democracy is because we have put such a premium on perpetuity. So that is the ability to live for these structures and these institutions to live on forever. To do that, it means that you have to max out the amount of giving at the minimum the government requires, which is 5% a year. 5% of what you have under management. And then to ensure that you can make that back, you have to invest the 95% in investments that will return above 5% annually. And I think if we're giving at that level the kinds of shocks we've now seen to our democracy or even our ability to prevent authoritarianism in the future and to really innovate on ways to do that, it requires so much more. And it means that you've gotta give more than 5%. Like, I would love to see one of these multibillion foundations, some of which are running $10.11, $12,000,000,000. I mean, Gates is in another universe, really. They're up around you know, they're in the over $50,000,000,000. But the for most, they're in the high side. They're in, like, that 8 to 12,000,000,000 range. And I'd love to see one of them just say, hey. I can live on 10,000,000,000. I can live on 9,000,000,000 and move, like, 3,000,000,000 right now to organizations. I don't know if you're familiar with Democracy Forward, for example, that

00:24:22 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I am.

00:24:23 Glen Galaich: Led the fight against these executive orders that were if they had stood, we would have seen so much damage to our democracy. We some did get through, but Democracy Forward, if they had a billion dollars right now to deploy and bring in some of the top legal talent in our country, I think we could see a dramatic shift in the in the ability to put in autocratic, norms and rules. You'd see much more democracy come in. I think that's the kind of risk we need to see, but it would mean that for some of these foundations, perpetuity would have to take a second position to humanity. And for many of them, that's just, too hard right now.

00:25:02 Andrew Keen: Although, I'm guessing, maybe not in our audience, Glenn, but 40% of Americans would strongly disagree with you on a lot of these issues. Is there another model maybe just to take out this idea of philanthropy altogether? If you've got a lot of money with you either made yourself or got it through the achievements of a a spouse. Mhmm. Maybe there's the Steve Jobs widow's model. I've forgotten. And Maureen? Yeah. Yeah. Who, Laurene Powell Jobs, who has put her money into the Atlantic and lots of other publications, which some people, including myself, actually think is doing a good job for democracy. Yep. But why even use the p word? Why not just invest in something you care about?

00:25:50 Glen Galaich: That's a strong argument. The reason you do the reason you use the p word but in you're using the p word and we're interchanging it with foundation. Right? Private foundation. You create a foundation because it's in the donor's interest to do so. You get a lot of tax benefit again. But there are donors like Laurene Powell Jobs, and many others that we don't actually hear about. They're not in the news, who use who, work there's a friend of mine, Ludovic Blaine, who's in the Bay Area, and he works with donors across tax status. So you have all these different technical tax statuses like C3, C4, LLC, you know, all these different structures that have, different levels of tax benefit or no tax benefit. And the further the more you take out the tax benefit, the more you give power to the organizations receiving the money. So for example, as a C3 foundation due to the laws involved, I am not as the CEO of the foundation allowed to engage in lobbying, allowed to engage in campaigns. I can't endorse anyone, any of that. I can educate people on the issues we care about, but I can't directly endorse or support any piece of legislation or otherwise. But if I work at a C4 structure where my where the donor gets no tax benefit, we can engage in anything we want. We can we can run campaigns. We can get the PACs. We can go write a candidates. We can pay we can support candidates. We can build buildings. We can do a lot of things. And that's what you see in Laurene Jobs. She's working. She has a C3. She has a C4. She has an LLC. I don't know. There's probably some other status organizations she's got. She's giving herself the range to work in many different ways and with many different people.

00:27:38 Andrew Keen: So the more you talk, it strikes me that maybe one reform, an appropriate reform, would be just to get to do away with this this this tax caveat. And that if you wanna give away your money, fine, but there are no there's no tax upside.

00:27:53 Glen Galaich: I totally agree. I mean, I think we should be recapturing all that. I I mean, I'm I again, I'm in favor of using capital in ways that, the market cannot provide and the government cannot provide. I think there is a zone there. We haven't nailed it completely, but there is a way to make it work. And, yeah, we don't we can also we, you know, there can be a range. I do think there's a benefit to incentivize people to give through tax. That's fine. I think it's gone a little far. I think there are other ways we could structure it. One that one that was recommended to me, I actually have it in the book, is that, you know, maybe the donor doesn't get the tax benefit at a foundation until the money hits the ground. It actually literally gets to the organization. You know, like, we haven't talked about this yet. It's another technical structure, but it's called donor-advised fund. And these donor advised funds are basically bank accounts that are inside organizations or community foundations. And if you give if you create a donor-advised fund, you get the full maximum tax benefit with no requirement to give out the money. And that's the type of thing where I just feel we could change it where once you give the money to the structure, you do not get the tax benefit until the money reaches the nonprofit community, then you get it. And I think we'd see far more money go out, and maybe you could even, you know, incentivize it in different ways to see different organizations get it.

