This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Olivier Petitjean, French journalist with experience in the NGO sector, discusses remuniciplisation in Europe.

For some years, the prevailing narrative in Europe, from pretty much all sides of the political spectrum, has been one of ‘crisis’ – an economic crisis, a democratic crisis, the climate crisis, and of course a so-called ‘refugee crisis’. The problem with this crisis narrative – no matter how much basis it may have in facts – is that it is often used to undermine a sense of our collective capacity and willingness to address common issues, including (but not exclusively) through public institutions. In that sense, it goes hand in hand with the impression of an inevitable decline of the role of government (at all levels) and of the public sphere in general.

We need counter-narratives and fortunately, there are some at hand. One of these is remunicipalisation: the story of cities and citizens reversing privatisation, and successfully developing better and more democratic public services for everyone, while addressing wider challenges such as climate change. In a way, the push for privatisation and for the continued decline of the role of the public sector (and all other forms of non-profit service provision) has perhaps never been stronger than it is today in Europe and the global level, as evidenced by the privatisation agenda of Donald Trump in the United States or Michel Temer in Brazil. Yet it is all the more significant – and heartening – to see so many people in large and small cities – elected officials, civil servants, public services employees, and citizens – willing to redress the failures of privatised services and, by doing so, invent the public services of the future.

Remunicipalisation surge across Europe

This is the story that a recent book, Reclaiming Public Services: How Cities and Citizens Are Turning Back Privatisation, seeks to highlight. While it documents dozens of cases of remunicipalisation across continents and across sectors, Western Europe clearly stands out, both in purely quantitative terms and in terms of the significance and ambition of the cases. There are well-known examples, such as the German Energiewende, which has seen dozens of local grids taken back into public hands, and dozens of new public- or citizen-owned renewable energy providers created. In France, water remunicipalisation has been in the news for some years, and there are also significant trends towards remunicipalisation in sectors such as public transport or school restaurants. Even in Britain, the pioneer of privatisation and liberalisation policies in Europe, some cities such as Nottingham, Leeds, or Bristol have created new municipal energy companies to address energy poverty and shift towards renewable sources. In Spain, many cities conquered by progressive citizen coalitions in the 2015 municipal elections have embarked on systematic remunicipalisation policies. At the other end of the continent, in Norway, a similar process has been unfolding, with city councils led by progressive coalitions implementing a reversal of past privatisations of social services, in close coordination with trade unions.

Of course, as the list above illustrates, remunicipalisation can take many different forms. In some sectors, such as water, it involves taking back into public hands a service that is a natural monopoly. In other sectors that have been historically or recently liberalised, it is realised through the creation of new, not-for-profit companies that provide a ‘public option’ – whether they are public-owned, cooperatives, or hybrid forms. Many cases of remunicipalisation have been and continue to be politically polarising, but many are not. Sometimes citizens themselves are in the driving seat, and the newly created public services open a significant space for citizen participation; sometimes the process is confined to city council meeting rooms. The word ‘remunicipalisation’ itself could be questioned, because some of the services in question had never been publicly managed or didn’t previously exist, because it is happening at intermunicipal or regional, rather than city, level and because some of what we call remunicipalisation actually involves cooperatives and other forms of citizen-owned, rather than city-owned, companies.

Nevertheless, out of all this diversity a coherent picture can be drawn: not a turn of the tide (except in some sectors in some countries) nor a coherent movement, but an emerging remunicipalisation trend that has the potential to be a game-changer, in many ways, and far beyond public services. This trend has remained mostly under the radar, apart from some clear exceptions such as the German Energiewende, because most of it happens at local level, as local authorities do not necessarily wish to publicise the actions they are taking, for fear of being accused of being ideologically-driven, and of course because there are powerful players that would rather keep people in the dark about these possibilities.

