09-12-2019, 05:49 AM
(09-11-2019, 11:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Pickens was doing some good work investing in wind energy in recent years. Surprised to see him go. What good will all his money do him now?
Carnegie endowed libraries as a window on the world for multitudes of hick towns before there was radio and television. (It is arguable that the libraries do more good in hick towns than do radio and television). Stanford and Vanderbilt endowed great universities. Hughes established one of the finest centers for medical research. Danny Thomas established St. Jude's Research Hospital (although he was more a pitchman for fundraising -- that too is important). We have the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
The question is what good his money will do the rest of us. If it simply goes to heirs to finance right-wing politics and sybaritic lifestyles as with descendants of Sam Walton, then it does little good.
There are questions about some foundations, as with the late Jeffrey Ep-swine with his revival of the cranky mad pseudoscience of eugenics.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.