00:29:21 Andrew Keen: The other absurdity, I think, of all these issues is that if you have billions of dollars, you have enough money to live on, and your children and your grandchildren, your great grandchildren are likely to have enough money to live on. So why do you even need the tax breaks in the first place?

00:29:38 Glen Galaich: Yeah. Well, you know, there is there's an organization in the Bay Area that was recently created called the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute.

00:29:45 Andrew Keen: That's a good one.

00:29:46 Glen Galaich: I do actually think there's something to it. I know it's a catchy title, but I do think there is something called excessive wealth disorder. I do. And I think it should be investigated. I mean, why does someone need why does why does someone have to be the first trillionaire? And, and, you know, the damage that it's doing just to get to that level, I believe, on society is pretty extreme. Like, these companies and what they're doing and the type of extraction in different places from environmental to human to human humanity is extreme. Why do we need all that? Why does anyone need all that? Yeah.

00:30:20 Andrew Keen: I don't think well, you don't need to convince me on that or certainly people like Noam Cohen. As we speak, of course, Glenn, profound changes with the current administration. Yep. The headline in the Washington Post that the Kennedy Center is beginning its layoffs. Lots of nonprofits are being chopped to pieces, undermined by the current administration. Are there profound changes, that are happening to the non to to big giving independent of what you're arguing in control? And when this when this administration ends in 2028

00:30:58 Glen Galaich: Mhmm.

00:30:58 Andrew Keen: Is the world of big giving, for better or worse, gonna be completely different?

00:31:04 Glen Galaich: I don't see that. But what I will say is there is much more coordination than I've seen in the past amongst foundations. That, in my opinion, others may disagree, has not yet turned into more coordinated philanthropic activity, especially on the left. The progressive philanthropic scene, for reasons that I won't go into here, is not capable up in for the most part to do widespread coordination. Conservatives who tend to only give on two issuers, they give around free markets and liberty. They don't actually mostly even have any sub issues. They don't have siloed issues. They don't have a lot of, like, What about abortion? You're not gonna see I don't think you're gonna see. You'd have to go and look for yourself. I have never seen a website that a conservative family has that says we our main issue area is, anti abortion or what they would call pro life. I've never seen it. They would talk about personal liberty, first amendment, free market. That's a big deal to them. And they find a way to make everything fit under that, and they give at high level over long periods of time in coordinated fashion. It's why you have the Federalist Society, Heritage, ALEC, and possibly Donald Trump. I mean, it's been an extraordinary run, but progressives have never found their way to each other in the same way. We are far more fragmented, and, and I don't think that's gonna change. I do think there's good coordination, but I don't think that's gonna change. I think, for the left, Trump has put so many people into a state of fear that they're gonna be arrested or their C3 status is gonna be taken away, their assets frozen. I think the left has moved into a much more protective zone with their capital rather than distribute distributing it.

00:33:00 Andrew Keen: Are you disappointed then with the way in which big giving hasn't like, maybe big law or big tech has failed to push back on the administration?

00:33:10 Glen Galaich: I think we've I mean, we've pushed back in the sense that he has not succeeded in breaking the back of philanthropy like he did law and universities and others' media. But, yeah, I'm disappointed. You know? I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed. I'm you know, I'm not I'm not here to say I do it any better than anyone else, but I've already given one example in this conversation. You know, I think yeah. I don't know what the exact number is on a progressive philanthropy, but I'm gonna guess that it's, you know, probably in the 250 to 300,000,000,000 zone under asset, maybe even as high as a trillion dollars under management across the ideological run. And I just in a moment like this, I just can't understand why we can't do more, give more, build more things with that kind of capital. You know? I just can't understand it other than there are lots of barriers that we create, which I get into in the book. We have a lot of bricks around the donor that prevent money from moving, from the type of people that are put on the boards, to the bylaws that we write, to the ways we invest our money. It just makes it hard to move it. And that's that's the conversation that I'm hoping to trigger with this book. Can we find ways to break down those walls and move the money? Because we need it right now. And I'll tell you, I don't know how much longer Americans are gonna put up with it. You know, there's $2,000,000,000,000 stacked up in these accounts headed to But

00:34:34 Andrew Keen: most Americans have no idea.

00:34:36 Glen Galaich: Well, I hope to change that. We'll see. Maybe you can help me with that.

00:34:40 Andrew Keen: One of the things about philanthropy or big philanthropy where I certainly couldn't be involved is it must require a degree of obsequiousness, of being really polite to wealthy people. Now you've noted that your your founder, Joyce, Stupski, was very nice. Maybe her husband was as well. But there must be something, Glenn. You know your business. You've written a book about it. There must be something slightly depressing about having to be so nice to wealthy people.