Beyond de-privatisation

So why Europe, and why now? First, in the shorter term, the economic crisis and austerity imposed on local authorities in Europe has forced many of them to take a closer, harder look at their budgets and to seek greater control over their expenses. And more often than not they have indeed found, in spite of what private sector propagandists continue to repeat tirelessly, that privatisation is more expensive than direct public management. When, for example, Paris remunicipalised its water services in 2010, it saved 35 million euros a year just by foregoing payments to parent companies. Later, the regional court of auditors confirmed that remunicipalisation had allowed Paris to “decrease the price of water while maintaining high investment levels”.

In Newcastle, United Kingdom, the modernisation of signalling and fiber optic cable system was carried out by a new in-house team for about 11 million pounds, compared with more than double this figure that it would have cost if done by a private company. The city of Bergen, Norway, where two elderly care centres were taken back in-house, had a surplus of half a million euros whereas a one million loss was expected. The costs of waste collection and cleaning services decreased from 20 to 10 million euros annually in León, Spain, with remunicipalisation, and 224 workers have received public employment contracts.

Second, 20 years or so have now passed since the large waves of liberalisation and privatisation of public services that swept both Western and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. It is a good time to appraise the real achievements and shortcomings of private management. It is also a time where a lot of concessions, leases, and so-called ‘public private partnerships’ (or PPPs) contracts expire, and get to be renewed – or not. Whereas privatisation of services such as water has been more in the limelight in past decades, outsourcing to the private sector has also started to progress in sectors such as local health and social services, and local administration. It is interesting to see many examples of remunicipalisation in precisely these sectors in countries such as Norway, Sweden, or Austria, where water, for instance, has never been privately managed. Local authorities seem to have found they could provide a better service directly, at a lower cost and with better conditions for workers.

When Paris remunicipalised its water services in 2010, it saved 35 million euros a year just by foregoing payments to parent companies.

But the story of remunicipalisation is not just about reversing past privatisation or redressing its failures. In many sectors, it is also about a profound reinvention of public services; a paradigm change. In the energy sector, this is obvious enough, with the rise of decentralised, renewables-based energy systems. But the ongoing paradigm shift is not restricted to addressing climate change, in the narrow sense. It is also visible, for instance, in the waste sector, with the emergence of ‘zero waste’ policies. Reducing waste volumes is often mentioned as one of the key motivations for cities that have decided to remunicipalise waste collection and disposal services, because it is in contradiction with the business model of private waste companies, which remains entirely focused on landfills and incineration.

Similarly, in France, the main reason why many small and large cities have recently remunicipalised school restaurants is to provide organic, local food to children, whereas contractors such as Sodexo typically relied on standardised, international supply chains. Some smaller French towns even source the food for their school restaurants from local municipal farms, or through partnerships with local farming cooperatives. The strong connection between remunicipalisation and the ‘relocalisation’ of the economy (and of the cash generated by public service bills) is a common thread that cuts across all these sectors.

A renewed focus on cities and on citizen involvement

It is no coincidence that we see cities at the forefront of this movement. Indeed, they are first in line to deal both with the consequences of austerity and with the new challenges of climate change and resource constraints. It is at the local level that reality strikes, and it is harder for local politicians than for national or European ones to ignore the very concrete daily consequences of public policies. One would also like to think that European cities have retained a bit of their political traditions of freedom, asylum, and citizenship. There is no doubt that active citizen involvement and participation – for which cities remain the most natural space – is at the heart of the ongoing paradigm shift and has been a fundamental driver behind many of the most interesting remunicipalisation cases of recent years in Europe, whether in alliance with local politicians or against them.

Citizens have pushed local authorities to reclaim public services and in many cases have played an active part in creating and running these very services. In doing so, they are effectively reinventing what ‘public’ actually means. Fundamentally, it is about (re)building collective capacity and solidarity, beyond public services. In this sense, there is indeed a strong connection between the fight for local public services and the fight for the rights of refugees and migrants. The example of Barcelona and other Spanish cities, where years of organising against evictions and water or power cuts have led to the election of progressive municipalities committed both to remunicipalisation and migrants’ rights, are just some amongst many illustrations of this connection.

