A few days ago, B-school prof Chris Marquis came on the show to argue that we should shut the business schools down because students arrive wanting to do good but graduate with banal corporate jobs. Today’s guest, Scott M. Curran, went to law school but then spent a decade doing good as general counsel of the Clinton Foundation. So doing good is his thing. His calling.
“There are two ways to run this world,” Curran told me. “Guns or lawyers.” No prizes for guessing his preference. In his new book Better Good, Curran argues that it’s not the seminar room that hammers the good out of us. It’s the banality of our monthly mortgage payments. So maybe the best way to build the good is by bringing mortgage rates down.
Anyone who has ever sat through a TED conference knows that good can be a four-letter word. But it doesn’t have to be that way, Curran argues. Yes, he acknowledges, Musk’s foundation barely clears the five per cent a year the law requires, and Bezos has far more and gives much less. But good, he argues, can be found in the most unexpected places. The luxury watchmaker Rolex, of all corporate ironies, is wholly owned by a charitable foundation — the watches being just its fundraising arm.
And then there’s Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has given away over twenty billion dollars with almost no strings attached. So philanthropy can still work, Curran argues. MacKenzie Scott didn’t even go to B-school. And she probably doesn’t wear a Rolex. Or have a mortgage.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Scott M. Curran is a lawyer and social impact adviser who spent a decade at the Clinton Foundation, latterly as its general counsel, as it grew from a library fundraising effort into a global operation working in forty countries. He now advises foundations, nonprofits and companies on doing good more effectively, and teaches social enterprise law. Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact is published by Simon & Schuster. He lives outside Chicago.
ABOUT KEEN ON AMERICA
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. With 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is a daily conversation about the ideas, books and arguments shaping the United States. New episodes every day.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Intro
00:31 — Chris Marquis, and the case for shutting the business schools
02:22 — It is not the seminar room. It is the mortgage.
03:45 — AK: the good is a four-letter word. What does it mean?
05:52 — AK: I am still not clear what you mean
06:57 — AK: how do we get beyond relativism?
11:00 — What do we expect of humanity’s first trillionaire?
14:00 — AK: why does wealth now seem to make people angrier?
14:41 — Wealth amplifies who you already are
17:35 — AK: is paying taxes a good?
19:00 — AirPods, the pharmacy, the elevator certificate
21:21 — AK: compare Bezos and MacKenzie Scott
25:59 — AK: what makes a good company?
29:00 — Patagonia, Chobani, Newman’s Own — and Rolex
32:21 — AK: isn’t Ellison more honest than Benioff?
35:30 — The Walmart argument
38:03 — AK: what about the shapes OpenAI and Anthropic are bending into?
42:27 — Guns or lawyers. That’s it.
44:00 — The Clinton Foundation years
51:30 — The tale of two Daves
53:39 — Closing