00:35:14 Glen Galaich: It's not just depressing because you have to be nice. You have it's kind of a fearful environment. That's the reason I think Wiley wanted to publish this book because I really pull back the curtain and give you a chance to see what that world is like, how it plays out. There are there are conversations I share, very anonymous conversations I share in the book where, you know, talking to a CEO, for example, at a conference, we were the only two people in a gigantic ballroom, and he's whispering to me about his donor because he doesn't want to be heard. He does he's so fearful. The donor's gonna hear that he criticized it. We are you know, I come right out of the chute. I think within the first couple pages, I'll tell you. I know I do well in this job because I'm a pleaser, you know, and that's what we have to be. We have to be able to please people who have tremendous wealth. We have to act as therapists, as their CEOs. We have to be gatekeepers to the money. If you remember the Monty Python movie Holy Grail, there was this troll that guarded the bridge of death. Yeah.

00:36:17 Andrew Keen: He had to answer—

00:36:20 Glen Galaich: answer three questions. And if you didn't answer them right, you got launched out. Well, that's how we treat grantees. Like, if they come to the bridge and they can't fit into what we want as as the gatekeepers to the donor, we're gonna launch you right out the door. You know? You're not gonna get your grant. So that type of stuff is all true. It's all true. And, again, it all plays into this need for control. And, frankly, we've given them that permission. You know? We have created a system centering the donor's wisdom that in many cases does work out well. And in other cases, I think it's really worked against us. And it requires the donor to really want to be a public steward. They don't really care about being a public steward. I don't know. It makes me think maybe we should just take the money back. You know? Let's we'll take care of it from here. But that's not I'm not a big pusher of policy. I think the mindset would be the better way to go. But I could see a time where these policies do change. If it gets up to $18,000,000,000,000 sitting in charitable accounts, mostly invested in hedge funds and, you know, real estate schemes, I think people will wanna take it back. I do.

00:37:30 Andrew Keen: And, of course, the Trump attempt to pillage the state through Doge Yep. In a way, it doesn't that. And I this isn't really a critique of philanthropy, but it's an unintended consequence Yeah. Is it enables that because I don't know. Elon Musk, for example, might say, well, I'd rather give my money, and he's as wealthy as anyone, perhaps more wealthier than anyone. I'd I'd rather give my money directly. I don't like the idea of the state. It's corrupt. It's bureaucratic. It's self interested. So don't we need also I mean, I take your point on why big tech needs to give, big giving, sorry, needs to give up control. But isn't part of this argument simply reiterating the value of the state in addressing the core problems in society?

00:38:24 Glen Galaich: You're saying my argument is doing that?

00:38:27 Andrew Keen: I'm saying that our argument should be. When it comes to philanthropy, maybe I'm not suggesting we ban philanthropy. Wealthy people wanna give away their money. Fine. But, really, ultimately, that's not an alternative to the state. Yeah. And when you have an administration like the current one, which has attempted to pillage the state and undermined it and got rid of as many bureaucrats as they can suggesting that it doesn't have any value, closing down entire departments. It and in an, maybe intentional or unintentional way says, well, philanthropy can be the alternative, a kind of free market version. But, ultimately, I take your point on decentralizing power in big giving. But don't we also need to bolster the theories of the state to say, look. Ultimately, the only way to address society's big problems, medical problems, problems of inequality or education can only be addressed by the state?

00:39:31 Glen Galaich: I am a progressive. I'm a former political science academic. You're not gonna get an a counterargument from me.

00:39:38 Andrew Keen: Well, you don't have to be on the left. I mean, conservatives can I mean, traditional conservatives can support that too?

00:39:43 Glen Galaich: Yes. They can. I haven't heard many, but I do I mean, I am a believer in the power of the state. I know it seems totally antithetical to some. Certainly, Andreessen would say this, but I think there's an efficiency to the way states can deliver services. There's an efficiency to the way they can negotiate contracts and things. I think there's you know, we haven't given health care the opportunity that it could have if the state were more involved. And, frankly, our country, if you go back you going back to philanthropy, because the country did not provide much in the way of social services at all in the eighteen hundreds, Carnegie ultimately and others had to build the social social safety net of our country through philanthropy. It was terribly inefficient and very spotty. And it wasn't until the income tax was passed and World War two came to an end that you saw government or even during World War two, you saw government step in in ways that Americans have become very dependent. Right? And there are lots of services that are happening every day all over the place from transportation, infrastructure, all the way to health care that Americans are dependent on. And when you mess with it, they tend not to like it, and we're starting to see that right now. So I think you're right. And I think that philanthropy can be a great petri dish for services and products and policies that, that communities need and can can experiment with. So I do think there's a partnership there.

00:41:12 Andrew Keen: Yeah. The ironic response is, don't take my philanthropy away. Well, it's an interesting conversation about a very important subject, a subject which is much misunderstood. Glen Galaich's argument in control, why big giving falls short is very original, very democratic, very anti traditional top down philanthropy. Congratulations, Glenn, on the book, and keep, thinking and rethinking philanthropy. We need guys like you. Thank you so much.

00:41:40 Glen Galaich: It has been a real honor. Thank you for having me on. Real joy. Thanks.