Cities are first in line to deal both with the consequences of austerity and with the new challenges of climate change and resource constraints.

All of this begs the question, of course, of whether the current emphasis on the role of cities in the public services sphere – and in climate issues or the topic of welcoming refugees and migrants – reflects, before anything else, a retreat of progressive forces from the national level. Are national governments not, at the same time, increasingly committed to the interests of big business and to forcing austerity on society, local authorities included? Although remunicipalisation is alive and thriving throughout most of Europe, there is also a distressing pattern of national governments actively opposing and seeking to prevent it. The Spanish government, along with the private operator and other business bodies, actually took the city of Valladolid to court, after it remunicipalised its water system. It has also adopted legislation to prevent the creation of new municipal companies or new public service jobs. Similarly, the UK now has a law actually banning city councils from creating new local bus companies.

Even if they do not all go to such extremes, it would be difficult to name one European government that is actually encouraging or even merely enabling remunicipalisation at the moment. As for the European institutions, they officially maintain some form of ‘neutrality’ towards the public or private management of essential services. But the culture prevalent at the Commission and the balance of power at the European Parliament and Council results in rules and legislations that, even when they do not directly favour the interests of large corporate players, tend to consider integrated, liberalised markets at European level, where a handful of large for-profit players compete with each other, as the ‘normal’ way things should be organised. Big business knows how to make itself heard in Brussels, whereas the local governments and citizen movements that drive the remunicipalisation movement on the ground have a weaker presence, if any, in the European capital.

Networks of cities to counterbalance corporate influence

Can the remunicipalisation trend thrive and expand without proper support at the national and European levels? Do cities have the capacity to deal, by themselves, with the wider economic and geopolitical forces at work today, over which they have very little control? In the short term, remunicipalisation and the fight for better, democratic, sustainable and inclusive public services will continue to depend on the personal energy and motivation of citizens and officials. This certainly appears fragile in comparison to the established machineries of the private sector and unfavourable national and EU policies. However, there is potential for responding to the challenge. Networks of collaboration between remunicipalised public services are building up at regional, national, and European level, particularly in the water and energy sectors. Mutual assistance between cities can be an effective way to address the limitations of smaller, local public operators in comparison to large multinationals; and it could even become an effective check on the influence of multinationals over public policies.

Of course, these networks also need to develop beyond the limits of Western Europe, particularly in places where the balance of power between cities and large international companies (who more often than not have headquarters and shareholders in Western Europe) is much more unfavourable. The Eastern half of the continent is the obvious place to start. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, has recently decided not to renew its heating contract with Veolia and is now facing a one million euro compensation claim in front of an international arbitration tribunal. A few years ago, the authorities of Sofia, Bulgaria, cancelled a referendum on water remunicipalisation, allegedly because they were threatened with exactly the same kind of procedure. And whilst countries such as France, Germany, Spain or even the UK are experiencing a wave of public services remunicipalisation, their governments and the European Union often turn into active promoters of the private sector’s role in providing essential services in other countries and continents, including by subsidising European multinationals under the mask of ‘development assistance’.

The remunicipalisation movement in Europe already demonstrates that there is an alternative for the future of public services to the vision currently prevailing at the EU and national levels. One of the key challenges ahead is to consolidate this alternative vision and impose it on institutional agendas, both within Europe itself and in its relations with the rest of the world and particularly the Global South. With remunicipalisation, and with the reinvention of public services that it often entails, Europe has something much more valuable to share with the world.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 4th article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

Photo by Harald Felgner

The post Can Cities and Citizens Reinvent Public Services? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There was a time when I felt warmly toward the Frick Collection. I was a teenager when I first visited the mansion-turned-art-museum on New York’s Upper East Side. Around every corner was a painting that I had seen before in school or books—Hans Holbein the Younger’s 16th-century portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, El Greco’s St. Jerome, the Vermeers. I did not know much about the paintings, or what they had to do with each other, except that they were all so important. And there they were, all together in this benefactor’s home, arranged (except for the gift shop and ticket desk) as if he still lived there. What a guy.

Last time I visited, I experienced the place quite differently. I had spent some of the intervening years reporting on social movements for a living, witnessing the violence and other forms of repression frequently wielded against those who take stands for their own dignity—as workers, as students, as migrants, as neighbors. I had learned that the history of my subject included Henry Clay Frick. During much his life, the public imagination associated his name not with famous art but with the breaking of the Homestead Steel Strike in Pennsylvania in 1892, a deadly operation that involved the use of Pinkerton mercenaries and the state militia. Mr. Frick spent most of his life organizing the production and sale of steel and other industrial products. Fine art was, in comparison, a hobby. Yet now, nearly a century after his death, certain masterworks can be viewed only by paying a visit to his home, frozen in time, where they are indefinitely imprisoned.

Frick-like behavior is such a familiar feature of cultural and economic practice in the United States that we rarely pause to question it. Mr. Frick was not alone. His contemporaries, like Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan and Leland Stanford, had philanthropic hobbies of their own, in some cases to greater effect. Each found ways of wiping away spotty business reputations with unrelated beneficence, supplanting the public ambivalence or notoriety they had accumulated in life with enduring gratitude in death. Like feudal lords endowing monasteries, they bought themselves a measure of salvation in the afterlife—and we continue to let them do it.

We like to think that the selling of indulgences was an error of the past, yet the practice has passed into secular forms, and there are few Martin Luthers complaining of it.

We like to think that the selling of indulgences was an error of the past, yet the practice has passed into secular forms, and there are few Martin Luthers complaining of it. What goes by the name of philanthropy—literally, the love of people—and what the tax code regards as giving can rival the cynicism of the feudal indulgence business.

Microsoft Windows remains the world’s most widely used desktop computer operating system, but its chief salesman, Bill Gates, is now best known in relation to matters like health care, combatting disease in Africa and school reform. There is no question that Mr. Gates has proved his skill in turning buggy, insecure software into a global near-monopoly. Less clear is the meritocratic rationale for why this man’s foundation should rival the power of the World Health Organization, which is at least partly accountable to elected governments. One might also ask why a private-school-educated college dropout skilled at selling software holds singular influence over the future of the U.S. public school system—which his foundation consistently steers in the direction of Microsoft products. Yet long after anyone remembers the misfortune of running Windows Vista, Mr. Gates can expect enduring praise for pouring money into humanitarian pursuits. Just as I took Frick’s collection for granted as a teenager, we may even forget that there were choices to be made about public health and public education, and that Mr. Gates had an outsized role in making them. When most of us donate from our small excess, we express a concern and entrust the money to those with expertise; when Gates donates, he sets the agenda.

Now a new generation may out-Gates Mr. Gates. In December 2015, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook, announced plans to transfer nearly all his Facebook stock to a vehicle for unrelated activities. He chose to do this through a limited liability company rather than a foundation, forgoing even the tax code’s spacious definition of philanthropy. The intended targets for this wealth, as for the Gates fortune, are health and public education, although, like the Gateses, they have limited direct experience in either field. (Mr. Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan, at least, received a medical degree in 2012; neither she nor Zuckerberg attended public high schools.) Mr. Zuckerberg has demonstrated expertise in turning surveillance of people’s interpersonal activities into a profitable revenue stream through micro-targeted advertising. But there is as yet little reason he and his wife should be entrusted with the sway over our systems of health and public education that they are in the process of claiming. If we are to go on tolerating the self-canonization and attempted do-gooding of wealthy donors, we should expect them to actually be engaged in donating—not in the buying of indulgences, not in a vast privatization scheme to replace what could be public decision-making. This is advocacy; advocacy is fine, but we should call it what it is. If philanthropy means love of others, it must prove itself by entrusting the material of that love to the intended recipients. To believe in the dignity of other human beings is to honor their capacity to choose.

If philanthropy means love of others, it must prove itself by entrusting the material of that love to the intended recipients.

Philanthropy, that is, should be regarded as a subdomain of democracy, not an exception to it. We live in a time when economic stagnation and an authoritarian mood have put political democracy on the run around the world. Yet we also have more ways of hearing each other’s voices and making decisions together than ever before. Philanthropy could be a means for diverse, creative, collaborative acts of democracy—just what we need to regain the capacity to trust ourselves again, to remember the essential dignity that is our birthright. But only if it is real philanthropy. Giving should mean really giving, or giving back.

Natural Law and the Tax Code

The latest edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church contains, among its many now-peculiar-sounding phrases, a doctrine called the “universal destination of goods.” Says the catechism: “In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race.” To the eye of God, as among the earliest Christians in Acts, all things are common to all people. Nothing is mine or yours, but it is ours because we are part of the same divine communism.

There is, of course, a very big but.

The catechism goes on, “However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence.” Our flawed and fallen nature makes God’s communism impracticable. Therefore “the appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge.”

So, there is a pass for possessions. Property of some kind is needed and useful. It can even be good, since it can be a means of serving others. The ample theory and practice of Catholic capitalism, from the Medicis to Domino’s Pizza, depends on this exception to the underlying, communist rule. But then there’s another but; the exception goes only so far.

“The ownership of any property makes its holder a steward of Providence,” says the catechism. Property is not fully ours; it must be stewarded, and taken care of, and shared. “The universal destination of goods remains primordial,” the catechism insists. Thomas Aquinas put the matter this way in the Summa Theologica: “Man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate them to others in their need.” We hold property, yes, but we should hold it as if it is not completely ours. We should dispense with it that way, too.

The tax code has a way of confounding useful distinctions, including among kinds of giving. U.S. law may give us the impression, for instance, that any contribution to a 501(c)(3) or similarly tax-exempt organization equals a gift. But many such gifts are simply acts of either obligation, preference or reciprocity—like tithing at one’s church, or supporting organizations that promote one’s social opinions, or underwriting a public radio station to which one listens. That is a normal part of being a good community member, and it’s praiseworthy, but it is not really giving. It is more a matter of responsibility than philanthropy. Actual philanthropy, the love of people, the stewarding of Providence—these expect a fuller kind of gift.

Such gifts can come in different forms. They might be in the form of sacrifice—giving what it seems one cannot afford, expecting no worldly reward. They might alternatively be a matter of forfeiting excess—the wealth beyond one’s own needs, which the world’s imperfect property arrangements have delivered into one’s hands. In either case the gift, once given, is no longer one’s own. It never really was.

Pope Francis has made a point of challenging the common habit of mind in contemporary philanthropy that second-guesses the person in need, that presumes to know better. Will the food-stamp recipient spend it on junk food? Will that man on the street use your dollar for drugs or alcohol or a doomed lottery ticket? Francis denies us these questions, together with their presumptions. He reminded an interviewer just before Lent this year that, for the homeless man, maybe “a glass of wine is his only happiness in life!”

Democracy can be a tool, or a family of tools, for achieving the humility that wealth can otherwise lift beyond reach.

Giving to those who ask, said Francis, “is always right.” Before trying to instruct the asker, the giver should listen and learn. “In the shoes of the other,” the pope added, “we learn to have a great capacity for understanding, for getting to know difficult situations.”

Catholic Relief Services has adopted a framework known as “integral human development” to guide its work of giving around the world, drawing on statements from Pope Paul VI and St. John Paul II. It is an attempt to give in a way that presumes the dignity and autonomy of the recipient, that seeks conditions under which people can become more fully themselves through choices and relationships. It is also an attempt to back away from the presumption that a philanthropist is typically entitled to: the presumption of knowing what other people need better than the people in need do.

Another framework for dispatching such presumptions is democracy. Democracy can be a tool, or a family of tools, for achieving the humility that wealth can otherwise lift beyond reach. We tend to think of democracy as the purview of government, but it can also be a means of real giving. It can be a vehicle of Providence.

Participatory budgets

Mr. Zuckerberg, in a lengthy manifesto he published last February on “Building Global Community,” turned to a sort of democracy out of necessity. He admitted that Facebook’s employees, whether in Silicon Valley or satellite offices around the world, cannot fully predict the cultural sensitivities and local anxieties of its nearly two billion users. Combined with artificial intelligence, the platform would be relying on a kind of “community governance,” he wrote, and said that users should expect to see experiments in “how collective decision-making might work at scale.”

The kind of governance Mr. Zuckerberg describes strikes me more like disguised focus groups than a truly accountable democracy; the company’s structure would remain chiefly accountable to profit-seeking investors. But his nod to collective, digital decision-making is instructive. Democracy often gets blamed for the bureaucratic outgrowths of government, so we forget its efficiencies; spreading decision-making processes widely across a large and diverse society is, in principle, a far better way to meet people’s needs than trying to anticipate them through central planning. To the degree that markets work, this is why. But the trick is choosing the right processes for the right situations.

We are living through what could be a renaissance in techniques for doing democracy—and, potentially, for doing philanthropy.

Mr. Zuckerberg comes by his techno-utopianist enthusiasm for the challenge honestly. Alongside the present authoritarian revival in global politics, we are living through what could be a renaissance in techniques for doing democracy—and, potentially, for doing philanthropy. There has never been less reason for tolerating feudal, unaccountable pretenders to generosity.

Private markets have generated a proliferation of decision-making software—from tools designed for running a private company’s board elections to project management platforms for teams scattered around the world. Some tools require more tech-savvy users than others, and they rely on varied means of encryption and authentication. Old-fashioned elections can be organized more cheaply and securely than ever.

But some of the most important experiments enable new forms of participation altogether. Liquid democracy, for instance, is a system used by some of the new internet-based political parties spreading across Europe and South America. One of the leading implementations, DemocracyOS, comes from Argentina; there, the candidates for a political party agreed to vote however the users of the DemocracyOS platform directed them.

It is a system of cascading proxies, a blend between direct democracy and deference to expertise. Rather than electing a representative to make every decision on my behalf for a fixed period of time, under liquid democracy I can decide on every proposal for myself. But in most cases I will have neither the time nor knowledge to do so. I can therefore designate a proxy to vote on health-related matters, and another to vote on education. Maybe those proxies choose other proxies in turn. I can change my proxy at any time or opt to vote for myself. I choose my own level of involvement and step back responsibly.

Loomio, developed by a worker-owned cooperative in New Zealand, has become a popular platform for discussion and decision-making for online groups. An allied project, Cobudget, enables groups to pool donations and allocate them collaboratively. More examples are emerging from the “blockchain” technology that underlies the Bitcoin digital currency—enabling secure, transparent governance without need for a certifying authority. But not all of these democratic developments depend on boutique software; to reach people most in need, they must not. Participatory budgeting, for instance, is a technique developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that has spread to U.S. cities like Chicago and New York. There, largely through in-person meetings, neighborhood residents work together to determine how funds should be spent in their communities.

Democratic tactics such as these might be aids in a kind of philanthropy that gives more than it directs, that entrusts gifts more fully to recipients. But they are just tactics. What matters most is how they are deployed. I conclude with three possible strategies for a more democratic philanthropy.

Giving directly

Maybe the most obvious thing to do when wealth accumulates excessively should be to return it, recycling it to those from whom it came. The John Lewis Partnership, for instance, is a large retail chain in Britain. When one of the founder’s sons took over, starting in 1929, he began transferring ownership of the company into a trust, which would become owned jointly by its employees. This was not an outright gift; the employees gradually paid the family back. But the choice ensured that, from there on out, the company’s profits would go toward the many who produced them, not just the founding family or outside investors. It prevented further excess accumulation.

Mark Zuckerberg might consider doing something similar. Rather than transferring his Facebook stock into his own pet projects, he could put it in a trust owned and governed by Facebook users—say, through some of those “community governance” mechanisms he wrote about. Then users could benefit from and help to steward the valuable, personal data they post and share. Mr. Zuckerberg himself might find his own skills put to better use that way. Instead of seeking to transform fields in which he has little expertise, he could help guide the user community to being effective stewards of the company he did so much to build.

Instead of seeking to transform fields in which he has little expertise, Mr. Zuckerberg could help guide the user community to being effective stewards of the company he did so much to build.

A vast number of businesses face impending transition as their Baby Boomer owners depart without succession plans. Some are large factories, others are small stores and offices. It is a historic opportunity to share that wealth, through forms of cooperative ownership, with the very workers and customers who make those businesses work. This is a kind of philanthropy that honors the human beings in an enterprise, the people who might otherwise take a back seat to the imperative of profits.

Cooperative conversion, however, is not an option for many who are in a position to give. A second kind of philanthropy more closely resembles the forms we are used to: delivering a set of resources to a community or cause.

When donors discern the need to direct funds toward some particular purpose, they can at least step aside after the gift has been made. Conventionally, philanthropic foundations remain, after the original donor’s death, under the control of family members or the donor’s stringent directives. Givers seem unable to allow themselves to fully give. We should expect better; even when the donor frames an original purpose, a more appropriate set of stakeholders can steer the gift afterward.

For instance, if a donor wants to set up a foundation for education in a given city, it could ensure that a significant portion of the decision-making process includes ordinary students and parents there. Rather than imposing elections, the foundation could assign rotating oversight positions through random sortition, just as juries are chosen. Or it could hold open meetings for a participatory budgeting process. If the recipients of the gift are more widespread, such as patients with a rare disease, online tools like liquid democracy or Cobudget may be more appropriate. One way or another, in order for a gift to be regarded as truly a gift, it should be given in a way that is accountable to its recipients, rather than as an imposition on them.

In order for a gift to be regarded as truly a gift, it should be given in a way that is accountable to its recipients, rather than as an imposition on them.

A third strategy for democratic philanthropy relinquishes donor control even further, and it is already starting to become popular: direct cash transfers. Just give people money and trust them to decide how best to use it.

GiveDirectly, a Silicon Valley darling, is a charity that uses mobile payment technology to deliver money into the accounts of poor people in Kenya and Uganda. The Taiwanese Buddhist charity Tzu Chi has also made lower-tech cash transfers integral to its disaster relief programs. This kind of giving includes no stipulation about how people use the money, but evidence appears to support positive outcomes; when people receive money with no strings attached, they tend to use it well. GiveDirectly has also become involved in research around universal basic income—a system by which every person (or adult) in a society would receive a livable income just for being alive. Advocates believe that, rather than disincentivizing work, a basic income would free people to make more valuable contributions to society than dead-end jobs by freeing time for education, family life and innovation. Some even contend that as more jobs become automated by technology, basic income could turn into a necessity.

Something like a basic income would require more resources than philanthropy is likely to provide (even though eight men now hold as much wealth as half the planetary population); full implementation needs public policy. But some philanthropists—including Facebook’s co-founder, Chris Hughes, now co-chair of the Economic Security Project—are putting the idea in motion by funding local experiments in cash distributions that could later lead to policy shifts. It is hard to imagine a way of giving more in tune with the universal destination of goods than this—recycling wealth among as many people as possible, with no stipulations whatsoever about how they use it.

These proposals, I realize, run the risk of inhibiting the philanthropic supply. If philanthropy cannot be a means of buying glory and immortality, one might ask, who would do it? Useful things have been done in the world by well-meaning but self-serving philanthropy. Are we ready to lose that by raising expectations?

Michael Edwards, a former Ford Foundation grantmaker, contends that the current system is not worth protecting. “Philanthropy is supposed to be private funding for the public good,” he has written, “but increasingly it’s become a playground for private interests.” However much the Zuckerbergs and the Gateses of the world succeed in their mighty ambitions, their chief achievement will be the cultivation of dependence on people like them.

“The more you try to control social change,” Mr. Edwards warns, “the less you succeed.”

Providence might do better.

Photo by J.Gabás Esteban

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